Imagine a commercial with music so alluring and contemporary that it draws thousands of YouTube visitors within weeks with comments like “can you tell me from where i can download the song please?” and “it’s really awesome!!!”. It must have used a hit song or a track from a new artist with Record Company marketing clout, and it probably cost tens of thousands of dollars to licence, right? Listen for yourself…
In reality this track chosen for the new Canon commercial (”Blackbird Song” by Ben Cocks) was from a production music library. The truth is that it was significantly less expensive for our client than a hit song would have been. And the song’s production quality and “catchiness” is on par, if not ahead of, most higher-profile tracks out there.
We know that many creatives prefer hit songs that they personally know and love. To them, production music is often the last resort, or a budget issue but definitely not first port of call. How did production music gain this reputation? Historically music libraries were large catalogues of short clips of music written ‘by the yard’. And today the average production music library starts with over 10,000 hours of material, so there are bound to be plenty of duds. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of music to listen through.
But things have been changing in recent years. Some of the top artists such as Brian Eno, Coldcut, Super Furry Animals, Télépopmusik, Aqualung and Luke Vibert have all created distinctive, high quality music for some of the production libraries.
The good news is that there are musical gems like “Blackbird Song” to be found in every production library. The skill is knowing where to find them and how to recognize a ‘keeper’ when you hear it.
The old “You Get What You Pay For” adage doesn’t always apply – we’ve heard tracks synced to visuals that we know would have cost serious money to licence and yet the music is still not doing its job. The smart money is on agencies who recognize that in this economic climate, production music can save time and money and deliver results, if you have a competent music supervisor guiding you through the maze.
Two production music success stories in a row from soundlounge – check out the Twinings commercial we recently soundtracked with ‘Good As New’ by Ben Vella & Barney Freeman.
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Posted January 13th, 2010. Categories: Ad Music, Creative Consulting, Music Production, Music Supervision, Soundlounge News.
