HOW TO FIND MUSIC FOR VIDEO

One of the most overlooked elements of a video production is music. Great music can be hard to find. And, once you do find a great track for your video, licensing can be even harder to understand. Because of these challenges, we were quite happy when we stumbled across The Music Bed. Here’s a transcript of a recent interview with the owner of The Music Bed, Daniel McCarthy.

Describe your background and how you got involved in music production for videos.

My background is in photography, design, and filmmaking with a major musical influence and history in sound design and production. So it seems I’ve had my hand in most areas of the production process which has been a big plus as we’ve taken on the music business.

In a nutshell, how would you describe The Music Bed?

The Music Bed is a music licensing site that offers relevant, affordable, and unique licensable music for filmmakers and photographers while giving musicians a platform for exposure and income. That’s what we call a win-win.

What sparked the creation of The Music Bed?

Our company essentially spun out of our own frustration as filmmakers — that frustration being the comical lack of easily licensable music that was current and just plain good. We saw a need in the industry and decided to dig in to solve our own (and evidently a lot of other filmmakers’ ) problem.

Who is your primary audience?

TMB’s primary audience falls under independent filmmakers and production companies. We see everything from small personal projects, to corporate broadcast placements.

What is the best part about owning The Music Bed?

Some of the most rewarding moments I’ve had is the privilege to see, as the company owner, whenever we get feedback from our artists. Ultimately, we represent the artists, and it’s always encouraging to see that the exposure that they get from being on the site is paying their bills and allowing them to focus on making more art. We think that’s one of the biggest wins.

How do you find artists to write music for the site?

All of our artists are real musicians with existing albums that you can access outside of TMB. Most of the catalog is artists that are in our iTunes library. Everybody wants to license music they would actually listen to… so that’s what we do. We go after artists that we like.

What is The Music Bed working on now?

We add artists on a weekly basis, but we’re currently working on some additional search features and new intuitive designs for the site. Production companies can look forward to the capability to search by commercial project types like demo reel, promo, and documentary.

What’s the story behind the name “The Music Bed”?

The “music bed” is a term for the track under footage in a video…so we just went with it. Cute, huh?