Listen, Feel, Transform

The difference between buying a jingle and building a musical identity.

You may have seen this type of business advertised lately: a production company promising the perfect jingle, a catalog of musical options waiting for your business name, or an automated service offering instant audio with a few clicks. 

The presentations can be impressive, and the convenience is certainly appealing. But before a radio salesperson or local advertiser reaches for a credit card, I think we need to have a conversation about what’s actually being purchased.An ad for Push Button Productions recently caught my attention. The link carried Microsoft/Bing paid-ad tracking and the keyword “radio commercial company.”

 That points to a paid advertising campaign, although the link alone doesn’t establish exactly why the ad appeared where I saw it. What it certainly doesn’t establish is whether the company buying that visibility has the best solution for your particular advertiser. There’s nothing wrong with advertising your business.

 I’m in radio; I’m pretty enthusiastic about the whole concept. But a bigger advertising budget can buy more opportunities to be noticed without necessarily buying a better creative idea. Being the company that gets onto your screen first is not the same thing as being the company that belongs in your customer’s head.A business name in the lyrics doesn’t make the entire jingle customIt’s important to distinguish between the products being offered. 

Push Button’s website lists stock compositions with customized lyrics and vocals, original custom jingles with market and industry exclusivity, and a Brand Scores offering with custom music and a worldwide buyout. Those are different products, and the company also describes a full creative and recording process. It would be inaccurate to lump all of that together and call it automated jingle making.
 But the stock-versus-custom distinction raises a question worth asking: Did this music begin with your business, or did your business get added to music that already existed? There can be perfectly legitimate reasons to choose a stock composition. I just don’t think changing the lyrics should end the conversation about how personally the advertising was developed.

My starting point isn’t, “Which of these tracks do you like?” It’s, “What should somebody remember about this business when the commercial is over?” Maybe the business name suggests the melody. Maybe the strongest idea is hiding in something the owner says about why customers keep coming back. Maybe the selling proposition is so good that it deserves to become the hook instead of being squeezed into a verse.Consider a car dealer trying to persuade people to drive beyond the dealerships closest to home. The assignment isn’t simply to make something that sounds like a car commercial. It’s to make that extra drive feel worthwhile and give people a phrase they can remember when they’re ready to shop. 
Choosing “country rock” from a menu doesn’t solve that problem. The advertising idea has to do the work.That’s the difference I care about. I don’t want to dress a business in a musical outfit that happens to fit. I want to figure out what that business should be saying, why anybody should care, and how to make that message sing.

Yes, I use AI. That isn’t the distinction.Let’s get this out of the way, because pretending otherwise would make this entire discussion ridiculous: SonicAttention uses AI production technology. I personally develop the concept, melody, lyrics and hook, then use modern tools to help realize the sound. Human creative direction and technology are both part of the process. I’m not interested in defending expensive production simply because that’s how we used to do it. 

I’m interested in what happens when you use better tools without abandoning the thinking. My standard is that technology should help execute the idea, not become an excuse for never having one.

There are services selling a different proposition. AI JingleMaker, for example, promotes creating station IDs, sweepers and other radio audio in seconds using AI voices and sound effects. That’s a convenience offering, and it may be useful for certain assignments. It should not automatically be confused with commissioning an original, sung advertising concept built around a business. The problem with a click-and-create approach isn’t that every result must be bad. The problem is that getting a result can feel like finishing the assignment. You have music, a voice and the business name, so the job appears to be done.

 But who decided whether the message was worth singing in the first place?A line can rhyme beautifully and say absolutely nothing. A production can sound enormous while burying the advertiser’s name. You can fall in love with a chorus and still have no clear reason to choose the business paying for it. Those are the questions I want somebody asking before the finished audio goes anywhere near a customer
.I don’t consider the first pleasant-sounding result a victory. 

I want the business name to land naturally, the important words to be understandable, and the hook to carry something more useful than “we’re the best, forget the rest.” The button can generate an option. It doesn’t relieve the person using it of responsibility for the advertising.Let’s talk about the price—and what you’re paying forThe price discussion needs to be honest, too.

