Similarly, licensing a well-known piece of popular music could cost anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the prominence of the performer(s).
Well-known examples of British TV series with theme songs sourced from library catalogs include Ski Sunday ("Pop Looks Bach" by Sam Fonteyn), Dave Allen At Large ("Studio 69", sometimes known as "Blarney's Stoned", by Alan Hawkshaw), Mastermind ("Approaching Menace" by Neil Richardson), the original theme for the BBC's Grandstand ("News Scoop" by Len Stevens), Crimewatch ("Rescue Helicopter" by John Cameron) and Grange Hill ("Chicken Man" by Alan Hawkshaw).
Arthur Wood's "Barwick Green", written in 1924, still serves as the theme for long-running BBC Radio soap The Archers.
TV comedy series such as The Benny Hill Show and Monty Python's Flying Circus also made extensive use of production library cues (many sourced from the De Wolfe catalogue)[3] as background or incidental music.
American TV has also utilized production music, most notably with the themes for Monday Night Football ("Heavy Action" by Johnny Pearson) and The People's Court ("The Big One" by Alan Tew).
Other notable examples are the Nickelodeon animated series The Ren and Stimpy Show and SpongeBob SquarePants, which use well-known classical music excerpts and a wide range of pre-1960s production music cues, some of which were composed by Emil Cadkin—including many pieces familiar from their use in earlier cartoons—which were chosen for their ironic, suspenseful, patriotic and humorous effect.
Production music composers and session performers typically work anonymously and have rarely become known outside their professional circle.
In recent years some veteran composer-performers in this field such as Alan Hawkshaw, John Cameron and Keith Mansfield have achieved attention and popularity as a result of a new interest in production music of the 1960s and 1970s, notably the 'beat' and electronica cues recorded for KPM and other labels, which have been widely sampled by DJs and record producers.
Library music has been sampled by artists including the Avalanches, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, A$AP Rocky, Flying Lotus, RZA, Swizz Beatz and Ghostface Killah.
Some companies offer truly royalty-free music which is not registered with any performance rights organisation (also known as "royalty collection agencies").
In other words, their intellectual property (their composition) can be licensed to multiple clients simultaneously, provided that they are not contractually bound by an exclusive agreement with another company.