3 Questions That Every TV Producer Has About Music
There are generally three questions that every TV Producer asks when it comes to music:
1) Is it available?
2) Has it been used before?
3) How much?
They seem such obvious questions – rookie stuff really. But, all too often in the rush and panic of getting ideas on the table, comes that horrible moment in the editing suite, when someone asks ‘did anyone get clearance on these tracks?
It usually comes after a couple of difficult weeks where the music brief has been in a state of flux and the TV producer briefs yet another music supervisor. The playlists keep coming. The music supervisors should have checked each track before sending them over – shouldn’t they?
And calling all the rights owners to double check on all those tracks that keep changing, seems a pointless exercise. Why keep having a conversation when 10 minutes after the call, you are on to another track and the information is now redundant? Besides, after a while, you can hear it in everyone’s voices, the silent sigh, that you read as ‘make up your bl**dy mind!’
Here at soundlounge, we have witnessed this situation too many times. And sometimes the repercussions have been too painful or too expensive to watch. If the commitment to a track becomes so deep, then it’s also not a great place to start negotiations. Of course most enquiry challenges can be solved if you throw a lot of money at the track, but what about competitor usages? Does this client care? Is the track actually clearable and for your product or product category?
Over the last few years, this ongoing scenario has been bothering us. How could we support an agency’s right to chose a music supervisor based on his or her creative ability, but also introduce a service that enabled the ad industry to benefit from our personal expertise of industry knowledge?
So we built Traffic Lighting, a new music data platform to address all of the issues above and more. Traffic Lighting is specifically designed to answer those three questions and a few more too. Just send the lists over and we will send you back the key answers that you need to know.
No more last minute Red Stop lights on creative ideas.
Ruth Simmons is CEO of soundlounge
