Recently I’ve been immersed in an incredible, musical world. Japanese Samba, Swedish Hip hop, Brazilian Pop Jazz, Icelandic Alternative. The Internet has allowed the true globalization of independent musical genius and all I can do is listen. As an Art Director I’m dying to suggest some of the amazing tracks I discover for campaigns but wait. Most of my campaigns are interactive and as everyone knows Joe Q. Public hates unsolicited sounds on the Internet. Ask any Usability Nerd or Web Marketing hack about sounds on the web and they’ll quote you some mumbo jumbo from some satanic survey of web users who find audio on websites annoying. Imagine their annoyance with audio in banner ads or on micro sites. What a freaking dilemma. Me with all this great music dying to be commercially exploited for advertising and nowhere to put it. Never before has so much been so available and at such a cheap licensing price. It’s not like my counterparts in traditional advertising get it. They’re too busy chasing around antiquated, hyper expensive, pre-recorded hits (Please no more Stones’ songs in Ads) from yester year for their antiquated :30 second block busters. Most of them probably think MySpace is a new temporary storage company for studio apartment dwelling urbanites.

Can anyone name me the last interesting commercial with an awesome song, jingle or soundtrack? Don’t bother! I’m way to cynical to be swayed by you. I’d rather you agree with me that most TV spots feature music as sucky as their sucky concepts and visuals. The only thing salvageable is the direction and I say that only because I don’t want to offend any of my future peers in that field. The fact of the matter is that I’m bitter as hell. Art Direction includes not just graphics and visuals but music as well and I feel like I’m only able to do half my job. All because some jerk offs with crummy “part of the package” computer speakers refuse to upgrade and enjoy all the sweet sounds the web has to offer. We can help each other. Stop bad mouthing audio on the web in these surveys and I and my fellow interactive Art Directors will try our best to bring you head nodding, bass thumbing music in our ads that will have you clicking thru and scouring the web looking for the tracks we use. If you’re like me and that rare occasion comes along when you do hear great music in an ad and you want to find out who made that song, guess what. You can’t do a Google search for it on your TV. At least not yet anyway.