Library Music

Library music, also termed production or stock music, is music composed and recorded specifically to be licensed for use in film, television, radio, advertising, and other media, rather than for commercial release to the public. Libraries commission composers to supply versatile cues organized by mood, activity, and instrumentation, pressed in short runs and distributed to producers on a subscription or per-use basis. Freed from chart considerations, library composers worked across jazz, funk, electronic, and orchestral idioms with considerable experimental latitude, and the anonymous, functional format produced a vast catalog now widely collected and sampled.