Tech Focus: Production Music, Part 2 — Music Libraries Offer Lots of Choices for Sports

A look at leading providers

Sports broadcasters and venues seeking library and production music and cues have more choices than ever before. Here are some of the leading ones.

Click here for Tech Focus: Production Music, Part 1 — How the Pandemic Has Changed the Choices for Sports

APM Music, a joint venture of Universal Music Publishing and EMI/Sony ATV, provides content creators exclusive access to more than 820,000 tracks pre-cleared and ready for use in in-stadium, broadcast, radio, or online/social-media productions. APM clients include ESPN, Barstool Sports, Turner Sports, Fox Sports, NFL Network, FuboTV, as well as 87% of NFL teams, 72% of Power 5 Conference Schools, 70% of MLB teams, and approximately 40% of NHL, NBA, and MLS teams. Sports Instagram

Megatrax offers more than 200,000 tracks, including alternate and underscore versions and complete edits. Features include a new website with ease-of-use interface and improved search system; full-time tech support and music supervisors with live chat; and online Spanish and Portuguese translations. Payment options include monthly and annual subscriptions and radio barter deals. Custom scoring is available for any project. Sports-related link

Born from original music and sound design for leading worldwide brands, The Vault Production Music Library, designed by Stephen Arnold Music, offers more than 200,000 tracks of highly curated, up-to-date, and relevant content with quarterly updates. The Vault offers a high standard in production music, taking maximum advantage of the assets that made it a leader in sonic branding. It’s staffed full-time with composers, who are called on regularly to aurally differentiate the likes of Golf Channel/NBC Sports, CNN Sports, ESPN, The UFC, Top Rank Boxing, Sony Interactive, and other brands, networks, and pro sports teams across the globe. Sports-related link

Sound Ideas offers more than 1,000,000 sound effects, production elements, and royalty-free music tracks for broadcast, live events, postproduction, game developers, and multimedia facilities, with unlimited lifetime synchronization rights with every purchase. Delivery formats include downloads and hard drives. All .wav files are provided with full keyword metadata for search applications. Sports-music link; Sports sound-effects link

Warner Chappell Production Music is a worldwide leader in production, news, and custom music. Its brands have composed works for well-known sports TV shows, networks and companies, and teams, including ESPN, British Open, World Cup, Major League Baseball, National Football League, Major League Soccer, Cox Communications, and SPEED Channel. Sports-music link

VideoHelper is an independent, boutique production-music library providing exclusive music for sports entertainment broadcasters (NFL Films, ESPN, ABC Sports, MSG, HBO, Showtime) and professional franchises (Seattle Seahawks and Mariners, Orlando City Soccer Club). Thousands of multi-genre tracks complete a catalog specifically designed to drive video. VideoHelper brings a very specialized breed of production music to sports programming, one that thinks like a producer and is easily editable. Its website/search engine makes it faster and easier than ever to find and license the music you need. Sports link