Library Music is Actually Good
Earlier this week, I attended a housewarming for Carousel Collective, an NYC post-production house, that has moved to a new location.
Curious about getting into composing for advertising myself, I spoke to a number of people working at post-houses and in music-supervision for TV/Film/Commercials.
I came away with an encouraging glimpse of the field: that most of the people I spoke to don’t want to rely on pre-made stock music! And definitely not AI music either (*Sigh of relief*).
What they’re looking for is human composers, writing music specifically catered to what they’re working on. That human touch allows for more flexibility and better results.
But it also got me thinking… stock music is composed by humans too. Sometimes that music is pretty bad, uninspired, and doesn’t even feel like a human is composing it, but, is all stock music always bad?
Some of the best, most influential film music (and some of my favorite music in general) is library music. Library music, stock music, production music. These are all effectively the same thing. Johnny Trunk, library music enthusiast and re-issuer, describes this type of music as: “non-commercial music made for economic use in film, TV and broadcasting.” But in terms of quality, not all library music is created equal.
A place like Pond5, for example, offers stock videos, sound effects, AND music. Most of that music feels a lot less interesting than say, KPM Music, which had it’s hey-day in the 60s, 70s, & 80s and is still used all over media today. Take the Monday Night Football Theme Song:
Pond5 is a more modern iteration of library music, where any composer can simply upload their music to the platform, set a price and, if it’s licensed for a production, the revenue split is 35%. As opposed to KPM Music, which during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, commissioned specific composers and full orchestras to make new compositions to later be placed in various productions.
KPM Music
During the mid-sixties, KPM’s (Keith Prowse Music) director Robin Phillips hired specific composers to write, record, and produce original music to build out a library for new TV and Film productions. He’d hire unknown talents with potential to write in certain genres or moods, eventually building out LP compilations with titles like International Business 2, Action World, and The Pleasures of Life. KPM is just one of a handful of publishing companies churning out quality stuff during this era.
It’s worth checking out APM Music’s website (holding company that now owns KPM) and scrolling through what is effectively a streaming service of all of these great recordings. Particularly, KPM’s KPM 1000 series is top-notch, from the glory days of KPM. They include KPM’s “Greensleeves” which is pictured in the link above, the minimal forest green cover that you may have seen crawling around on YouTube or you may have heard sampled in a rap song. These LPs became sought after in the sampling world, especially when they were less accessible.
If you scroll the website, pay special mind to each album’s descriptions, which are quite funny. International Business 2 reads: “Contemporary thematic suites scored for rhythm section and orchestra depicting fashion. Transportation and glamour.”
Library Music’s Influence
Beyond just the infiltration into hip-hop, library music made during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, has made it everywhere in media by now and, one could argue, has established certain genre film’s go-to sounds.
“Someone like Alan Tew, who was a British big band composer, did two records on a British label called Themes International called Drama Suite Vol. 1 and Drama Suite Vol. 2. Those particular records are really exemplary examples of what I call British cop funk,” said David Hollander, writer of what looks to be an amazing book on the subject.
In an interview with Red Bull, Hollander spoke more about library music’s influence on genre. “I’m a fan of genre filmmaking, and a lot of this music was used in genre filmmaking, both in Europe and in the US. In fact, it was genre filmmaking that I think really drove the expansion of library music because it was blaxploitation, it was horror, it was science fiction and it was porn that widely used library music.”
Of course, being used for TV Themes like Monday Night Football is especially influential, becoming an eternal earworm for many. For our generation, check out this specially compiled list of KPM tracks used in Spongebob Squarepants. Spongebob also used other library music tracks too, like for the opening to this sequence, which has one of my favorite easy-listening tracks:
Library Music’s Downsides
A quote above mentions library music’s wide use for porn. One of the downsides of library music is that once the music was commissioned and recorded, the composer was paid and never had a say as to where it was used. Sometimes they rarely even knew about where it got used.
Take this story from The Quietus’ interview with KPM session musician Alan Parker:
Just a few days before, Parker had been doing an interview over the phone to an American radio programme when the host of the show informed him that he was "massive in the porn industry." Parker, stunned, replied, "What? What are you talking about?" Turned out a piece he'd written for KPM in 1976 called 'You've Got What It Takes' had since been used for over a hundred porn films, from Barbara Broadcast and Pretty Peaches to The ABCs Of Love And Sex, Australian Style. "I mean, that was the first I've heard of that," Parker said, shaking his head. "But I mean, ok! Novel."
If the composer didn’t like the resulting placement, good thing it was relatively anonymous, with composers using pseudonyms or their names appearing in small print on the back covers of LPs. While some people might see anonymity as a downside, for many composers it allowed somewhere to hide if they didn’t care for where their songs showed up.
What Makes Good Library Music
So why does the library music nowadays feel so much less inspired than during the 60s, 70s, and 80s? For one, it might be a nostalgia-bias. It doesn’t sound like everything else you’re hearing these days… so it’s better, right? But, even at the time it was released it felt novel. And I think the main reason is because of experimentation and trust.
At KPM and other libraries, experimentation flourished. For some composers, this came from anonymity, but for most, it likely came with resources. Adequate pay, state-of-the-art studio space, quality session musicians, and time. All of these resources take these companies trusting in their composers. Not all of the music made was guaranteed to get used, but it still had to be paid for. In fact, it’s even more trustworthy than a director hiring a composer directly to score their film, since it’s less of a risk. In the case of hiring a known composer for a movie, at least one would know the composer’s style and it would be written for something specific. In the case of library music, it’s making something unique, yet broad, for no piece of media in particular, and hoping it sticks.
A bulk of these libraries were notably European. Bosworth, Kassner, KPM, and De Wolfe all in the UK. Gemilli in Italy. Editions Montparnasse 2000 in France.
Perhaps because of their history of patronizing the arts, many of these great composers’ work came out of Europe. I think that attitude is still around today, with much better opportunities and infrastructure for musicians existing in Europe, rather than in the United States.
Conclusion & More Reading
Now, do I want film and television to not hire new composers to make original music specifically for their work, and instead rely on library music? Of course not!
That being said, I do think we can learn something from Europe’s golden age of library music. Wouldn’t it be fun if these types of companies started popping up again in 2024, commissioning avant-garde and unknown talents to make new sounds for the next era of genre films, trusting in new artists by supplying them with resources, money, and time.
Yes, libraries still exist, and are hiring composers, but it’s more broad, less experimental, and (at least from what I can tell) less trusting with resources.
I think someone should effectively start a “record label” of this kind of music again, seeking out musicians and putting out LPs with cool, fun names International Business 2 again, with the intention that those records will be licensed for productions. Who’s with me?
If you’re interested in learning more, check out some of the articles I used for research:
will dinola (he/him) is a film composer, musician, and writer currently working in new york city
he is interested in people’s passions and pushing the art of film scoring to new horizons
he writes about his experience in a newsletter called “do”
