Music

The music that is used in a radio adverts is essential because you cannot just choose anything. There are laws hat state what you can and cannot play which are called copyright, where it is owned by someone else and royalties, where you have to pay someone to have permission to use it. Music has a very important role in radio advertising and without it the adverts could come across as boring, have no ambiance and would make the listeners feel emotionless. The music used will depend on the context of the advert. In the adverts that producers often choose music that works well with the product / service they are advertising however they do not always have a large selection of music because a lot of popular songs have copyrights and cannot be used for commercials.

Something that makes this issue more complicated is that the advertisers and some radio stations are sometimes unsure about what they are allowed to play. This is because the licenses they have to play songs for entertainment do not allow them to be used in advertising. Therefore if the advertiser decides to play music they are not supposed to then the legal responsibility is with them and not the radio station.

Fair use: It is illegal to use copyrighted music when it exceeds fair use which means the core parts of the music has been used. In summary it is illegal to use if you don't have permission or if the song can be recognised.

Licensing: It is possible you can get a license to use the music in the radio adverts however it means you have to get two different licenses. One from the owner of the songs and one from the owners of the copyright of the recording.

The 7-second rule: A lot of radio advertisers will use the '7-second rule' which is that you can include any songs at all as long as it plays for less than seven seconds. However this rule does not exist and copyright still needs to be gained. If any radio adverts use this 'rule' they are breaking copyright law.

Strategies: Copyright law is complicated and expensive to gain the copyright therefore on option is to compose your own music and have it performed by a musician or purchase the copyright but get someone else to perform it and record it.

In college for our radio station we have a catalogue of Production FX and Production Music, this is royalty and copyright free and therefore we can use it in radio advertising. We have not had to pay for the licensing to use these are they do not have copyrights on them. We have a library of music that we have paid for and can therefore use as part of our radio shows.

Production Music

Production FX