CEO of Songseekers International, Ruth Simmons discusses today’s relationship between advertising and music at the Festival of Media Global in Rome.

Just because you have the ability to use music in your advertising it doesn’t always mean you should, says the CEO of Songseekers International, Ruth Simmons.

Speaking at the Festival of Media Global in Rome, Simmons was joined by Cliff Fluet, partner, Lewis Silkin to discuss today’s relationship between advertising and music in the ‘Music for the people’ session.

The pair argued that today, in order to communicate at the level demanded to make genuine emotional connections with their customers and get heard above the noise, brands have to work harder and with more clarity of not only what music but how, why and where.

“Music has been a journey for advertising,” said Simmons.

“When digitisation came into existence – so the last six years or so – this had a big impact for the agencies,” she added.

With this new platform, anyone who has a computer could access music anywhere they wanted and as a result of this, a lot more people were talking about their brand and using music to tell their story, she explained.

On top of creating new licensing issues, there was also no real way on the advertiser side to see if that music was working for their brand.

Simmons explains that the main issue she finds with brands is that “just because you can use music in your advertising, does it mean you should?”

“Why do brands use music? They use it because they want to connect – not just to fill in the silence. There are four stages in processing music: Physical, cognitive, emotional and physical.”

On a more serious level, Fluet explained the legal and financial cost in this evolving relationship.

“It is clear that much of the value from music for artists in the future will come from the use in brands, marketing and advertising, rather than music sales,” he said.

“The real issue is music will need brands as much as brands will need music – there is a huge opportunity to work together. But the truth is it takes a completely different way to work together – it needs to be a genuine partnership.”

But the issue lies in the significant number of people in the “value chain.” Fluet explained that it is the “fundamental competing interests” that halt a genuine partnership.