Lindsay Zoladz offers a glimpse into "library music," the stock music that is composed for commercial purposes and used in all kinds of movies and TV shows:
Usually it would work like this: an editor would describe to me some images or sequences she needed music for ("man on a mountain peak at sunset"), and I’d plug certain mood-related keywords (motivational/inspirational) into the online archive for which our company had paid access, which in this case was an L.A.-based library called Killer Tracks. … For anyone who keeps up with pop culture, browsing through certain corners of the Killer Tracks catalog is like traipsing through a bizarre shadow world full of easily identifiable doppelgängers. Songs for Shady Living features a Toby Keith look-alike on its cover and such instant classics as "I Pulled a Muscle (Loving You)"; Soul Pop includes Amy Winehouse–inspired jams and a beehive-coiffed cover model; and, with artwork that showcases a hand-drawn bird and a dead ringer for Ellen Page, Sweet & Quirky seems to be capitalizing on the popularity of the fey indie-pop on the Juno soundtrack.
Coming full circle, pop artists themselves are sampling from the library:
On his 2000 track "Stick 2 the Script," Jay-Z sampled the debonair groove of "Under Pressure," a 1976 KPM track by Nick Ingman (not the Queen song), who, in his wildest dreams, must have hoped his music would someday play beneath a vocal track that goes, "Breathe, mami. / This is good weed, mami." Producer Danger Mouse has sampled Keith Mansfield tracks repeatedly, and Mark Ronson, Gorillaz, and Ja Rule are just a few of the pop artists who’ve used De Wolfe samples in recent years. Library music, of course, appeals to pop musicians and producers for the same reason that it appeals to filmmakers and TV producers: it’s cheap and easy to license.
You can listen to the BBC's 2011 documentary on library music here.
(Screenshot from Killer Tracks' offerings)
The Dish 