music placement

We hear popular songs in advertisements, movies and television shows so often that I forgot that this was a type of product placement. Musicians are very protective of their product and writers and producers will often have to pay big bucks to use a song in their show, ad or movie. One company has been created specifically for the purpose of selling the rights to music to the film, video, advertising and radio industry. Alazia has provided music that has been used incommercial advertisements, web pages, cable and network television, corporate instructional video, piolet shows, motion pictures, documentaries and more. They have a catalog of over 2000 songs that have been pre cleared for "most purposes".

Their music catalog can be searched online by genre, mood, vocals, instruments or tempo and tracks can be previewed using real player. Prices are determined by the type of production the customer wants to use the music in. Alazia has placed music in shows such as "The OC", "CSI Miami", "Reba" and more.

While most people are aware that consumer products are being placed in tv shows and movies, many people do not think about the fact that music is being placed in these productions as well. The difference of course is that most of the time producers have to pay to have music in their shows, whereas companies will pay the production to place their product in it. However, by playing a song on shows such as "The OC" and MTV's "The Real World" the artist benefits just as much as the show does. I know I have heard a song on a show that I liked, and then downloaded it on itunes. In fact, the popular MTV show "Laguna Beach" has a section on their website that has a featured artist for the week. Each week a different artist would be featured and during the show their songs would be played and links to their videos would be on the website.

Music placement may be more subtle than consumer product placement but it provides benefits to the artists in the same way an advertisement would. Music is less controversial because most of the time we don't even think about it being publicity for the artist.