I’ve been fascinated by the link between advertising and music recently. It seems I’m finding tonnes of new music this way - totally not the way I’m used to finding it. It also appears to me that advertisers are getting smarter about their ad music choices and their ads in general. Catch a tune before it goes mainstream or help it get there and you’ve got some pretty good brand association there. It’s not as if it’s a one way street either - artists must be doing well out of this too?

The most recent example I have of this is the newest ad for Very.co.uk. It’s a pretty great ad and you can view it here from YouTube:

It uses a song by Purity Ring called “Fineshrine”. What an amazing tune. I had to track down the song so the first port of call was YouTube - which usually works. Result. And judging by the comments on the video, a large number of other people had the Very.co.uk advertisement to thank for pointing them at the song!

My other most notable example is from the Red Bull Media House - The Welcome to the World of Redbull ad Update Video has been removed from Red Bulls youtube channel for some reason.

It was more of a rediscovery in this case for me, as this tune is the majestic “Outro” by M83, who I’d already heard of with “We Own The Sky”. This advert though, introduced me to “Outro” and in turn their epic album “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming”. M83 have gone from strength to strength (like the Oblivion movie soundtrack) and their music has been used in a large number of adverts on TV.

I was speaking to friends about it at the weekend and it was pretty unanimous - they’d all discovered great songs/bands/DJs from ads on TV. And with the clamor of advertisers trying to get us to talk about their clients ads this might be the better way of getting our attention.