Original or licensed music - which works better for your brand?
This is one of the most common topics I discuss with clients.
“For example, Oikotie has successfully used the well-known song ‘Kun aika on’ in their advertising. So why should we invest in original music when we can just use something familiar?”
Great question! Let me explain.
First of all, very few companies in Finland have the kind of resources that Oikotie has to push their ads across multiple channels with that level of frequency and duration. I haven’t studied how effective their chosen music was or how well people associate it with the right brand, but I’d guess the numbers are quite high, largely due to repetition alone.
However, licensed (or “borrowed”) music always comes with one big downside: The listener already associates the song with something else—something other than your brand. The more recognizable the song, the more likely this is to happen. And when that happens, you lose control over the emotional impact your ad creates. In some cases, you might even trigger an unintended negative reaction.
How much does music cost?
The cost of using licensed music varies wildly. There’s no standard price tag. You might pay hundreds (unlikely), thousands, tens of thousands, or over time, even hundreds of thousands of euros. These are just numbers for local tracks, don´t even get me started on international hits.
One good example is DIY store Rautia’s “Vasara ja nauloja” (“Hammer and nails”), whose former marketing director once told me they’d “paid painfully” for that track over the years. But once it’s part of your brand, it’s hard to stop using it.
With original brand music, the costs are known upfront.
Personally, I prefer an approach where the client buys full, perpetual rights to the music, meaning there are no additional costs down the line. Another option is to agree on an annual licensing fee in advance.
There’s research to back this up
We recently conducted a study comparing the music of two brands. Both had done roughly the same amount of TV and radio campaigning, and both had used their music for a similar amount of time. One used custom-made brand music and a sonic logo, while the other used a licensed song that did, admittedly, match the brand quite well. Importantly, neither brand’s name was sung or mentioned in the music.
The results were striking:
52% of respondents correctly associated the original brand music with the right company. Not a single competitor was mentioned in the responses.
Only 7% correctly linked the licensed music to the right brand and all of the company’s major competitors were also mentioned in the answers.
Of course, this was a fairly small-scale study, and it doesn’t tell the full story. But it definitely tells something.
To sum it up:
If you ask me, every brand should have its own unique music for use in advertising (or in any situation where a customer hears the brand). In the long run, this builds brand recognition and emotional connection far more effectively, and cost-efficiently, than using borrowed music ever could.
