Horse Sales Videos with Music

I'm thinking about sending a query to Practical Horsemen. I've been stumped as to what it might be, but today I actually thought of something. A plea for horse sellers to stop using music in their sales videos.

Georgi emailed asking about sales horses and I promptly fired off a descriptive email regarding the particular sales horses that I thought would be suitable for the particular buyer in question. Then, because were I work is fairly organised and they are really great about keeping their website up to date, I was able to forward 3 videos of sales horses.

Then I watched one of them and...put it on mute immediately.

Why? Because it had music. A lot of horse sales videos have music. A LOT. And it is always, always, always the worst. Think "Bittersweet Symphony" or anything by Coldplay. And for those who are aware of copyright law, it's always some awful synthesized easy listenin' track with pan pipes bought cheaply from the video production company who informed the seller about copyright law.

Pretty much the only excuse as to why. "But I/someone was yelling/talking/singing while the video was being made."

I think that we can all put our heads together and come up with a solution for that problem.

The other place I think it comes from was horse show videos from the 90s. Some horse shows had videographers, so you could get a "professionally made" video of your rounds. And to (I think) justify the cost, they put cheesy graphics and added music. This was very impressive in the 90s. It looked as good as local news show b-roll! (we couldn't make things ourselves that looked that good back then). I believe that horse people are stuck in a bit of a time warp sometimes and because this was done in the 90s when, perhaps, they started their business, they think that all sales videos should have music over them. And the tradition continues.

The thing is though, unlike websites that play music upon loading, it doesn't make me close the window immediately and look back, and as far as I know, it doesn't affect to do that either. And I think I know why.

Horse people are woefully, strangely and sadly behind the times. Only recently, within the last 5 years or so, have any significant portion of them figured out what a powerful marketing tool the internet can be. And they still don't understand how websites work or why it's important that they are updated and no, your friend can't just do it because it takes time, effort and expertise which is why you should pay someone (a competent someone) to RUN the website after it has been built.

I do know, however, how hard these people work doing something that they love. And they are making an effort dammit. The video is out there. Much in the same way that I find paintings for sale in thrift stores heartbreakingly sweet, despite how truly awful they are, I try to feel that way about music on horse sales videos.