Music Gateway’s Trudy Kirabo discusses which styles and genres of music are the most favoured for ads in the top market sectors - and highlights ways in which music sync fanatics can take this information and apply it to their own world.

Using music in electronic media advertisement to enhance a product's success is a method that has been used for decades now. The relationship between popular music and advertising has increased over the years. This is mainly down to the fact that musicians are now greatly profiting from sync ( which you can read more about on Music Gateway here) rather than being viewed as mere “sell-outs” for giving in to these popular genres.

How did it all begin?

The first ever recorded television advertisement was broadcasted in 1941 in the United States of America. Radio advertisement had already made an impact back in the early 1900s. The UK wasn’t too far behind with their first television advertisement aired in 1955. With products now being broadcasted on a national scale, viewers quickly began to associate certain melodies with their product counterparts as music played a big role in increasing popularity and sales. Which to this day, has created a ripple effect.

In the last 10 years, popular market sectors include:

Motoring
Food
Fashion
Finance
Alcohol

Adbreakanthems' 2015 sync sector statistics are based on those ads featuring music broadcast in the UK last year and tracked and posted by adbreakanthems and provide a valuable snapshot of the shape of the market. They showed that Pop music secured 193 syncs during the 12 month period followed by Orchestral music, Electronic and Alternative Rock and Pop. Top sector brands included Apple, Tesco, McDonald's and Ford. It was no surprise these brands amongst others such as H&M, Sony and Microsoft were racing to find the most popular music genres and styles to go alongside their product advertisements. These days top market sector music supervisors lean towards genres that can be easily tailored to reflect key messages to help people remember a product or service name. With catchy lyrics/music too along with this, pop music ideally does this a majority of the time. For example, in 2003 McDonald’s paid $6million for the “I’m Lovin It” jingle which was written by American rapper ‘Pusha T’ to be sung by singer Justin Timberlake. The jingle is now the franchise’s anthem, making the rapper the composer of the longest-running campaign in the fast food chain’s 76 year history.

Orchestral being second, financial services tend to use orchestral/classical music as this can evoke feelings and moods to relax and reassure the audience that the service being advertised to them doesn’t require them to worry. Electronic music secured 61 syncs in 2015 mainly in “Motoring” commercials. The fast pace and exciting melodies allowed the audience to associate themselves with the car being advertised, creating the idea that if they purchased the item, their life will be you guessed it…”Electronic”. Other top 10 songs getting the sync plays included, alternative, rock, easy listening, hip-hop, R&B & soul, solo piano and singer/songwriter.

So what can I take from this?

If you’re looking to get into sync music yourself - whether as an artist, a band, a manager, a publisher, a song-writer or someone who randomly stumbled across this page - I urge and encourage you to pay attention to detail. If there is a particular market sector that appeals to you more – let’s take the fashion industry for example – be advised to find music that is most used in that sector so you can grow in your knowledge and focus on a genre of music that’ll get your foot into the sync door. You can’t go wrong with a good ol’ catchy pop song too. Your first sync deal may not be “Apple” (well who knows, dream big) but studying brands and the music they’ve released on their advertisements in the past can help you stay relevant and help you know how to sell that product well through your music. You can read more about the best strategy here.
The benefits of paying attention to detail and creating music relevant to these briefs is that you’re most likely to get a response. Music supervisors for these markets are always open to new and relevant music, if you provide them songs that you will work, they’ll be greatly fond of you.

There are a number of sites that can help you on your sync journey in order for you to always be ready to pitch/create music the top market sectors favour.

Adbreakanthems
The company is a unique information source for professionals in the sync and branding sectors. For the last five years, the company has increased the number of syncs identified year on year and have even been quoted by the BPI in their reports and releases. This all done merely by identifying the master rights holders, music supervisors and ad agencies involved in the soundtracks to all the latest TV ads. In the long run adbreakanthems hopes to provide everybody in the sync supply chain with the knowledge to unlock potentially lucrative new business opportunities. They’re definitely the first point of contact if you want to get more information about the statistics in sync.

Music Gateway
This B2B platform has specifically be designed to allow creative and music industry professionals to connect and work together on a global capacity. Often getting daily sync opportunities coming through their platform, the company allows you to connect to what you may lack. Breaking down barriers that hinder career development, you can easily find producers, singers or songwriters to collaborate with/hire to get you one step closer in creating a style and genre favoured by top market sectors. Click here to find out more about what you can do and here for how it works.

Diverse Music Solutions
Although different from the first two, Diverse Music Solutions is a non-profit , social enterprise launched by musicians specifically to help unsigned and emerging artists with long term music related advice, ideas and answers. This includes sync placements that they’re well connected to which all goes to a great cause. This can be great if you ever need advice or experience in placing music for sync deals that are all going to a great cause.