Remember that one song that goes “doo ba doo ba doo ba doo, ba doo ba doo ba doo ba doo”?
Okay, probably not from that description. But if it played out of a phone speaker right now, chances are that anyone who has been on TikTok in the last year or two would recognize it—but still might not be able to name it.
It’s called “Funny Song,” and it plays in the background of animal videos, family antics, and brands’ TikTok videos trying to get in on the spunky, recognizable vibe. The audio track is so popular that it generates more than $1 million a year across TikTok and YouTube, according to Jesse Korwin, CRO of its licensor, Slipstream, and Korwin said that using a cleared track like this is key to brands getting trendy without risking legal action, especially as brands’ music needs are increasing and labels and rights holders get more serious about enforcing their copyrights.
“We’ve really seen a wave in the last year of clients and companies needing solutions to help them scale production,” Korwin told Marketing Brew. “Traditionally, people would make one show or one ad, or a couple a year, and they would be very high-priced items. But now they’re required to always be on, on multiple channels.”
Music for one, music for all
In October 2024, Sony Music and Marriott jointly filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit that the music giant brought against the hospitality chain, alleging that it had used more than 900 Sony songs on social media without permission. Per Music Business Worldwide, Marriott could have been liable for about “$140 million in statutory damages” based on that number. (The companies did not disclose whether they reached an out-of-court settlement.)
The importance of using cleared music should be top of mind when brands are choosing what audio will accompany their social media presence, but according to Korwin, music has taken on an incorporeal quality that sometimes leads to unlicensed audio usage.
“Because of how music consumption was democratized with Spotify and whatnot, in a weird way music…[is] kind of devalued in people’s minds, because they’re like, ‘I have every single song in my pocket!’” he said.
Alongside that devaluation is the lure of the trend—the “Apple” dance or the “moment that feels like Hozier’s yell” audio tracks, for example, were particularly popular—licensed—trends. In order to avoid any potential headaches, Korwin recommends brands go with cleared music. But that, too, can be complicated, because each social platform operates differently.
“There’s not one overarching blanket or license that covers every platform, every [major] label or publisher has a different deal with different platforms,” Korwin said. “I think the labels and the publishers, they’re monoliths in a way where they’re not always the quickest to act. So I think now that they’ve seen, ‘Oh, wait, this social media thing is a thing for commercial enterprises and our sync business…[which is] a key revenue driver, we’re going to pay more attention to it.”
Music libraries like Slipstream’s can provide content creators with audio that is cleared for usage across multiple platforms, something that Korwin said can help brand clients feel more confident that the content they create can be used cross-platform, an initiative he has found to be increasingly important among brand clients.
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“We say ubiquity is the new exclusivity, which is like a very highbrow way of saying, you need to be everywhere now,” Korwin said.
Listen up
Just posting visuals on social media, though, is often not enough. In a space increasingly leaning toward long-form, premium, and episodic content, brands looking to make their mark should pay attention to their audio footprint, especially to help build memorability off-platform too, Paul Greco, executive music producer at VML, told Marketing Brew.
“Later on, when you’re not on TikTok and you’re still thinking about that song, that’s priceless for a brand,” Greco said. “The amount of brand recall and recognition in that, you can’t put a number on it.”
Building brand memorability doesn’t need to be reliant on the current pop hits, and finding the right licensed song doesn’t necessarily mean a brand will be relegated to using less exciting music, Greco said. While stock-music libraries used to have a reputation for being “middle of the road, at best,” according to Greco, the industry has made greater investments in them over the last few decades, especially as they’ve become a more important income stream for composers and artists.
Greco also touted the benefits of sync libraries, banks of music he described as “a rung above” typical stock-music libraries that are populated with music from well-known songwriters and composers.
“There’s another layer there. It feels like it’s a little bit more fresh, it’s a little more creative. It doesn’t feel like it’s geared for advertising,” Greco said. “I’ve heard a million times in my career, ‘We don’t want it to sound like an ad.’”
Level set
Balancing uniqueness and trends is something Greco said brands should also consider. While hopping on trendy music may get brand content in front of more eyeballs, it can also dilute the branding effectiveness of a song.
“[If] people are using [a trending song], if not tied to any brand, that’s great, but that benefits more the people that are using it independently, or the person that came up with it and is collecting some kind of money for some kind of license,” Greco said. “But from a branding perspective, it’s probably counterproductive if more than one brand is using it at the same time.”
On TikTok, though, music usage isn’t always about unique branding. Brands using certain audio tracks might not be interested in creating a traditional ad, but rather getting in on a trend to build community or signal that they, too, understand the intricacies of the algorithm.
Korwin, though, thinks there’s value in merging the creator and brand uses of music, and cited the resonance of “Funny Song” with TikTok creators as reason for why the song has also taken off on platforms like YouTube Shorts and Snapchat. Its universality is what makes it useful to brands trying to achieve a certain feel, he said.
“Even the composer, Tommy Hewitt, it was like a throwaway song for him,” Korwin said. “I don’t think that anyone would peg that as like a viral TikTok song, but I think it underscores that it’s not all about commercial artists or commercial music, that there is a need and a strong use case for different kinds of songs that set a scene or give a feeling to what you’re doing on camera.”