How to Find Songs from TV

A melody, lyric or toe-tapping beat suddenly grabs your attention. Music you've never heard before is playing on TV. Who is the artist? How can I find songs from TV? You determine to track it down. Here is a search strategy with websites that can help identify mystery songs from TV shows, commercials or movies.

You need at least one of three pieces of information to begin.

1. The name of the TV show or movie.
2. The name and brand of the product featured in the commercial.
3. A bit of lyric that is specific enough to be identifiable. A generic phrase like "I love you" or "yeah, yeah, yeah" will not help at all.

Find songs by lyrics
If you have a good phrase, start with the lyrics in your favorite search tool. For example: "I don't love you much do I", lyrics. This is a shot in the dark, but it's worth a try.

Finds songs from movies
Go to any music site and search for the movie title in the album category to find the soundtrack. Most sites at least let you listen to clips of the tracks. Listen to samples to identify the song you are looking for.

Find songs from TV series
TV series are a challenge. Look at your program schedule to find the episode title. On the Internet you can go to TVGuide.com or IMDB and check listings there. Once you know the episode title, go to TuneFind and look up the name of the series. If there are any songs listed they will be organized by episode. Another place to look is the official series website. Look in episode information and look for threads about music in the forum. Fan sites for the series may also have music information or related forum threads.

Find songs from TV commercials
Go to your favorite search tool and type in something like, "JC Penney ad song" or "Macbook Air music". Browsing the search results should lead you to what you are looking for. Sometimes it is not so clear or easy.

There are websites that can help you in a difficult search. Yahoo Answers and Answerbag are good places to look. Before posting a new question, search through the existing answers and see if someone else has already asked. There are also websites dedicated to identifying music from TV commercials. If you can't find the song after searching the sites below, post a question to a site forum and get help from the members there.

AdTunes
Commercials Tune Forums
What's That Called?

After successfully sleuthing the music, enjoy victory by listening to it at your favorite media site or see if there is a video at Youtube. You can find songs from TV and discover new or unfamiliar artists.