 Push Button’s jingle page doesn’t publish package prices, so I’m not going to invent a quote or present an agency-wide project estimate as the cost of one jingle. Its published timeline says most custom projects take four to six weeks from initial concept approval to final delivery. That describes a different production process, not a verified dollar-for-dollar comparison. A larger production budget can buy things an advertiser genuinely needs: live recording sessions, additional deliverables, extensive collaboration or broader usage arrangements. 

Those can be legitimate reasons to spend more. What a larger invoice cannot establish, by itself, is that the central idea is stronger. An expensive forgettable jingle is still a forgettable jingle.Here is the SonicAttention offer: the custom spec costs nothing, and there is no obligation to buy. 

Your client hears it before deciding. If they want to use it, the jingle is $100; if they don’t, they owe nothing. Revisions are available, and the finished purchase includes commercial usage rights without an ongoing royalty every time it airs. 

That changes the conversation. I’m not asking a business owner to imagine how good something might turn out after committing money. I’m asking them to listen to an idea created for their business and decide whether it belongs in their advertising. Instead of “pay, create and hope,” the sequence becomes “create, hear and decide.”I’m also not selling access to a dashboard and leaving the advertiser to become the creative director. The value is having somebody take responsibility for the concept and the finished production. 

My goal is to use technology to remove unnecessary expense without removing the part of the job that requires judgment. A local advertiser shouldn’t have to choose between an affordable tool they must operate themselves and a creative process they can’t comfortably budget for.A radio salesperson needs an idea, not another assignmentPut yourself in the salesperson’s chair for a moment. You have a business owner who needs customers, a competing station offering a package, and a digital company promising everything short of eternal happiness. 

Walking in with another list of features doesn’t necessarily give you much to work with. Walking in with an idea the advertiser can actually hear gives you a different place to start.That’s how I want a spec jingle used. Not as a novelty you tack onto the presentation after discussing the schedule, but as the beginning of a conversation about what the advertising could become. “Here’s something we developed around your business” is a very different introduction from “Here’s another production service you might want to investigate.”Imagine playing an owner a hook that captures the reason they opened the business or the advantage they’ve struggled to explain. 

Now you can discuss how that idea might work in a commercial, a seasonal promotion or a longer campaign. There’s no guarantee that a jingle will close a sale, and I would never promise one. But I would much rather give a salesperson something specific to present than another vague assurance that we can make the client sound great.This is also where creative judgment matters more than the number of available options. 

A hundred generated versions can become a hundred decisions somebody still has to make. Which one communicates the benefit? Which one gives the name enough room? Which one sounds good in isolation but becomes exhausting inside a thirty-second commercial? 

More choices aren’t necessarily more help.The useful question isn’t, “How much audio can we generate?” It’s, “Can we give this advertiser a reason to believe in the campaign?” That’s the assignment I want to solve.Bigger visibility isn’t the same as better valueSo, yes, you may see other production businesses advertised more often than you see SonicAttention. I’m not asking you to assume that makes them bad, and I’m certainly not arguing that every larger studio is interchangeable with an automated website. I’m asking you not to confuse the size of the presentation with the value of the idea.

A catalog, a generator and a custom production service solve different problems. A catalog lets you select. A generator lets you produce options. A creative partner should help you decide what deserves to be produced, then take responsibility for making it work. Before comparing prices, make sure you understand which job you’re actually paying somebody to do.
Here’s the test I would use before approving any jingle:

 Why does this music belong to this advertiser? Not just because the name appears in the lyrics, and not just because the owner likes the musical style. What does the idea communicate about the business that matters to a potential customer?

Try mentally replacing the business name with a competitor’s. If everything else still works without changing a word, ask whether the message is doing enough. That doesn’t mean every jingle needs to explain the entire business. It means the memorable part ought to give the advertiser something worth being remembered for.

I’m not against catalogs, and I’m certainly not against technology. I’m against treating the presence of music as proof that the creative work is finished. A good jingle shouldn’t merely announce that a business exists. It should give that business a recognizable voice and a message somebody might carry away.At SonicAttention, I’d rather let you hear the answer than ask you to buy the promise. Bring me the advertiser and the challenge. Let’s put an actual idea in front of the client before asking them to spend money. Because the goal isn’t to make another jingle—it’s to make one that has a reason to be theirs.

​EMAIL JOE CRASH KELLEY TODAY: joecrashkelley@sonicattention.com