NEW YORK (Billboard) - We've all done it before -- heard a catchy song in a TV ad and Googled the product to look up the name of the artist.

But TV viewers who tried looking up the Cadillac CTS commercial during the summer probably came up empty-handed. That's because the song in the ad wasn't written by an indie-rock band or electronic music act. Instead, the high-energy electronic track was composed by the collective Black Iris Music, which has offices in New York, Los Angeles and Richmond, Va.

Although the group performs the old-school job of writing original background music for TV ads, it took a new business approach to its Cadillac ad. The group made a deal with the carmaker that allowed it to record a longer version of the music in the ad and offer it for sale as a digital single. Under the deal, Cadillac owns the rights to the recording and the composition but granted Black Iris the rights to the single.

The release sold about 2,000 copies and prompted Black Iris co-founder Daron Hollowell to start a singles label. While the Cadillac track, "Fire Hydrant Floods," was released only online at the Black Iris Web site, the label's next single by indie band Fool's Gold was released digitally and physically. Fool's Gold's "Surprise Hotel" was released on a 7-inch vinyl single in June and has nearly sold out its initial pressing of 500 copies, Hollowell says. The label has subsequently released two more singles by Flowers of Doom and Bad Veins.

Fool's Gold, Flowers of Doom and Bad Veins include members of the Black Iris collective, although the groups' singles weren't used in ads.

"As of right now, we have seven full-time employees and a group of 20 freelance composers," says Hollowell, who helped start the collective three years ago. "It's a great way for musicians to make money doing something creative and not have to work at a day job between tours."

Black Iris plans to release more of its ad music as singles "if the right track comes along," Hollowell says. "It all depends on whether we feel that there is a demand for the track."
Hollowell says he started Black Iris to exploit an opportunity in the market for music in advertising.

"Advertisers were using a lot of indie music but didn't have a lot of options if they wanted something original," he says. "We realized that there are advertisers out there that want a certain level of credibility but also want to have control over what the track sounds like that they might not get using a song that is already recorded."

Hollowell says that Black Iris draws some advertisers by charging less for its music than many others. Will Uronis, creative director at Modernista, the agency behind the Cadillac ad, says he decided to work with Black Iris because of budget constraints, but was surprised by the song's success. "I didn't know that it would attract the level of attention it did," he says.

Uronis says that Modernista continues to work with Black Iris on the Cadillac campaign, but that the decision to use original music as opposed to prerecorded tracks depends mostly on the cost and the ad treatment. "Sometimes I write a concept and a song just leaps into my head," he says. "Other times, there is a need to have something written just for the ad."

When Uronis calls Black Iris for original music, Ben Davis is one of the collective members who leaps into action. Davis says that he keeps the music he writes for his band, Bad Veins, separate from his tracks for Black Iris, but that the two entities are becoming increasingly intertwined. "We recorded our album in their studio and play their showcases, but the music I make for each is very different," he says.

Davis says that ad agencies usually send him a reference track as a starting point for Black Iris compositions. "They'll send me a Shout Out Louds song, for instance, and say they want something like it, with certain tweaks," he says. "I deconstruct it and then re-create it.

"It's not as free creatively as what I do with Bad Veins, but it's good money. I think doing music for ads will become the retirement plan for indie rock stars."