Anonymous Sounds

This cross-disciplinary collection provides the first comprehensive study of library music practices in the 1960s and 1970s.

Library music was inexpensive, off-the-shelf music available to license for a small fee. It was widely used in television and film as a cheaper alternative to commissioned soundtracks. The book pays attention to the different individuals, groups, organisations and institutions involved in making library music, as well as to its transnational sites of production (from continental recording studios to regional cutting rooms). It addresses questions of distributed creativity, collective authorship, and agency.

Combining empirical and theoretical research, the book unveils the modus operandi of a highly secretive yet enduringly significant cultural industry. By drawing attention to the cultural ubiquity and intersectionality of library music, the collection also shifts emphasis from individual film and TV composers to the invisible community of music publishers, writers, and session musicians. It argues that the latter were collectively responsible for fashioning much of the sonic identity of 1960s and 1970s film and television. As well as providing a nuanced understanding of historical library music cultures, the collection shows how they continue to inform contemporary audiovisual cultures.

Nessa Johnston is Lecturer in Screen Studies and Digital Media at the University of Liverpool, UK and author of The Commitments: Youth, Music and Authenticity in 1990s Ireland (2021). Her research is in sound and music in screen media, cult cinema, media technologies, and media industries. She is co-investigator on the Leverhulme funded research project ‘Anonymous Creativity: Library Music and Screen Cultures in the 1960s and 1970s’ and a 2020 Fellow of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas (Austin).

Jamie Sexton is Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies at Northumbria University, UK with research interests in music and media, and cult cinema. Recent publications include Freak Scenes: American Indie Cinema and Indie Music Scenes (2022).

Elodie A. Roy is a media and material culture theorist with a specialism in the history of recorded sound. Her publications include Media, Materiality and Memory: Grounding the Groove (2015) and Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture: Unsettled Matter (2023).