Noise Upon Noise

If I knew what motivates people to do what they do, I'd be a very rich person. Can I explain why an ad agency will have creatives haphazardly search the web for music to license, wind up with something no one's ever heard of, and pay a lot more for it than they would for original music that precisely serves their branding, campaign, and editorial? Then turn around and pay a music house to re-record it so that it sounds more like what they really want?

The answer is I haven't a clue.

I'm not opposed to licensing. In addition to original music, I work on licensing projects both in connection with my work with RSC Music and for selected law clients. I just negotiated one that worked out especially well for an artist who you've probably never heard of, and that's a lovely thing. My client is thrilled.

But I am a creator of original scored music, and I'm seeing way too many licenses that not only don't work, they detract from a campaign.

I'm also hearing a lot of nasty original tracks that do nothing for the visuals or creative idea; I'm hearing lots of "beds" instead of real scored tracks. I wonder if the fact that producers have so gotten into cutting to music, instead of creating visuals and having music scored to picture, has contributed to this lack of quality scoring?

Selecting licensed music for a campaign often does the artist or band a bigger favor than it does the client's brand recognition. Often we hear voice-overs grinding above a mishmash of singer, music bed, and SFX. This means that often the effect of this is not to hear the music that the client is paying more for at all, because the VO has to be hotter, or simply a confusing spot where people can't even remember the product that the ad was promoting.

One thing that's led to this phenomenon over the years is that video editors will cut to a temp track, which then means that the client hates anything BUT the temp track. Also there is the fact that clients can pick the exact track they want in advance without taking a chance that the original music they commission won't be to their liking. This, even though ad demo competitions increasingly involve free demos with dozens of pieces of music to pick over.

Sure, it's good that that artists who put stuff on YouTube can make some real money if someone stumbles on their work and it works for a campaign. And it's also good that artists can launch their careers by getting noticed in ads.

But there really needs to be some balance. Creatives need to think about the real needs of the project.