Library Music and Its Use in Contemporary British Television Production

This thesis examines the use of library music (also known as ‘stock’ or ‘production’ music) in contemporary British television. To date, scholarship has tended to approach library music negatively — as a lower-quality alternative to other scoring practices — or to exclude this type of music from studies of screen soundtracks. Departing from such value judgements, this study marks a significant advancement to the literature by investigating how library music is used in British free-to-air television, a media form where this music is pervasive. The central research questions are: what is meant by the term ‘library music’? What are the functions of library music in contemporary British television? How does a library track come to be synchronised in a television production? How is library music used within a specific episode, series, or genre? How is the same library track used across multiple episodes and series? Examination of these areas draws together multi- and interdisciplinary methods — including a systematic literature review, content analyses of cue sheets, and interviews with practitioners — with an extensive range of media examples, to provide a comprehensive account of library-music usage. Taken as a whole, the study offers a new definition and understanding of library music as an integral part of contemporary audiovisual culture, together with an original production model. Library music is shown to operate within distinctive industrial frameworks that challenge common assumptions relating to, among other areas, the primacy of the composer and the perceived divide between library tracks and bespoke scores. Resultantly, the thesis makes original contributions to library- and television-music scholarship, offering conceptual and analytical tools (e.g. large-scale analyses of audiovisual content) that provide new perspectives for future study. The implications of this research — in terms of both its content and methods — also extend to broader fields including production studies, media studies, and musical intertextuality.