License, Library or Original Score?: While radio and video hits keep coming, composers are challenged with selling clients on original scores

Post, March, 2002 by David John Farinella

FEARLESS'S MUSIC TELLS THE STORY

Jamie Lamm, owner/composer of NYC's Fearless Music (www.fearlessmusic.net), has seen a number of scenarios when clients are deciding on music for a spot. "One is that they've picked a piece of music and they're going to shoot and edit the commercial around that and it's a record that they've already negotiated to own the rights. So, that doesn't involve us at all," he explains. Then there's the situation where the client doesn't have the sync rights so they have to have a composer perform an arrangement of an already existing song. "Then it would be a scenario where we're going to do original music and we'd like the music written before we create the commercial -- meaning they may have the storyboard, but they haven't gone into any production. So, they'll have us create some music and then they'll shoot and edit to that. The other possible scenario, which is probably more frequent, is that they shot the commercial and edited it, sometimes to another piece of music, and they'll ask us to do a post score of tha t," he adds.

Of all the scenarios, Lamm prefers creating music to storyboards before anything has been shot. "I think it's really effective when music comes first," he says. "If there is live action being shot they'll play that music on the shoot and people will respond to it. If there's dancing, they'll dance to it. If there's action, they may act to it. It will be smooth and the tone of music will be considered in the production, as well as the post production because the editor will get that piece of music they've already decided on and he'll lay images on top of it."

As for the competition between original and licensed, Lamm is philosophical. "Well, I think there's enough work to go around for everybody. I do think that it is effective for some advertisers to buy a piece of music that [already exists and] that we all have heard before, and spend the bulk of the production money on that," he explains. "Things flow in cycles. That seems to be a trend that has been in play for the past four or five years, so my feeling is the people are less and less going to pre-recorded music and are looking for something original. I don't see it as a competition, I think they are two different things and they serve two different purposes, and they fit in two different price categories."

Lamm concurs that original music enables clients to have a fresh approach to their spot that will match the emotion of the images that will be created. "Usually, rather than people being interested in finding a record of somebody famous, I find they'll be deciding on the lower end whether to use library music versus original music," he says. "That's a pretty easy sell, because the price of just researching some library music might be several thousand dollars and it still might not be right and might have to be edited and probably sweetened to fit their picture. For maybe two or three times more you'd get a custom piece of music that is edited to fit their picture, that maybe has some sound design elements and some musical design elements that fit exactly what they are looking for."