ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses significant creative and commercial trends of music placement that have emerged across various screen spaces—promotional and artistic, traditional and new—and will reflect on the professional consequences for music supervisors and musicians. It discusses a positive development for producers of screen media insofar as they benefit from greater choice, and new efficiencies, it is important to think about music on screen as involving a relationship between multiple creative parties who need to be taken into account. Studies of music on screen necessarily consider the work of music supervision, though the music supervisors themselves and the decisions they make have rarely been addressed explicitly. Research that has moved beyond a traditional film-studies approach contextualizes the work of music supervision by highlighting continuities and differences across screen media, and by exploring industry perspectives and the role of cross-promotion. Digitalization has redefined the role of music supervision by simultaneously presenting major challenges to, and opportunities for, the music industries.
