Music bed
A music bed refers to background music in radio and television that is placed under presentations. A bed is adapted to the audio design of a station or a program. In the 1990s, the trend developed to use music beds in radio for service messages such as traffic reports or weather forecasts . It is also rarely used in news formats, then usually only in an overview, as it can otherwise be too intrusive and distract from the content.
Tension-related beds are usually available as a material lasting several minutes. But there are also beds in the form of endless loops . However, it is not possible to work particularly flexibly with this, since tension cannot be easily built up and reduced again within the usually short time (e.g. one minute).
In television programs there are “indicative” jingles that become a music bed at the beginning of the moderation (ie after the main motif has ended), but are then faded out after 30 to 45 seconds at the latest. They are therefore also a kind of music bed. One example of this is the RTL TV magazine extra .