I'm torn, I really am, because I love music and I love podfic, but.... Can I say I'm wary based on personal experiences?
For me, the perfect use of music in a podfic is like the scene-breaks in The Summer House Trilogy, which uses snips of the themes for Eureka and Stargate. That is, short bits of music (under 20 seconds), at the same recording level, and bearable even for people who are not fans of that kind of music.
But I've got podfics which start with entire songs, and ones with several minutes of disco music stuck in, and ones where the music is so loud that I have to rip out my headphones. At this point, the hits are, sadly, fewer than the misses. A trend that drives me nuts is when a story is titled "Free Falling", and the podficcer decides to open with Stevie Nicks covering Tom Petty's song... starting from the beginning; so we hear her sing up to "Free Falling" (fade out) and then "This is a recording of XYZ's Free Falling..." That is, listeners are subjected to:
(22 seconds of strumming) She's a good girl, loves her mama Loves Jesus and America, too She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis Loves horses and her boyfriend too [10 seconds of more twangy guitar] It's a long day livin' in Reseda There's a freeway runnin' through the yard He's a bad boy, 'cause he don't even miss her He's a bad boy for breakin' her heart [1:17 before we finally, finally get to] And I'm free, I'm free fallin'
...wow, and I just hijacked my own comment with a minute and a half of music >.< But I don't know what the name of this use of music is, and I find it both very common and very annoying. I would prefer any music longer than 20 seconds to be made its own chapter in a podbook, so it can be skipped or deleted. I listen while riding my bike and can't fast forward easily. (Also, I usually don't enjoy the music used in podfic [if pop or disco or metal; bluegrass is sadly underrepresented in my fandoms], and find it earworms *really* easily.)
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For me, the perfect use of music in a podfic is like the scene-breaks in The Summer House Trilogy, which uses snips of the themes for Eureka and Stargate. That is, short bits of music (under 20 seconds), at the same recording level, and bearable even for people who are not fans of that kind of music.
But I've got podfics which start with entire songs, and ones with several minutes of disco music stuck in, and ones where the music is so loud that I have to rip out my headphones. At this point, the hits are, sadly, fewer than the misses. A trend that drives me nuts is when a story is titled "Free Falling", and the podficcer decides to open with Stevie Nicks covering Tom Petty's song... starting from the beginning; so we hear her sing up to "Free Falling" (fade out) and then "This is a recording of XYZ's Free Falling..." That is, listeners are subjected to:
(22 seconds of strumming) She's a good girl, loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America, too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves horses and her boyfriend too [10 seconds of more twangy guitar]
It's a long day livin' in Reseda
There's a freeway runnin' through the yard
He's a bad boy, 'cause he don't even miss her
He's a bad boy for breakin' her heart [1:17 before we finally, finally get to]
And I'm free, I'm free fallin'
...wow, and I just hijacked my own comment with a minute and a half of music >.< But I don't know what the name of this use of music is, and I find it both very common and very annoying. I would prefer any music longer than 20 seconds to be made its own chapter in a podbook, so it can be skipped or deleted. I listen while riding my bike and can't fast forward easily. (Also, I usually don't enjoy the music used in podfic [if pop or disco or metal; bluegrass is sadly underrepresented in my fandoms], and find it earworms *really* easily.)