by Michael Crozier

Created on: December 23, 2007

Music in television commercials is nothing new. In fact, television advertising right from its very beginning in the early 1950s has relied heavily on music to get people's attention, set a mood, create the right brand image and sell the advertiser's product. The reason why is simple it works.

Music is an important part of the American culture, and for that matter, almost every other culture in the world. It can relax us, excite us, make us want to get up and dance or simply involve ourselves by listening. That's what makes it such a powerful tool in advertising.

Most music used in TV commercials is what we call "rug" music tracks of innocuous "elevator-caliber" music that is just "slid" under the announcer and actors' voices to fill a gap and help bring all of the audio and visual elements of the commercial together. These musical tracks are not meant to be recognizable and they're usually so subtle, you hardly know they're there.

Very often, more recognizable songs are used as background music to set a mood or help establish an image for the product. Early television commercials in the 1950s featured well known classical masterpieces as background music.

The works of the "Waltz King", Johann Strauss, an Austrian composer of the mid 1880s were among the most popular pieces used as background music for television commercials. His "Artists' Life". "Tales from the Vienna Woods", "Voices of Spring", "Emperor Waltz" and of course, "The Blue Danube" were all used as background music for Palmolive Soap, Cashmere Bouquet Beauty Bar and other soap and beauty aid commercials. Rossini's "William Tell Overture" and Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" were popular background tracks for breakfast cereal and food commercials.

Advertisers then expanded into jazz and rhythm and blues. Soon TV commercials were featuring songs like Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll" and Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" as background music to help sell a variety of different products.

Madison Avenue then borrowed a musical genre from radio the jingle. These short and often witty little custom created musical numbers became popular with advertisers and radio audiences ever since companies like Proctor and Gamble and General Mills first hit the radio airwaves in the 1920s. Jingles became quickly popular with television advertisers and their audiences

"Winston tastes good like a cigarette should"," Tan don't burn get a Coppertone tan", "See the USA in a Chevrolet", "My beer is Rheingold the dry beer", "I'm a Pepper,

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