How to power up production music libraries with automation

Production music libraries are only as good as their metadata. Thankfully, using AI, production music libraries can quickly generate coherent tags across a vast library in next to no time.

Consistent, coherent tags mean that users find the music for their TV or film production faster, rather than giving up mid-search to try a competitor.

Whether you have resources in-house to respond to sync briefs, or whether you want to let supervisors peruse your catalogue more easily, AI tagging is a great option.

One way of serving up suitable tracks to film and TV clients quickly is to group tracks into playlists based on specific use cases.

Below, we’ll look at three music brief scenarios and see how you can use AI-generated tags (and audio reference search) to build appropriate library playlists that will help music supervisors find suitable tracks super quickly. 

1. Suspenseful horror scene

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Horror soundtracks are extremely particular. As our sympathetic, innocent lead creeps around a dark house, you want the audience on tenterhooks. There are supernatural forces at work, and the music needs to have a steady, low thrum of dread, while building suspense. But what sort of tags can you use to find just the right tracks?

Musiio client Melodie has some ideas about that. They say that to instil dread in an audience, you need minor keys, dissonance and unresolved musical patterns. But how can we get there using only Musiio’s AI-generated tags?

For this scene, we might want to try:

• Moods: Dark, Tense, Scary
• Mood Valence: Negative
• Instrumental
• Energy: Low
• Key: Minor only

That negative mood valence is critical. It indicates how a piece of music leaves you feeling. For horror, negative is the only option. This should get you in the ballpark quickly.

And, if you strike upon a sound that you like, Musiio Search lets you find similar tracks ranked by audio similarity.

2. High-octane car chase

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On-screen, tyres are screeching. Bald-headed men are in high-speed pursuit of other equally bald men. The cuts are hard and fast, the explosions are plentiful, and the tension is ramping.

This calls for a dramatic, energetic, rhythmic track that can match the energy of the movie mayhem that’s unfolding. Let’s see how we’d find appropriate tracks:

You can find candidate tracks using the following tags:

• Energy: High and Very high
• Mood: Tense, Dramatic, Energetic, Frantic
• BPM: Over 126
• Instrumental, with Percussion elements

Then, if you’re looking for a track with more dynamics, you could try refining your search by removing:

• Energy Variance: Small

This leaves only those tracks that have sections of high and low intensity – perfect for cat-and-mouse chase scenes.

3. Heroic moment 

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Superheroes wouldn’t be much without suitably heroic music. So, it pays for production music libraries to have a series of resplendent tracks. This could be to underscore the moment the hero harnesses their powers, or to play as an on-screen sports hero overcomes adversity to realise their full potential. Either way, you can count on there being slow motion.

If you’re imagining the same sound as us, it involves brass, it’s epic and leaves you with an overwhelmingly positive feeling. 

Try using these tags:

• Mood: Inspiring, Majestic, Dramatic
• Instrumental

Without specifying genre, you can create an interesting range of possibilities. But if you want to hone in further on a sound, try restricting genres or specifying instrumentation. For example:

• Genre: Rock
• Instruments: Guitar

Or 

• Energy: Medium
• Use case: Cinematic

These are just three ways that production music libraries can create quick collections of tracks with the help of AI tagging.

The more tag groups you can build for specific use cases, the less your users need to start new searches every time they visit your catalogue. If you streamline your catalogue’s user experience, the more likely it is that users will return.

For an even better catalogue navigation experience, see how Melodie integrates Musiio Search technology to let their users navigate by soundalike tracks.

If you need help, get in touch. We work with 75+ catalogues worldwide and know a thing or two about how to get the best out of our tags. Simply drop us a message via our contact form, on Twitter, LinkedIn or email sales@musiio.com.