Leading footage-licensing company Thought Equity Motion has launched a music and sound-effects collection. Offering exclusive and third-party audio content, the royalty-free music library brings Thought Equity even closer to the business models of the stock industry's Big Three.
According to company founder and CEO Kevin Schaff, new media is now driving advertising. While traditional music licensing options are available, he claims they are not as scalable, fast or cost-efficient as the rights-cleared, instantly downloadable option now offered by Thought Equity.
The company describes current market conditions for such an offering as promising, given the shift to motion content across all platforms, including the Web. Notwithstanding the microstock boom, which is driven by do-it-yourself marketers, the move away from stills is evidenced by the stagnating or declining still-image revenues of traditional stock-licensing leaders.
Other forces are shaping the market, including Google's recent launch of video/audio-based advertising, eMarketer's prediction of $25.8 billion in 2008 online ad spending and the success of video-sharing Web sites. eMarketer also forecasts that the market for synch-music rights, which allow the synchronization of music and video for a finished product, will reach $2.5 billion by 2011.