I was recently approached by a client who had firstly asked, if they licensed a track from our library, would they have the use of it exclusively with their commercial?My reply, obviously, was no, they would not. Production music is licensed on a non-exclusive basis and therefore others may come across that track and find it suitable for their production too. If you require something exclusive, then we can compose something for you, I added in my response. It will be, of course, a bit more expensive, however it will be unique to your campaign and it can be tailored to fit the visuals or existing audio.

So, the following are points in favor of each path; choosing production music and going for a specially composed track:

Production Music:

Though you will get good deals from composers in this economy, production tracks are less expensive. The price will depend basically on the size of your audience – not too much for corporate or online video, but usually a decent jump up to advertising use.

There is always a good selection of library music available and there are many ways to search. If you are willing to put some time in you should find a track that will fit. Library composers are filling every possible gap of required styles and genres of music these days.

Help is at hand – Many libraries give good assistance in finding the right tracks for clients. They are familiar with their music and can get suitable tracks quickly.

You can browse music with no commitment to buy. Often libraries will offer clients a downloadable low res file for previewing tracks with a video.

The music will not be unique to your production, but with the large amount of tracks on offer, the chances of it being picked up for, say a similar ad campaign, are slim.

Specially Composed Music: 

The obvious thing is that you are working with a composer to try to get exactly what you want. You might be able to supply them with a video to work to so the music can be punctuated to what is happening visually. The piece of music can be written to finish perfectly with the end of a commercial for example. It does help, however to have a trusted relationship with your composer and to know that they understand your brief.

Talk to you composer. Some are very well experienced and can often help in the overall creativity of a commercial, even down to the concept of the ad itself.

Composers know that need to be on hand to make last minute changes when they are needed and they can do this easily enough with today’s music creation tools.

Other versions and edits can also be made down the line, e.g., a Christmas version, shorter versions etc.

Hopefully this has helped to discover the advantages of each road when choosing which source of music to choose. Whatever road you opt for, there is a lot of good quality music out there and it is often as good and attention grabbing as fully commercial tracks.

Alan Killian is a director and in house composer of Muziko.com, a production music library based in Dublin Ireland.