When licensed music emerged as a huge trend in advertising several years ago, many commercial music companies began to worry. After all, every time an agency used a licensed track in a commercial, it was one less spot that required original music. Music producers saw licensing as a threat to their livelihood.
They were right to be worried. Specific figures are hard to come by, but our experience suggests that 30 to 40 percent of the market for original music for ads has disappeared in recent years, replaced by licensing. A 30 or 40 percent decline in sales would devastate any business and there is no doubt that many commercial music houses have been hurt. Yet, in the long run, licensing may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to those of us who create music for spots.
Commercial music companies have responded to licensing by changing the way they do business. With fewer ad projects available, music companies have sought to diversify, to pursue opportunities to create music for other media, such as television and film. Many have also expanded their talent and resource base. They’ve forged relationships with record labels, music publishers, recording artists, remixers and others outside the traditional pool of commercial composers who can deliver the sounds that agencies are demanding today.
Some companies have responded to the challenge of licensing by going into the licensing business themselves. Our company, Emoto, did so and we quickly discovered that we had something valuable to offer advertising agencies: experience.
Commercial music houses are used to the tight deadlines and budget constraints inherent to advertising work. Big record labels are often unfamiliar with the process of producing ads. Neither are they set up to tweak a track to conform to a 30- or 60-second ad format. Commercial music houses do that every day. Even something as mundane as paperwork needs to be handled accurately and that is something that artists who work directly with agencies aren’t remotely equipped to handle.
As painful as change can be, the process of change often produces unexpected benefits. Our own experience bears this out. Although we had been involved in scoring for television for some time, when licensing became an issue in advertising, we began to focus more intently on the entertainment side of our business. That not only led to more television work, it also led us to uncover opportunities in film, DVD and gaming.
As our business changed, we began to make new contacts. Through our TV work, we met music supervisor Howard Paar, who now heads our licensing division. We formed an alliance with Craig J., a Chicago-based remixer. Relationships that we made with recording artists through our licensing division suggested the possibilities of working with those same artists on original scoring assignments.
While the licensing trend provided an opportunity for labels and publishers to enter the advertising business, it turned out to be a two-way street. Writing music for ads, television, film and records used to be discreet, insular businesses. Composers rarely worked outside their area of specialization. Today the situation is much more fluid and the advent of licensing can be credited for helping to spur that change. For commercial music companies, the disappearance of the barriers that separated advertising and entertainment has provided an opportunity to build more diverse businesses with broader resources. Ultimately, that is a very good thing for the bottom line.
But the real beneficiary of this change is the creative process. For musical artists, the freedom to work in different media is a boon to creativity. The opportunity to collaborate with artists with different backgrounds, experiences and talents is enormously stimulating.
Advertising clients also benefit. When agencies come to us for music, we’ve always been able to offer them the talents of a superb team of composers–and we still can–but we now have access to several alternative resources as well. We can offer existing tracks as licensing possibilities. We can bring in an underground band from the UK, with whom we are connected through our licensing division or an independent record label, to write an original track. We can submit ideas for remixes. These additional choices can only be a good thing from the perspective of an ad agency.
Ultimately, the proper response for music producers to the trend toward licensing is not to resist it, as if that were possible, but rather to embrace it. From a business standpoint, reinventing a business can be a little bumpy at first, but it inevitably leads to more interesting and original output. From a creative viewpoint, the opportunity to work with a broader range of collaborators makes the work more vital and fresh, and the process of creating music more organic–and a lot more fun.
