Production Music Libraries

Where does the music come from in reality television?

Many of your favorite television music tracks come from popular libraries, such as the theme song from Curb Your Enthusiasm.  And much of the music from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, also including their theme song.

Production music libraries are a popular source of music for television for several reasons.  The chief advantage is that they are designed to be easy to license.  The production company pays a flat fee to use music from a particular production library, and for that fee they are allowed to use all of that music in perpetuity, anywhere around the world that the show may be broadcast, on any platform or format even if it hasn't been invented yet.  If you know anything about the nightmare of licensing music under these situations, you begin to see why using a production library is a good, no-hassle way to get music for your production.

Additionally, production music libraries are much cheaper than licensing commercial music or hiring a composer to write original music for your production.  This is particularly true if your company is making several shows and can cut an overall deal with one production library.

There are many libraries available for you to investigate before deciding which one is right for your project.

My personal favorite is the Extreme Music library.  This is a vast, vast library with every style and combination of styles you can imagine.  I love that it has a large collection of classical music, as I tend to use it whenever I can (it's good for comedy, action, drama, everything if you know what you're looking for...)  I love that they are constantly adding new stuff.  The website is very easy to navigate and search for different tracks by feel or description or instrument or keyword or whatever!  I've never had to struggle to find something in this library, and I always get exactly what I'm looking for after a little searching.  I would use the Director's Cut series to score a film, should I ever get the chance.

The library I've worked with the most as an editor is called iSpy.  This library has a lot more of what you would think of as typical reality music and I find is particularly suited for comedy and action, though it is used in all types of shows.

There are plenty of libraries out there, and here are some I have occasionally come across in my professional life:

Killer Tracks is a very popular library.
So is Vanacore
Lovecat Music has a lot of pop music with lyrics.  I used it on Plain Jane for the CW.
Combustible
Signature
APM
AH2
Discovery Music Source is used by all the Discovery family of networks, such as TLC and Discovery Science.
Audionetwork is a British company that is gaining footholds in the US.

The downside to using a production library is that none of the tracks will be truly unique to your show, and there is a risk that viewers will begin to recognize or even tire of the music.  I find this is generally a small risk, and one well worth taking.

EDIT:

Here are some more libraries I have worked with now, on MTV and other networks:
Beach Street Music
Black Toast Music
In The Groove
Jingle Punks
Pfilbryte - I particularly like this library for quirky and docu stuff
Pacifica
DL Music
AudioSparx - Easy licensing for independent filmmakers

Score one for Red State

Last Sunday night, my lovely girlfriend Chelsea and I attended a screening of Kevin Smith's new flick, Red State.  After the screening, he spoke for about an hour about various aspects of making the horror movie, a departure from his normal comedy adventures.  Using no traditional act structure and skewering story tropes, Kevin calls this an experimental film, explaining, “Everything is designed to keep you off balance.  All the things that allow an audience member to sit there and be ahead of the movie, we just throw out.”

One thing Smith mentioned was the importance of score, or in the case, the lack thereof.  "I put some score into the scenes and I was like, 'this feels like fucking bullshit, like this just dropped and it just became a fuckin’ movie.'  Take the score out and like, 'shit this is real.'  it forces the audience to decide how they feel at any given moment.  I’m not telegraphing or telling you how to feel via the music.  I let you decide how to feel, and that’s difficult in this movie from time to time.”

In reality television, it's often necessary to tell the audience how to feel via music to quickly tell complex stories or add meaning to footage that was maybe a little soft to begin with.  On most shows we have wall-to-wall music, meaning there is almost never any significant time without music of some kind playing.  Usually a cue will last 30 seconds to a minute, so a one-hour show (about 43 minutes without commercials) will have around 75 music cues in it.

That being said, it can be very powerful to remove score at key moments to draw attention to drama.  If you're having a tough time deciding which cue to use during a sad, tense or even joyful moment, consider dropping out the score as your solution.  If you've properly set up the stakes and emotion in previous scenes, trust your audience to react accordingly.