Why is library music used as backing to the test card?
Much of it was taken from the music libraries of KPM, Bruton Music and (perhaps) Chappell. The idea being that, instead of having to negotiate permissions, clearances and royalties with each publisher, the library music companies have one agreement and one price across the board, remaining the same for each unit of air-time. Normally, when clearing music for transmission, a publisher wants to know (apart from duration and likely audience) exactly in what context the music is to appear. You can imagine how long it takes to get clearances agreed for programmes with many musical extracts! So library music simplifies this somewhat. Even the ‘classical’ music is probably library music… KPM, for example, have many complete versions of ‘classical’ works in their catalogue for use by anyone who’ll pay the appropriate MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Society) fee. PRS doesn’t apply to most dead composers. The ‘pop’ music that used to appear on the BBC Test Card (for example, Wings’ Live
