Still in the UK, Chappell, one of the largest song publishers, launched its production music collection in 1941: The Chappell Recorded Music Library. Through a series of acquisitions, this department was first acquired in the 1980s by Zomba Production Music, which continued its development, before being integrated into BMG Production Music in 2003, and finally into Universal Publishing Production Music in 2007. It is important not to confuse Chappell Recorded Music Library with Warner-Chappell Production Music, the current department of Warner Brothers Music. It is justifiable to consider the UK as the cradle of production music, where today more than a hundred publishers are active.

In the United States, Capitol Records launched its collection Capitol Transcription Service at the end of the 1940s, which would precede the Capitol ‘Q’ series and Hi-Q.

“The Guild-Universal Library” was created by the Radio Service of the American Armed Forces. It was directed by the composer and editor of Hungarian origin, Alexander Laszlo, one of the pioneers of modern production music. He was indeed the first to theorize, inspired by architecture, the sense and function of different musical sequences in relation to the image in the second library he would create: “Structural Music”. See the site ‘Mood Music – Composers, arrangers, publishers.

At the same time, the company formed by Emil Ascher and Thomas J. Valentino represented European companies, mainly British, and became a major player in the sector in the USA.

During the 1940s and 1950s, many American series used music libraries, despite the conflict that arose with the powerful Musicians’ Union, which prohibited its members from working for production music companies. This type of conflict would recur in the UK, the birthplace of the activity, in the 1960s. British publishers would therefore be forced to record abroad to circumvent the opposition from the Musicians’ Union. It was not until 1978 that British production music companies signed an agreement with the Musicians’ Union, simplifying recording procedures and allowing the emergence of an entire creative industry.

After World War II, it was in the UK and France that what would become production music became the subject of research due to the importance of radio theater, scientific programs, and especially science fiction series for radio.

From 1944 to 1963, the renowned composer Henri Dutilleux (1916 – 2013) was responsible for the Music Illustration Service of the French Radio and Television (RTF). This service allowed many famous musicians to write commissioned works for radio programs.

At the end of the 1940s, Pierre Schaeffer created the Groupe de Musique Concrète, then the Groupe de Recherche Musicale, one of whose goals was to design applications for the musical illustration of radio programs and then for emerging television. The music for the animated series “Les Shadocks,” written by Robert Cohen-Solal, remains a reference for what was called “applied music.”

The experiments of the GRM (Groupe de Recherche Musicale) gave the impetus to electro-acoustic music, allowing creators such as Pierre Henry and Bernard Parmegiani to conceive a new art form. The research of the GRM also gave birth to the technique of the closed groove; a sort of use of loops, and thus sampling before its time. According to various sources, this technique inspired American minimalists such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley, and more certainly, many schools of contemporary electro music.

In the same spirit of discovery, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was created in 1958 under the direction of Desmond Briscoe.