
Tech Focus: Production Music, Part 1 - Technology, Business Upheavals Create Challenges and Opportunities AI and the RSN bubble are among current disruptions in the sector By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
Production music has been one of the stabler sectors of the sports-media business. Football always seems to want its triumphal horns and crunchy guitars while golf relies on its pastoral themes, and so on. That's even as sports clients ask for more of the same but different, or modern takes on classic themes, as the head of one music house phrases it. It's a typical pattern for sports-production music: the classic themes endure, but elements of the current culture find their way in.
But, as in other media sectors, a combination of technology and business disruptions has been churning the waters around production music. Players in that market are aware of it but say it's too soon to tell how it all will play out.
AI Is on the Horizon As is likely to happen with everything AI touches, artificial intelligence will probably affect production music, eventually.
Sound Ideas Sales Manager Peter Alexander believes that no algorithm could effectively imitate the emotional qualities that music for sports applications requires. You need to be able to get crowds up on their feet and cheering predictably, he says. It's hard to imagine a machine able to compose at the same level as a human, at least not without human supervision. But it's still early days, so it's hard to predict how AI will shake out for production libraries.
AI has drawn wary looks from the music industry in general: composers see it as potentially replacing them; publishers view it as the next iteration of sampling, which uses data from existing IP - a sound or a song - as the basis for a new work, a path some expect AI to follow in music creation.
However, production-music companies may take a more nuanced view of AI: as both a source of potential infringement but also as a way to lower the costs involved in music creation and production.
The AI is definitely a topic of consideration in the production-music sector. According to Morgan McKnight, executive director, Production Music Association, a non-profit that works with production-music libraries, composers, performing-rights organizations, and technology solutions to promote the sector, AI is viewed by many as potentially one more tool to help foster the use of production music, particularly from established providers at a time when almost anyone can make credible music on an iPhone and an app.
It's too early to tell what the impact of AI will be, she explains, but it's seen already as potentially a tool that could make life easier, such as metadata for creating remixes.
She adds that new avenues, such as social media, create more demand for production music and stimulate the need for variations, such as alternate mixes. Hopefully, it becomes another way to create stories for sports and contribute to the authenticity of those stories.
AI-based music-creation platforms are proliferating. Bandlab's Songstarter will generate three unique musical ideas for composers. Splice offers a similar CoSo tool, and TikTok owner ByteDance is reportedly readying its own app for its 1 billion users.
RSN Disruption = Opportunity Recent disruption in the RSN sector, which has seen streaming and cord-cutting push regional networks like Diamond/Bally Sports to the financial edge, has the potential to create opportunity for production-music providers, says Whitney Arnold, president, Stephen Arnold Music.
Stephen Arnold Music's Whitney Arnold: A lot of teams need to create their own brand identities through music.
We're seeing a lot of teams taking back their broadcast rights and, with them, the need to create their own brand identities through music, he says. When they were part of a larger network brand, there was often a one-size-fits-all approach to music and graphics for all the teams and leagues broadcast by a network. Now we can help them choose and create custom music branding.
Stephen Arnold Music Director, Brand Strategy, Russell Boiarsky points out that, even as sports moves into new distribution paradigms, such as Apple's acquisition of MLS streaming rights, a team's desire to hold on to its own identity branding will survive, creating a need for vendors like production-music houses to take on creative duties.
[This shift] is going to create a ton of new opportunities, he says. But it's going to be the Wild West out there for a while.
Matthew Gutknecht, director, sports entertainment, APM Music, believes that the classic broadcast-sports model remains strong for many leagues and teams though not for every market.
APM Music's Matthew Gutknecht: When technology outpaces legalities, you have to wait to see a legal precedent set [for AI]. It'll all get figured out.
The Diamond situation has touched so many of our clients in basketball, baseball, hockey, and other sports locally, he notes, but the full impact won't be felt immediately but rather as each sport's next season comes around. He adds that litigation and other disruptions, such as the legal kerfuffle between the Phoenix Suns and Mercury teams and Bally Sports, will increase that uncertainty.
Yes, he continues, there will be opportunities [for production music], but the larger picture is that the whole local and regional and OTT broadcast ecosystem has changed drastically. We're monitoring all of that.
Gutknecht takes a similar view with AI, waiting for its inevitable legal concerns to show some resolution: When technology outpaces legalities, you have to wait to see a legal precedent set. This is like sampling was years ago
North America Stories
27/08/2026
ESPN and Disney are launching College Football Saturdays, adding two college football games per week to Disney for U.S. subscribers as part of their existing ...
27/08/2026
Zixi will exhibit at IBC2026 (Hall 5, Stand 5.A76, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), demonstrating the Zixi Platform and the latest release of Zixi Broadcaster, ...
27/08/2026
NDI has announced that its ecosystem has surpassed 1.2 million NDI-enabled hardware nodes worldwide, spanning products from more than 200 hardware brands across...
27/08/2026
Clear-Com conducted a pre-launch field trial of FreeSpeak Cell during Carnival 2026 in Rio de Janeiro, in partnership with Brazilian systems integrator Savana C...
27/08/2026
BHV returns to IBC 2026 with an important milestone for its own SportsBox: the broadcast industry's smallest remote vision mixer and format processor has mo...
27/08/2026
TOGETHXR and Snapchat have announced the second cohort of their Snap the Gap content creator program, welcoming nine athletes as Snap Stars. The program provide...
27/08/2026
MediaKind has announced that CNBC UK has selected Beam to modernize its contribution and distribution infrastructure for live broadcast operations. The deployme...
