When 'Epic' Became Meaningless

A NOTE FROM OUR FOUNDER ON PRODUCTION MUSIC’S IDENTITY CRISIS

Daniel Holter at THUD. recording studio (Seattle, WA) by Andrew Imanaka

Every year, License Lab founder Daniel Holter takes a break from the studio grind and writes an honest assessment of the licensed music industry—micro trends, macro shifts, where the catalog stands, where the business is headed. This year's is worth reading slowly.

The short version :

Production music has keyword-optimized itself into a corner. When every library chases the same search terms, every catalog starts to sound like the same catalog. And when AI can generate a thousand "epic inspiring corporate" tracks by tomorrow morning, volume stops being a competitive advantage entirely.

The longer version—including why our deliberately unique label names aren't an accident, what the Golden Age libraries got right that we've largely forgotten, and why the libraries that survive the next decade will be the ones music supervisors remember rather than the ones with the most comprehensive catalogs—is over on Daniel's journal.

Read: Production Music's Identity Crisis: When 'Epic' Became Meaningless →