Library music (also called production music or stock music) refers to pre‑composed, pre‑cleared musical works written specifically for use in audiovisual media — TV shows, films, commercials, corporate videos, podcasts, video games, apps, and online content. Unlike commercial releases written for consumer listening, library music is created with the needs of editors and music supervisors in mind: clear moods, flexible lengths, defined genres, and ready-to-license rights. It is catalogued and administered by a Production Music Library, which handles licensing on behalf of the composers.
Despite often being less visible to the public than commercial music, library music is in fact the dominant form of music used in broadcast television. A 2021 study by music monitoring company BMAT and the International Production Music Group (IPMG), analyzing 50 major German TV channels and 7 major French channels, found that production music is used roughly three times more often than commercial music on German TV — with some channels (e.g. SAT 1) airing 70% production music. In France, production music also outweighs commercial use by more than 40%. In the industry’s words, production music has become “the dominant form of music in TV broadcast worldwide.”