Musicadium Blog

Remember the so called ‘good old days’, when bands just made money from CD sales, touring and merchandise? ‘Selling out’ or making money from a corporate tie in, or through having a song featured in  a mainstream movie was deemed a pretty negative thing. Things have since  changed, and with the decrease in record sales and the recent havoc within the music industry, artists are looking for new and interesting ways  to get their music heard.

One way of doing this is by selling their music to be synchronized with commercials and hit television programs. Synchronization gives artists the  opportunity to have their music played during a commercial or a television series. This not only creates a hefty wad of cash, but generates a huge amount of exposure and awareness.

On a local scale, take the Mitsubishi Lancer ad with Polka, by Yves Klein Blue playing. You know the one - the couple are throwing stuff into the back of their car, and the song makes the ad great. Or if you want to look at it from a bigger scale, there are television shows, Gossip Girl or Entourage to name a few, who only want the latest and greatest music featured, Entourage has featured music from Cold War Kids, Phoenix and even our very own Empire of The Sun.

The exposure and recognition that is gained from your song is uncharted as it could be played across all television stations on     
free-to-air, dozens of stations on Foxtel and Austar, at prime time to millions of people. Even if it is only a snippet of a song, it is helping to reach an audience outside your target market that you wouldn’t have thought of before. Having a song synced with a commercial could help to also generate numerous purchases. With the use of iPhone apps such as Shazam, a consumer can hear the song on an ad, Shazam it, and have the opportunity to purchase it via iTunes immediately.

The new hit show Glee is a great example of synchronization at its best. Glee has sold over 2 million tracks on iTunes, and its success doesn’t look like it is going to slow down. The cast also cover popular songs, and this is helping to boost sales by artists who manage to get selected for the show – an example of this being Rihanna’s “Take A Bow” increasing a massive 189% since it was covered on Glee. The royalties that they are generating for older artists is also incredible, the Glee Cast covered Journeys “Don’t Stop Believin” and it was certified Gold in December selling 500,000 copies. See the article here.

In theory, sync is great but is anybody really paying that much attention?  Sure you hear a great song in a movie, you might go buy the soundtrack, or find it through other sources via the Internet once you’ve identified it on Shazam. One good song on Gossip Girl may give you a kick start, but the rest, a great live show, other great tracks, still needs to be present in order be successful. Otherwise an artist may fall into the abyss of songs that are only associated with the ads they were on, and become known as “Oh yeah, the song off that dog food ad” forever.

With not a whole lot of ads being created, and so many artists trying to get heard, the chance of ending up on an ad are slim, to none. But still, if this could be harnessed, and Australian commercials used music by Australian bands, then the world would be better place.

Take from this blog what you will. At the end of the day what works for some people won’t always work for others. The old model of selling albums to make money is changing along with culture. Artists need new ways to get their music heard, and if that means writing a song for a vampire soundtrack, is that still selling out, or simply surviving?

Attribution for photographs

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 4:13 pm and is filed under General, Marketing & Promotions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.