27/08/2026
Monitor engineer Chris Dwight has deployed Sennheiser's Spectera wideband bi...
27/08/2026
Telestream has announced an expansion of its UP cloud-native platform, adding capabilities for orchestrating Telestream services, third-party technologies, and ...
27/08/2026
Swerve TV has signed a multi-year partnership with GLORY Kickboxing, bringing live GLORY events and library programming to Swerve Combat, Swerve TV's free a...
27/08/2026
Dalet has announced a new integrated content experience with Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Dalet Flex, designed to bring AFP's editorial metadata into the p...
27/08/2026
Grass Valley will demonstrate an integrated live production environment at IBC2026 (Booth 9.A01, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), combining K-Frame, Maverik X, ...
27/08/2026
The National Women's Soccer League and Roku have announced an expanded partnership, with the Roku Sports Channel becoming the exclusive streaming home of ei...
27/08/2026
FuboTV has announced the launch of ACC Network Extra (ACCNX) and SEC Network (SECN ) on the Fubo streaming service at no additional cost to subscribers with En...
27/08/2026
Sports marketers have entered the experiential age. Today, sports teams, leagues, and venues are increasingly using immersive interactions and real world events...
27/08/2026
MultiDyne will introduce the MDoG-8800 at IBC2026 (Stand 11.C12, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14), extending its openGear portfolio with a high-density fiber tra...
27/08/2026
The Joint Task Force on the Dynamic Media Facility (JT-DMF), an initiative of AMWA and the EBU, will host a series of informal Ask Me Anything sessions during...
27/08/2026
Homestream, a mobile app that automatically syncs a team's local radio broad...
27/08/2026
A packager for TNT Sports, Kwokman Productions is on hand for the unique event w...
27/08/2026
After more than 3,000 games, five members of YES Network's original staff re...
27/08/2026
Advertisers gain granular CTV targeting and turnkey reporting across eligible in...
27/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/08/2026
Profuz Digital makes a mark by launching a powerful upgrade to its Profuz LAPIS digital media management platform this IBC in Amsterdam at Stand 8.A88. The late...
27/08/2026
DHD.audio has chosen IBC 2026 as the launch venue for what it defines as one of the most radical advances in the companys 30 year history.
Every broadcast trad...
27/08/2026
Direct connectivity between planning, production and graphics for creativity and streamlined workflows...
27/08/2026
New Photoshop innovations bring you more choice and control at every stage of yo...
27/08/2026
First Two Seasons of Vertical Series Vultures Shot on Blackmagic Design Cameras
Brie Clayton August 27, 2026
0 Comments
Director and DoP of Vultures ...
27/08/2026
For years, the media and entertainment industry has hesitated to use AI-voiced dubbing due to concern for audience experience. New data from 3Play Media, a glob...
27/08/2026
Starfish Technologies has announced the forthcoming V9 release of its Advantage AD workstation, adding support for voice synthesis services and giving Audio Des...
27/08/2026
Lightware's UBEX is a powerful AV-over-IP product well suited for rental and staging workflows where systems must be fast to deploy, easy to repurpose, and ...
27/08/2026
Lightware has expanded the scalability of its 10G TPN AV-over-IP platform with the introduction of the new TPN-MMU-X100 Matrix Management Unit, enabling systems...
27/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/08/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/08/2026
PlayBox Neo Stand 7.C29 IBC2026 - 11 14 September
Well-established global specialists in media playout, automation, and streaming solutions, PlayBox Neo ...
27/08/2026
Rise Academy, the broadcast and media skills charity dedicated to delivering practical media technology learning experiences, careers resources and work experie...
27/08/2026
Mediagenix, a global leader in smart content solutions to profitably connect the right content to the right audience, will showcase the latest evolution of its ...
27/08/2026
NVIDIA's Gamescom announcements are revealing what's next for GeForce NOW, with new ways to play, more supported devices and platforms, and even more bi...
26/08/2026
Roku Sports Channel will stream eight matches free beginning Aug. 30 as league shifts Sunday-night games away from Victory+...
26/08/2026
Evertz and Mobile TV Group detail how on-premises infrastructure and cloud resou...
26/08/2026
The Sennheiser Group will demonstrate its broadcast audio portfolio at IBC2026 (Hall 8, Booth D50), covering wireless microphone workflows, studio monitoring, a...
26/08/2026
Appear and Transmisiones Televisivas TVTEL Limitada have announced the deploymen...
26/08/2026
Leader Electronics has announced that Danish broadcast rental company Minitech has purchased a Leader LPX500 hybrid IP/SDI waveform monitor and LT4670 sync puls...
26/08/2026
Encompass will demonstrate its Altitude media services at IBC2026 (IAMT Hub, Diamond Lounge, Hall 3, RAI Amsterdam, September 11-14).
Key products on show incl...
26/08/2026
Daktronics has partnered with Massillon Washington High School in Ohio to install a new LED video display and implement the Daktronics Camino show control platf...
26/08/2026
Clear-Com has appointed Dubai-based Venuetech LLC as its main partner for the Middle East. Venuetech distributes professional audiovisual solutions across the r...
26/08/2026
NBC Sports NOW, NBC Sports' free 24/7 streaming channel, will launch a new weekday lineup beginning Monday, August 31, including two new shows.
Not So Fast...
26/08/2026
Calrec will demonstrate updates to its ImPulseV DSP software and Argo ecosystem at IBC2026 (Stand 8.C47), including previews aligned with the EBU's Dynamic ...