How to Find Information About a Song Featured in a Television Commercial

With the slow death of radio today, recording many artists have resorted to licensing their music for television commercials. This used to be seen as "selling out", but anymore, it's a vehicle for letting millions of people hear your song. "La Ti Da" by the Icicles would've had little radio airplay, but since it was in a Target commercial, I got to discover an artist that I liked, the Icicles got quite a few new fans and made a penny or two. Anybody heard of French-born Israeli singer Yael Naïm's song "New Soul" until the Macbook Air advertisement? That commercial jump-started her carreer here in the US.

So how do you find information about songs featured in a commercial?

It's not like a music video. Rarely will they list the name of the artist in the ad. I wish it was that easy. Here are a few steps.

1. Pay Attention

What is the name of the company? The product being advertised? Any description of the ad (ex: woman and a man driving in a car, etc..).

2. Lyrics

Can you pick any lyrics out at all? It's best if you can get at least one line.

3. Start with Google

Here is an example. The most recent ad for the TV Show Gossip Girl had a great song in it. I was able to pay attention and get the lyrics:

"Now I'm only sour cherry on the fruit stand, right. Am I the only sour cherry on the fruit stand". So I googled that line in quotation marks, and one of the top results was a lyrics website, showing the lyrics to "Sour Cherry" by The Kills. Found it. Made my way to iTunes and bought the song. : )

4. What if there are no lyrics?

This is where it starts getting tricky. First thing's first. Google everything you know about that song. A recent Nike Sparq commercial had a song in which I was unable to understand the lyrics. However, there was a tagline at the end saying "My fast is better than your fast." I googled that phrase, with "Nike Spark" and "commercial".

5. Youtube

Still nothing helpful? Add the word "youtube" to your search. Youtube is invaluable in finding song titles in commercials. It's likely that commercial is on Youtube, and someone in the comments area knows the song title. Be prepared though, most Youtube comments are written by people with an IQ of 50 for some reason.

6. Specailty sites

Adtunes and WhatsThatCalled both have forum sections of their websites dedicated to helping people find song information from commercials, they can be very helpful because you have multiple participants. Another site for commercials is FindThatSong.net(Full disclosure: Findthatsong.net is my site). The way I run Findthatsong.net is that I take requests, there is an "Ask About a Commercial" song, the user submits info about the ad, then I do research and post the results.

7. Yahoo Answers

Still stumped? Sign up for Yahoo Answers. I'm amazed how many people ask and answer questions every day on this site. Ask a question and be as descriptive as possible, and you're likely to get an answer about the song you're looking for. The only drawback is that it might take a day or two. http://answers.yahoo.com

8. You Can Always Call The Company.

Yep, seriously. I've done this. I promise, they won't think you're a psycho. People do this all of the time. Go to the about us section of a company's website and try to find the number of the marketing department. Generally when I've done this, the person has been very friendly and helpful. Often they know the title of the song off of the top of their head. It's a surprisingly effective way to get your answer. Of course you can email a company as well. They're often surprisingly helpful to this type of question. Don't be shy. Just ask!

Happy hunting!