Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

As Organic's first full-time Sound Designer (at least I think I'm the first?), it's part of my sworn duty to evangelize that custom-made music and audio be thought of as early and as often as possible.

Compelling video content REQUIRES compelling audio. Original music scores, audio atmospheres that denote a specific environment, 3D audio ambience, unique UI sound effects—all can be easily considered as possibilities in the overall experience, and included from the ideation process forward.

As Alex notes, the audio component is often left to the last minute, outsourced, or—too often—overlooked entirely, because producing audio in-house is usually perceived as being difficult or expensive. This perception is unfortunate—because all audio elements can be produced by one person in-house, working on an inexpensive system.

Music is very important, but it has to be used carefully online. It's one thing for a commercial to have a music bed using an obscure soul track - which of course would go to #1 in the UK, which has a rich heritage of loving soul music [the Rolling Stones and the Beatles as popular examples, the Northern Soul movement as a more niche example], but it's fully another thing to have music on a website.

I think it can work, but it has to be an actual song. I think users have had enough of stock, atmospheric music and select the mute button immediately.

To have real songs requires a real budget, not $500-1000, but more like $10-25K depending on the track, term and territories.

Re: the music business, the record labels have their hands tied right now. Its business model relies on both album and single sales, which differs from how it was pre-1953 before the long playing album was developed.

If it's based on singles, and many consumers are sharing or stealing, depending on one's perspective, music online, a tremendous source of revenue goes away.

I argue on my blog that subscription will be the saving throw for the music business, but it shouldn't be called "subscription", because consumers start to think about ownership, which is not an issue with services such as Netflix. Such a service will have to be offered on demand via high speed mobile phone networks and include radio stations and a la carte listening options.

Unfortunately, the major labels' predicament is not entirely a result of bad taste, but a convoluted business model (getting labels, publishers, Harry Fox and performance rights societies to agree...) and pirates galore.