Mike Bielenberg (pictured to the right) is general manager/musician for Jupitertunes, a division of Jupitermedia Corp. He is the original founder of www.BBM.net, an online music library created for Flash, PowerPoint and web professionals. He is based in Atlanta.
Geetesh: Tell us more about RoyaltyFreeMusic and its music collection.
Mike: With over 8,000 instrumental songs and 10,000 sound effects, RoyaltyFreeMusic.com is currently the world's largest online collection of what is called "buyout music" or "stock music". "Royalty free" means you only pay once and can use it again and again in commercial projects.
Although our subscriptions are a great bargain, anyone and everyone can listen to the tracks in our library, use a credit card or PayPal to buy a single track and download it in either WAV or MP3 format. Our friendly staff is available by day to help people with their purchases and choose music for them.
Geetesh: In your opinion, what genre of music works best in PowerPoint presentations?
Mike: You can never go wrong with an upbeat classical piece or an ambient electronica track. So few PowerPoint users actually employ music I think you're already ahead of the game by having music at all (as long as it's legal!)
But really, it's not about genres. That's too limiting. It's more about tempo and emotions. Many online music libraries now let you search for music based on both tempo and/or emotion. I think that's much more liberating than limiting yourself to just classical or techno.
If I'm watching a PowerPoint presentation, I'm there to learn something. That's a very state of mind for me than passively watching television. So, for PowerPoint, the music really has a different job to do. It has to:
Prepare minds for learning and
Tell those people how to feel about the subject matter.
Satisfying #1 usually means picking something with a fairly brisk tempo. Satisfying #2 completely depends on your subject matter, but I find it's usually something positive and inspiring. I think one of our best CDs for this requirements is Background Music for the Digital Age (#SCUND07)
If I'm watching a PowerPoint presentation, I'm there to learn something. That's a very state of mind for me than passively watching television. So, for PowerPoint, the music really has a different job to do. It has to:
