Contemporary Writing and Production: Books

Audio Branding is a concise, practical guide on the influential world of audio branding - what it is, why it's important, and how it can be used to enhance a brand. Consider the familiar tune of a branded ringtone, the bubbly sounds of Skype, and even the chosen sound bite for a branded car unlocking as the driver presses the key. How do these choices tie into a wider brand identity? Which emotions do they spark, and most importantly, how do these choices enhance brand association with the consumer?

Business-as-usual has been transformed across the music industries in the post-CD age. Against widespread hype about the purported decline of the major music labels, this book provides a critique of the ways these companies have successfully adapted to digital challenges and what is at stake for music makers and for culture. Today, recording artists are positioned as artist-brands and popular music as a product to be licensed by consumer and media brands. Leslie M. Meier examines key consequences of shifting business models, marketing strategies, and the new common sense in the music industries: the gatekeeping and colonization of popular music by brands.

From Coca-Cola to Chrysler, this book takes the reader behind the curtain of some of the best popular music in advertising campaigns of all time. It is little know fact that fog played a critical role in the "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" campaign and that while taping the "Lose Yourself" video, the choir had no idea Eminem would show up. Originally the Doors were to be in the Cadillac commercials, not Led Zeppelin, but one of the members of The Doors discovered that Cadillac made the Escalade and suddenly declined because he felt it was environmentally unfriendly. This Note's For You talks of the people who created the campaigns with the songs we remember the most.

In this funny and insightful investigation, Steve Karmen dubbed the "King of the Jingle" by People magazine takes us back to a time when consumers happily sang along to "Pepsi Cola Hits the Spot," "This Bud's for You," and "Hershey Is the Great American Chocolate Bar," and brings us to the era of borrowed melodies, electronic sounds, and lyrics that never mention the name of the product. Did Madison Avenue get too sophisticated for its own good? Too cheap? Too sneaky? In its quest to combat the technology that allows viewer to "zap" the commercials, "tune out," or eliminate advertising, did the advertising world invent "integration" (putting the product into the programming) rather than make the commercials lovable, hummable units of entertainment themselves? Karmen explores the demise of the advertising music business and why the future of advertising is so precarious.

(Berklee Guide). Writers of commercial music are more in demand than ever before. The rules have changed in the past decade, and the contemporary writer needs a multifaceted skillset in order to succeed in business. This book will help you master the three roles of the new job: writer, producer, and engineer. You will learn to set up a profitable business model for creating commercial music, providing your clients with music that fits their needs and budget, at today's quality standards. Whether your interest is in producing music for jingles, film scores, videogames, corporate presentations, or other commercial areas, this book will reveal how to set up shop, find work, and create music at today's demanding professional standards.

In Writing Music for Commercials: Television, Radio, and New Media, professor, composer, arranger, and producer Michael Zager describes the process of composing and arranging music specifically for commercials across the growing variety of media formats. Writing music for commercials requires composers not only learn the craft of writing short-form compositions that can stand on their own, but also understand the advertising business. In this third edition of his original Writing Music for Television and Radio Commericals, Zager walks starting composers through the business and art of writing music that aims for a product's target audience and, when done well, hits its mark.