Brands must stop choosing library music based on price and convenience
Composer Kris Macken details how the oversaturation of library music has resulted in brands misjudging and misusing a wonderfully powerful asset.
Over the last decade, easier, faster and hassle-free access to a growing bank of library music has benefitted advertisers, production teams and composers alike. However, the growing supply of library music, coupled with an increasing inclination to choose it over bespoke music services is exploiting the world of composition and production and leading brands astray.
A commanding force
Music libraries have been around for ages. However, upgraded internet capabilities and advancements in music production have served to spark a boom in content creation.
Worldwide, library music is now a commanding force in pop culture and media. Alongside the spectacular surge in track numbers, independent publishers are popping up like boy bands. Entities such as Audio Network and Extreme Music have become synonymous with library music, bypassing the traditional copyright societies as licensors, to provide an alternative pricing structure for their services.
Music libraries are fantastic resources, where composers can offer a huge range of music genres with generally high-quality production values to the global market. Highly accessible, they also provide a crystal-clear chain of title (although some publishers are walking a very fine line when it comes to sound-alikes).
But the real value of library music is time; it’s available off the shelf, bypassing time-consuming negotiations and agreements.
Something’s gotta give
The relationship between composers and music libraries is tenuous and set to turn toxic. Large numbers of new publishers and an over-supply of tracks mean the production of library music is saturated.
Distribution is no longer easily obtained, and publishers are overwhelmed with door-knocking composers wanting in on the action. While supply edges up, rates for the licensing of production music have fallen in real terms.
Given that this is where the demand is, composers are throwing their resources at library music production, instead of bespoke services. Inevitably, it’s a race to the bottom.
To produce library music, highly creative and specialised composers are being commissioned to write for a nominal transaction fee – effectively, zero upfront payment. Rather, most agreements simply offer a share in the potential future mechanical and performance royalties as payment.
Now, it seems this music library-equivalent fee structure has crept into the composition of bespoke tracks for branding projects. These fees are often groundless and significantly lower than the resource costs involved in production. While this gamble may prove worthwhile for some, for most, it’s a painful, insecure and financially unrewarding process.
The new status quo points to a narrowing scope for creators paired with an oversupply of content. This has the potential to lead to ‘deadweight loss’; or, the social cost of a market failure. This happens when the price of production music doesn’t account for the social cost of producing too much music. The casualty is a contingent of independent composers functioning largely on speculative outcomes with little to no job security.
One-size doesn’t fit all
While music libraries can yield excellent matches for all sorts of uses, brands should think carefully about the value and role of music in their identity. The strategy underpinning your brand’s use of music and sound has to infiltrate every point of contact; consistently, distinctively and repetitively. It goes way deeper than jingles and mnemonic audio tags; it speaks to the soul of a brand.
By blindly selecting library music based solely on price and convenience – you’re just adding to the wall of homogenous sound commanding consumers’ ears. In doing so, you’re also missing a wonderfully powerful brand asset.
Kris Macken has worked as a composer and audio branding strategist for over 15 years.
Photographs and advances in printing technology devalued the worth of images as everyone who wanted one could make or get a cheap print. The same happened when “digital” also devalued audio content and its traditional distribution model of physical objects. Just as the camera eliminated the “entry cost” (being a painter) of producing an image, computers have removed the need for big recording studios in the creating of high quality audio content. Now every man and his dog can “knock something together” with Garage Band et al. The chance that other great bands such as Queen or The Beatles emerging nowadays is almost nil. The “race to the bottom” has already started and there ain’t no stopping it. Your article gave many good reasons why using (possibly older) audio content from the old incumbents is painful and why any “brand” is justified in exploring other content sources. The economics of the music industry always only worked for a lucky (and/or talented) few. The rest had to keep their day jobs. I can’t see any real difference today from yesterday in the financial situation of “young hopeful” audio artists. It was always precarious financially for the unknown bands or creators. There is now a glut of new audio content just as there was a glut of technology facilitated images of prior decades. The buyer is the winner: isn’t that how capitalism is supposed to work?
User ID not verified.
Love this piece Kris, elegantly written and gets to the real point. If a brand wants to say who it is through music and emphasise its POD, it has to work with a human being who will work with them to understand and help them authentically express those qualities. AI is what it says on the tin – artificial intelligence.
User ID not verified.
Maybe. But when you look at the nightmarish labyrinth of rights to navigate in choosing something edgier, you take the path of common sense. Why expose your client and yourself to vexatious litigation from rights “owners” who are just after some go-away money? Copyright is a complete mess.
User ID not verified.
Original music and sound is nice, often better, but not always essential.
User ID not verified.