commercial breaks and beats > Reviews (1)

How many times do you watch an advert on TV and think 'I love that tune, I wonder who it's by?'.
Well I think I may have the answer.

Commercial Breaks and Beats or CBaB have been around since 2002. It is a non profit site , and struggles to fund and update a database of over 2203 song titles. It also has a healthy messageboard running.

The site relies on the advertising revenue and user donations to support a very professional looking site, that would put many a music store site to shame.
I have found many of those nagging questions with friends and family with this site, and have also discovered new artists and indeed a whole new genre of music.

The Site
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The homepage gives general information regarding the site, latest news, and a monthly feature.

There are a number of' Search Tools'. Where you can search by artist, company, song title, and search by year.

Next is a' More Info' section. There you can view older news and feature items.

Also you will find a ' Further Reading' This useful section gives links to a number of websites for further information, and a list of books available on the subject.

Further down on the main page is the top five items searched.

Under which are details of donation to the site, which can be made by paypal or you can link to amazon or i-Tunes and purchase items and they will pay a small commission to CBaB.

I find the best way is to purchase my amazon items here as the site receives a small commission each time you link from this site to amazon, and you can then order whatever you want once on amazon, not just music.
There is some advertising on this site, but there are no popups, banners or ghost pages.

The link to the message board is at the bottom left corner, and once clicked the message main page comes up, but you cannot click back to the main page, so search the main site first.

The Search
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Once you have decided how you want to search you will find that once selected, the database gives you every option. For example select Artist, you get all artists listed alphabetically.
The best way to seach is by using the 'Quick Search' box, top right corner. Enter your item, then hit return. This narrows it down straight away.
You will then see the Company Ad , the Artist, the Album and date. Not the track, which is a pity.
The main database is fairly good up to about 2004, as the editor admits, lack of funds and work commitments slowed the update of the site. But there are over 100 entries for 2005.
But this is where the message board comes into play.

The Message Board
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Is set up like most bulletin boards. To get the most out of it you need to register. It is an easy operation involving agreeing to the site policy and selecting a user name and password.
Once registered you can submit and reply to messages or if you don't fancy that, you can just read only the messages on the board.
I have found the message board very useful. There are some real musical masterminds there.
The headings are simular to the main site, Memberlist,Usergroups,Register,Profile,S​earch and Login.

This is very helpful and friendly board (just like Ciao) and no question is to silly or difficult.

So there we are remember that music you heard on that ad, well go find it here.

Just one little Gem you wont find there, as I have just found it myself, is the Sprite Ad's are back,the one with the little monster. The music:-
Artist-----------Bromthomstates
Label----------Warp Records WAP151
Release----- Qito
Track----------Adozenaday

http://www.commercialbreaksandbeats.co.u​k

http://forum.commercialbreaksandbeats.co​.uk