Tech Focus: Sports Music, Part 2 — A Look at the Libraries

Offerings continue to grow and diversify

Production teams looking for library and production music and cues have more choices than ever before, including a new entry this year: Arena Waves. Here are some of the leading sources and what they have to offer.

Click here for Tech Focus: Sports Music, Part 1 — Pandemic Spurs Greater Demand.

APM Music, a joint venture of Universal Music Publishing and Sony Music Publishing, provides content creators with access to more than 920,000 tracks for use in in-stadium, broadcast, radio, or online/social-media productions. APM clients include ESPN, Barstool Sports, Turner Sports, NFL Network, Wave.TV, 85% of all NFL teams, 75% of Power 5 Conference schools, 75% of MLB teams, and 40% of all NHL, NBA, and MLS teams. Click here to check out APM Sports Entertainment’s newly curated playlists.

Arena Waves, a rebranded joint venture of veteran sports A1 Jeri Palumbo and music-licensing service FlikTrax, is a precleared music library offering specialized, dynamic, and customized music for sports, esports, and other content. Its user-friendly interface and mobile-platform design allow easy access for creators on the go. The curated Producer’s Edge collection was designed specifically for sports and live broadcasts with precise, drop-in–ready cutdowns for bumpers and highlights, saving valuable time. The Curated Playlists feature makes finding the exact style/genre quick and easy. In addition to its 100,000-track and rapidly growing (the service launched March 1 with 70,000 tracks) library, Arena Waves has an impressive array of talent and composers and offers custom music packages in as little as 48 hours from any direct request. Designed by sports-audio and production-music veterans, Arena Waves numbers CBS Sports, ESPN, NBC, MLB, NFL, NBA, Netflix, Amazon, and the BBC among its sports clients.

Megatrax recently toasted its 30-year history as a leading independent production-music library by launching a new brand identity with a new logo, renewed brand mission, and newly developed music-search platform powered by its Simpli artificial-intelligence search assistant. Its library comprises 300,000 tracks, creative radio imaging package WIZZFX, and custom music options for any project. Click here for news and sports music, here for sports.

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 provides 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. Click here for sports-related music.

Sound Ideas offers more than 1 million sound effects, production elements, and royalty-free music tracks to broadcast, live event production, postproduction, game developers, and multimedia facilities, providing unlimited lifetime synchronization rights with every purchase. Delivery formats include downloads, hard drives, and online memberships. All .wav files are provided with full keyword metadata for search applications. Click here for royalty-free sports music, here for sports music, here for sports sound effects.

Emmy, Telly, Addy, and Promax Award-winning WarnerChappell Production Music (WCPM) is a global leader with more than 35 years of experience. Based in Los Angeles with offices in New York City, London, Paris, Nashville, and Hamburg, WCPM is owned by music publisher Warner Chappell Music and is part of the Warner Music Group family. In total, the library represents 135,000+ unique tracks and 120+ catalogs across all popular genres, including hip hop, pop, rock, country and alternative, classical and orchestral, modern underscore, jazz, trailer music, sound design/SFX, world repertoire, and vintage archival. In addition, WCPM produces custom music from its studios in Nashville and Los Angeles. Recent clients include Disney+, ESPN, NBC, ABC, Fox, MLB, EA Games, and the UAE Pro League’s theme “Going to War.” Click here and here for sports-music reels.

VideoHelper is an independent, boutique production-music library providing exclusive music for sports/entertainment broadcasters (NFL Films, ESPN, MSG, HBO) and professional franchises (Seahawks, Mariners, Orlando City Soccer Club). Thousands of multigenre tracks fill 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 appropriate music. Click here for sports music.