Most organisations commissioning video or audio content make the music decision last. It’s treated as a finishing touch and something to drop in once the edit is locked. That ordering tends to produce predictable results: a stock track from a subscription library that fits the footage without particularly serving it, or a licensed song whose cultural associations have nothing to do with the brand attaching itself to them.
Music is not a finishing touch. It is one of the primary ways an audience understands what they’re supposed to feel. Getting the decision right and making it early changes the quality of the work.
There are three practical options: royalty-free and stock music, licensed existing tracks, and commissioned original composition. Each has a legitimate use. The question is which one serves a particular piece of content.
Stock and royalty-free music is appropriate for functional content like explainer videos, internal communications and social media posts where music is background texture rather than a load-bearing element. Subscription libraries like Epidemic Sound and Artlist have improved considerably. For content with a short shelf life or a modest budget, they’re a reasonable choice. The limitation is that stock music is, by definition, not distinctive. The same tracks appear across thousands of pieces of content. If the music is doing significant emotional or brand work in a piece, stock rarely holds up.
Licensing an existing track makes sense when the cultural associations of a specific song are part of the point — when the audience’s existing relationship with that music is something you want to borrow. It is also, in practice, the most complex and expensive route. Licensing requires clearing both the composition and the master recording separately, negotiating terms with publishers and labels, and specifying media, territory, and duration before anything is confirmed. For a track by a well-known artist, costs can run to thousands of pounds for a single usage. Rights holders can and do say no. Campaigns have been built around songs that fell through at the last moment.
Commissioned original music costs more upfront than stock and is less complex than licensing, but it gives you something neither of the other options can: music that belongs entirely to the piece it was made for, and to the organisation that commissioned it. A brand film, a documentary, a podcast with a distinctive sonic identity, or any content intended to carry long-term brand weight — these are the places where original composition pays for itself. The music can be reused across all derivative content. It creates consistency. It cannot appear in a competitor’s video.
We run a record label and offer audio-visual production as a core part of what we do at Dancing Turtle Media. We’ve worked with composers and producers for over twenty years. When original music is the right answer, we can make it — or we know where to find it. When it isn’t, we’ll tell you that too.
