I have had so many fights about this, online and off. I could link you to a few offline.

I've actually managed to have this discussion with a couple Oscar-nominated composers, and I worked with Alexandra Patsavas. I've negotiated mechanical rights and I've worked with composers on scores. The most important thing to mention to you I learned from Hummie Mann. It's like this:

"Circle" by Edie Brickel means something very specific to you. It builds a very specific emotion for you. But that might be the song that was playing when I broke up with Trish. It might be that song Bob played over and over when he fucking refused to give up drinking. It might be any number of negative (or positive, or otherwise emotionally-charged) reactions that you have absolutely no control over. When you take extant music and dump it on a story, you are spinning the wheel as to how the audience reacts. An example:

What does that song mean to you? I'll bet it's powerful. You probably have a lot of emotions associated with your experience of that song 'cuz it was fuckin' everywhere and it's pretty lyrical.

Those of us in Reality TV, however, have probably worked with one or more people who grew up working on The Real World. Those people were used to the editors temping Everybody Hurts over every emotional montage on the show. And thus, those of us with an experience in Reality TV production are used to cracking up whenever there's something melodramatic happening because some asshole will crack the walkie and start the guitar over the top of it.

I've been that asshole more than a few times. In fact, I had a movie with an overly melodramatic scene in the 3rd act that I was able to successfully get cut down by pointing out to the producer that "Everybody Hurts" was shorter than the scene.

Bizarre niche case? Surely. But our reactions to music are all bizarre niche cases. "They're playing our song." I mean, fuck - Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" kept me in a bad relationship for four years. I still love it but it's an emotionally-charged tune to say the least.

This is why people hire composers: music is powerful and music with no preexisting associations always works better than extant songs. And this is why people hire music supervisors: music is powerful and if they can find a song that nobody has heard before to shove into that scene, they'll make money off the soundtrack, the band will get rich and the entire project will be elevated.

It matters.

My advice? Stop trying to be a DJ and start trying to be a composer. You wanna put music behind the podcasts? Compose music behind the podcasts. You're probably the most prolific musician I know and it'd probably be a good exercise.

Whenever I'm really blue, I cruise Pornhub and find something ridiculously dirty. Then I download it and I open up Logic. Then I drop that nasty porn on the video track and I make the most ridiculous orchestral score I can. Never fails to cheer me up.

- a friend of mine