The sound you hear when you swipe a MetroCard is more of a toneless beep than anything approaching music. But former LCD Soundsystem front man James Murphy is on a quixotic quest to change that.

"It's a really unpleasant sound," he told WNYC's John Schaefer in 2012, imitating the off-key bleat of the turnstile for good measure. Adding insult to audio injury: "the one that's right next to it is slightly out of key."

Three years later, neither Murphy's dream — nor the reality of the turnstile sound — has changed. But now Heineken has taken notice, and is launching a campaign to make Murphy's "subway symphony" a reality. The company has launched a website, worked with Murphy on a video, and is trying to get traction for the project on social media. 

Giving each turnstile a unique sound, Murphy says in the video, could revolutionize an otherwise dreary commute. "Rush hour, instead of being a nightmare, would suddenly become possibly the most beautiful time to be in the subway."

The response on Twitter has been largely supportive, if not wistful.

And while we're at it, can we make it a tap-to-pay system? #SubwaySymphony

— taylor marsh (@taylor_marsh) June 16, 2015

But Murphy's dream will need to remain in the non-corporeal world, says MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg, because you can't mess with the turnstiles.

"They're too important," he said. "The function of these beeps is to allow visually impaired people to use the subway efficiently and effectively."

(One beep = go ahead. Two beeps means 'swipe again.' And three rapid, judgmental beeps means 'insufficient fare.')

Logistically, it's also a time suck. There are 3,289 turnstiles in the system, and they must be individually taken out of service to tweak.

The MTA has had time to hone its argument. Murphy is not the first person to come up with the idea of hacking the turnstile sound. "There was a high school kid, a Stuyvesant grad," said Lisberg, "who emailed us and proposed substituting soothing chords for a cold, dismissive beep." He offered to write the code for it. The answer remains: NO.

Despite an apparent lack of wiggle room in the MTA's response, Heineken was optimistic. "Changing something so institutionally established as subway turnstiles and the sounds they make takes a lot of effort and hard work from a variety of partners," said marketing director Quinn Kilbury. He said new content would be added to the website in hopes that it would garner enough public opinion to sway the MTA. "As we continue to work behind the scenes, our ultimate goal is unchanged, and we hope to get Subway Symphony in front of the right people for a chance to implement the project."

Perhaps it's not that far-fetched. No one ever thought the MTA would ditch those panic bars on subway emergency exits either.