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AI Is Coming for the Jingle — And Maybe the Entire Advertising Audio Industry

Advertising jingle songwriters and singers feel the impact of AI song generators and technology, though some major earworms remain.

In the mid 1990s, Jason Paige, then a struggling singer trying to break with his rock band, could make a solid living by writing Mountain Dew, Taco Bell and Pepto Bismol earworms for jingle houses that dominated the music-in-advertising industry for decades. In the process, they created lucrative side gigs for rising talents for decades, like Luther Vandross, Patti Austin and Richard Marx, who, as jingle veteran Michael Bolton wrote in his biography, “all shook the jingle-house tree.” Today, artists are far more likely to have broad branding relationships with corporations such as Target — Swift has appeared in commercials and the retailer has sold exclusive versions of her albums for years, and Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and others have made similar deals — than they are to write catchy ditties for TV and radio.

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