The Corporate Conundrum

What Music To Use Today

What exactly is a corporate presentation today? Is it Apple introducing a new product with hip alt folk music? Or Northwestern Mutual presenting their annual stockholder’s report using traditional orchestral music? Or maybe Harley-Davidson introduces a new motorcycle via a walk-through video utilizing a Southern Rock influenced underscore? What exactly makes these different music styles “corporate?”

The tried and true formula of the typical corporate track is a big intro that quickly drops to a rhythmic groove with a slow melodic thematic over the groove. The reason behind this is simple: most shows open with graphics followed by narration. Oftentimes, key changes are written into the arrangement to allow the narration to change bullet points or moods. The corporate track usually closes with a big build allowing closing graphics. Wham bam thank you ma’am, hope you enjoyed the show!

We at CSS Music want to take a moment to brag: we’ve been supplying corporate-industrial music for over 30 years and feel this genre of music sometimes gets short shrift. What used to be “tympani and French horn music” has now evolved into a genre as diverse as the colors of the rainbow. While we continue to refine the traditional “corporate sound,” CSS Music is also developing hybrid styles that incorporate elements from hip hop, house, rock, electronica, dubstep and many others.

If you look at our Hand Picked Genre/Category Hot List on the CSS Music/Zero Fee/Dawn Music websites, you’ll notice we have only one category, Business/Industrial that links to the type of music you’d typically choose for corporate presentations. But you’ll notice there are 175 pages for your corporate presentation pleasure. You’ll find a plethora of styles all having the commonality of working well in corporate/industrial/business presentations.

For you as an editor or music supervisor we encourage you to explore our website. With various search options, we think you’ll discover music that will enhance your presentations quickly. But if you want to confine your search to strictly corporate-industrial, using our Search By Library will yield tons of great tracks from all our libraries! Happy hunting!