Music you already know

What needs to be arranged before a famous hit plays under your commercial

Three notes and you already know. A famous hit under a commercial does its work before the brand is even on screen. The song brings along a feeling that was already there: a summer, a party, a memory. The brand does not have to build that feeling. It can step right into it.

That ease is what the listener hears. What they do not hear is everything that comes before it. Publishers, record labels and film studios. Sometimes in Hilversum, sometimes in Los Angeles. Every party has to say yes before a track goes on air. At TFA we have been arranging that for years, for brands from Remeha to Lidl and from Kawasaki to the Dutch government.

In this article we take you through a number of songs we have licensed for commercials. And we show why it pays to leave that route to us.

A title that does the work

For Remeha we licensed The Heat Is On. The rights were held by Sony and by Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles. The song says in four words what a heating brand stands for. That is not a coincidence but a choice.

With The Power, Kawasaki got a song that sounds the way a motorcycle accelerates. That license went through Sony. Thuisbezorgd chose Apple Pie Bed, with rights through Strictly Confidential and Cloud 9. Lighter in tone, homelier in feel.

In the early 2000s, Suzuki used Billy Swan's I Can Help for a long time. We arranged the rights with BMG. Through repetition, the song became a fixed part of the campaign. That is how music works in the long run: the more often you hear it, the more firmly the brand is attached to it. What research says about this, you can read in What does music do for your brand?

Lidl: a whole playlist

For Lidl we did not arrange a single license but a series. From Christmas classic to summer hit and from soul to Dutch-language: every campaign got the song that suited the moment.

• The Lion Sleeps Tonight
• I'll Be Home for Christmas: Warner Music and Universal
• Stormy Weather: EMI Music Publishing
• True Colors: Sony
• Doekoe: EMI and BMG
• Boogie Wonderland: Universal and EMI
• Summer Jam: Warner Music, Sony and Kontor
• Birds and the Bees
• The Best: BMG
• Mambo No. 5: Peermusic
• Have You Ever Been Mellow: Jeroen Flamman and Kobalt Music

Behind many of these titles are several parties. Summer Jam has three. Every rights holder has to agree. As long as one signature is missing, it stays silent.

Dutch government: Douchebags

The government also knows the power of a song everyone can sing along to. For the Douchebags campaign of the Dutch government, through agency Noise, we licensed three tracks:

• How Am I Supposed to Live Without You
• Mambo No. 5
• Gangnam Style

So Mambo No. 5 played both in a supermarket commercial and in a government campaign. A strong song carries very different messages. The feeling stays the same. Only the sender changes.

Why you leave this to us

Music licenses are tailor-made. No two songs follow the same route. You deal with publishers, record labels and sometimes parties on the other side of the world, each with their own terms and their own pace. We have years of experience and a broad international network. We know who we need and how to reach an agreement quickly. Because we are a music publisher ourselves through TFA Rights Management, we know both sides of the table.

Using an existing recording means you pay twice: for the composition and for the master, the recording itself. That is why we offer a second route. If the rights holders allow it, we make a re-recording of the song. You then use the melody everyone knows, without the original master. That saves considerably on costs, often half. The craft is in the details: a re-recording has to come so close to the original that the feeling stays intact.

A famous song lends your brand a memory. We make sure that loan is settled before the first note plays.

Do you have a song in mind for your next campaign? Let us hear it. Get in touch and we will work out together what is possible.

Want to know what happens behind the scenes before a song plays in a campaign? Listen to Spatial Stories with Aron van der Ploeg of Warner Chappell Music or read the conversation between Danny and Marco about what music is truly worth.