Two Music Composition Trends to Tick Off at Cannes 2018

With many big changes coming in to effect for 2018, this will be an interesting year at Cannes Lions. The length of the festival is different, the number of attendees greatly reduced and access to certain areas has changed. But one thing that remains a constant is that there’s still one hell of a lot of discussions to be had. 

This year in music and advertising has been an interesting one. Music libraries continued to thrive and there have been some interesting acquisitions between labels and production libraries. Many music composition companies have had to push hard to win commercial jobs - or diversify their offering completely. Alongside this, we’ve seen some of the most powerful combinations of music and film – Childish Gambino’s ‘This Is America’ has reignited the conversation around the music video as a platform to communicate. With viewers watching longer on YouTube than any other social media platform, new opportunities present themselves between brands and artists and vice versa. 

If music comes into your day-to-day role, be it production, editor, creative or CMO, I recommend you get yourself wrapped up in one of these two topics:

That’s right, technology isn’t just for the likes of Marcel, it’s going to change how we procure music for good. Over the past decade, Production Library Music has dominated by making use of our increasingly global and connected world. Their platforms to make music licencing faster and easier spread like wildfire. But this is the year music can not only be faster and easier, but powerful and bespoke. It was only a matter of time before someone used technology to give Creatives what they really want - emotive music, composed for their ads, at a sustainable cost with speedy, quality delivery.

Look out for chat about how new platforms can catalyse creativity and shake up existing models.

I predict that the word 'Connection' will be one of the top buzzwords on the Croisette this year. The whole discussion around the over-reliance on the use of sync and library music and the apparent disconnect between the music and the story, on a great deal of brand content, will be a hot topic. The use of stock music, might be a convenient solution for content producers who are working on tighter timelines and budgets but are brands actually missing a trick? There is an opportunity to connect with their audience and customers via the use of bespoke music and the craft of scoring music to picture. Ask pretty much any creatives around the world and they'll come back with a resounding, ‘YES!’