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Selling Your Creativity to Big Business
A brief discussion on the use of music in advertising
In the not-too-distant past, I read a brief article regarding a popular song and its use in an advertising campaign produced for a large corporation to sell a particular drug.
I thought, “Oh great. Some poor muso has sold their soul to a cretinous conglomerate. Again.”
I also thought, “The guy is making a large pile of money from the deal, so good luck to him!”
You can see the bind I was in: totally in favour of making some cash, not in favour of selling out!
However, after further contemplation, I realised that permitting the use of one’s creative output has been occurring for quite some time.
The use of music, particularly well-known or popular pieces of music, in advertising has been occurring for almost as long as we’ve had commercial media. Many of those advertisements, be they on radio or television, have used music to create an emotional connection as part of an attempt to reach and perhaps influence consumers.
Some of those pieces of original music have become so well-known, that they have become culturally significant.
Consumers are now also used to seeing advertisements that feature classical music, the rights to which are often in the public domain.
Many advertisements also feature contemporary or modern music created by artists who have chosen to sell or rent their creative work to an advertising agency.
That last particular point has led me to prepare this article! But, we’ll get to that in due course.
Original music
The creation of original music for use in advertisements is now a rarity, primarily because there is so much cheap or free music to utilise.
Below are some examples of advertisements that I grew up with that featured original music.
In 2007, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia established Sounds of Australia, a registry of sound recordings with cultural, historical and aesthetic significance and relevance, which inform or reflect life in Australia. Nominations from the public are voted on by a…
