The “Knock” on Royalty-Free Production Music

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This lower-profit alternative known as “buyout music”, as it developed, often drew second-class composers and producers…resulting in a rather poor reputation for buyout music. But there were exceptions, and a certain competitive pressure caused many who had previously used traditional “needledrop” and “blanket” libraries to hunt for the better-quality buyout libraries as backup options. Over time, more and more quality composers were drawn to this field, and with the creation of MIDI technology and its ability to automate certain aspects of music production…single composers/producers found that they were able to create complete music scores by themselves…further tightening the margins and allowing profits to be made at lower price points.

Since it has to cover a wider-range of usage than songs composed for other purposes, royalty-free music is generally less complex and less engaging than popular music. And yet, the music is rarely “the star of the show”, as it’s often used underneath a professional narration and location audio. Thus, some producers play on this strength and create separate tracks called “underscores”, which have the lead instruments stripped out of the tracks.

Evolution in the Field of Royalty-Free Production Music

In the 1980s-1990s, synths gave way to samples, as technology allowed more instruments to be “sampled” digitally and recreated on desktop audio workstations. Instead of “faux” instruments such as drums, bass and piano, it became more and more difficult to distinguish live instruments from their sample counterparts. It’s gotten so good now that artists are recording albums featuring single digitally-sampled instruments…even very complex instruments such as pianos.

For small production houses, production music libraries in the form of an in-house CD library or an online library of downloadable tracks are the preferred choice.