The Jingle Geniuses Making Millions Writing Music For Ads, Reality TV

In a beige soundproof room not much bigger than a closet, Gabriel Kirshoff sits in front of a keyboard, plinking out a pop-rock tune. It’s cheerful and swelling, with benign radio appeal that makes it sound familiar, if a bit boring, like something from Fall Out Boy. That’s what Kirshoff is going for. He’s not trying to write a hit, just something that will make people buy laundry detergent. Or eat a hamburger. Or upgrade their cell phone plan. “I don’t know who’ll end up using this song,” he says.

Kirshoff, 23, is a songwriter for the commercial music company Jingle Punks. He sits in the windowless booth in New York for eight hours a day—“It’s OK, I have a sunlamp,” he says with a shrug—composing tunes in genres including electronic dance music (EDM) and classical symphony for ads, films, and TV shows. Two of Jingle Punks’ other songwriters record in identical cubbies next to him. Sometimes they write tunes for a specific client, but they usually just feed their work into Jingle Punks’ library of prerecorded tracks that anyone can license.