Stock music or custom music for your ad?
Daan Koekelkoren — producer and founder of Studio ZK. Has been making music and sound for campaigns, brands and cultural institutions in Amsterdam since 2016.
Stock music has become good. For plenty of videos it is the right choice, and we say so when someone asks. The question is not which is better, but what you are paying for with each, and where the difference shows up once a campaign runs.
When is stock music enough, and when do you need custom music?
Stock music is enough for internal videos, tests, one-off social posts and anything that runs briefly in one place. Custom music pays off when a campaign runs for weeks, has to work at several lengths, or should sound like your brand and nobody else's. The deciding factors are exclusivity, fit to the edit and the rights.
The comparison
| Stock music | Custom music | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Per track or by subscription, depending on the licence tier | Per project, quoted up front |
| Exclusive? | No. Anyone, including a competitor, can license the same track | Yes |
| Fit to the edit | You cut the edit to the music | The music is written to the edit |
| Six-second cutdown | The hook usually falls away | The hook sits where the shortest version can reach it |
| Content ID claims on YouTube | Common, even with a valid licence | Not an issue when you control the recording |
| Broadcast use | Often a separate, more expensive licence tier | Agreed in the contract |
| Speed | Same day | One to two weeks for a track |
Read the licence tier
A stock licence for online use does not automatically cover TV, radio or paid advertising. Most libraries sell broadcast and paid-media use as a separate tier. Check three things before a stock track goes on air: is paid advertising covered, is broadcast covered, and for which territories.
The middle route: stock, reshaped
There is a third option. Sometimes a brief calls for a piece of stock music reshaped until it feels tailor made: re-edited to the cuts, rearranged around the voice-over, mixed and mastered for broadcast. It costs less than an original score and sounds less generic than stock straight from the library. We do this regularly; see mixing & mastering, where stock audio treatment is part of the service.
Rerecording: the route when you want a known song
If the edit was built on an existing song and the licence is too expensive, a rerecording is the alternative: a new recording you own. Mind the composition rights if the melody stays the same. More in music licensing 101.
Why recognition is the real cost
An ad that sounds like a library sounds like everyone else who used that library. If the campaign runs for weeks and the brand wants to be recognised before the logo appears, that is where stock costs the most. Ads with clear sonic brand cues are 8.53 times more likely to be high performing than visual-only ads, according to Ipsos (2020). A stock track nobody else owns does not exist.
Not sure which route fits? Send the edit and where it will run. → Music for advertising · What music for an ad costs