What Is the Difference Between a Jingle and a DJ Drop?

A jingle is sung and a DJ drop is spoken. A jingle is a short piece of music with the name of a brand, show or station sung as a melodic hook, usually 6 to 30 seconds. A DJ drop is a spoken voice line, usually a name or tagline, with effects, 3 to 10 seconds, designed to be played over music.

Jingle

A jingle is a tiny song. It has a melody, a key, a tempo and an arrangement, and the name is sung on the hook. Lengths follow broadcast conventions:

• Sting: about 6 seconds, a sung name and nothing else. The sung equivalent of a station ID.
• 15 seconds: a hook with one line of lyric around the name.
• 30 seconds: a full jingle with a verse or two lines and the hook, the classic commercial length.

Because a jingle is music, it is played on its own: at the top of a show, between segments, as a commercial, not over another track where its key and tempo would clash.

DJ drop

A DJ drop is speech. It has no key, so it sits over any music. Its effects, stutter, reverb, echo, pitch, and its bed make it feel produced. Lengths are short, 3 to 10 seconds, because the drop is fired over a track and must not cover a vocal. The voice style carries the attitude: a hype MC shout, a smooth radio read, a processed imaging voice or a robotic effect.

Side by side

	Jingle	DJ drop
Voice	Sung	Spoken
Has a key and tempo	Yes	No
Plays over music	No	Yes
Length	6, 15 or 30 s	3, 5 or 10 s
Purpose	Memorable brand hook	Branding and transitions in a mix
Typical user	Shows, stations, brands, podcasts	DJs, streamers, mixtapes

Which to make

Make drops if you are a DJ who plays sets, records mixes or streams; you will fire them over music and need several variations. Make a jingle if you have a show, a podcast, a club night or a business that wants a sung identity people remember. Many DJs have both: a jingle for the top of a radio show and drops for the mix.

Making each in Club Ready Music

The Drops studio has three tabs. DJ drop takes a script of up to 200 characters, a voice style, an FX chain, a bed and a length of 3, 5 or 10 seconds, and renders three spoken variations with wet and dry files. Jingle takes a brand or show name, a one or two line sung hook (or asks Club Ready Music to write one), up to five musical styles and a length of 6, 15 or 30 seconds, and renders a sung hook trimmed to that length with a musical fade. Commercial spot is a third format: a spoken read of 15 or 30 seconds for an event, venue or sponsor, with a bed and a call to action.

All three are leveled to -8 LUFS and delivered as MP3 320 with a shareable link.