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How can I find out in which movies and video games a specific musical work was featured?

Starting from the movie/game is usually easier, as corresponding websites (like the IMDb) often list the used soundtracks (example).
It’s also more likely for movies/games to have dedicated fan sites or Wikipedia articles, while for music, the focus is typically on the artist or maybe their albums, but not necessarily single musical works (Wikipedia usually lists this information only for popular works).

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    (I wonder if such questions are welcome here. It’s not a pure recommendation question, but more a "teach me to fish" question.)
    – unor
    Apr 8 '15 at 15:05
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    Other than obvious Google searching, this seems to be a resource question. This should be discussed on meta (if it hasn't already) to determine if such questions would be on topic on the main site, or just discuss in meta.
    – user3169
    Apr 8 '15 at 18:56
  • @user3169, the question is perfect for music fans. Knowing in which movie a song has featured is part of music appreciation.
    – Bebs
    Oct 25 '19 at 11:53
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+50

For movies and series, the site http://www.tunefind.com/ can be used.

For example, you can see that Journey’s Don't Stop Believin' was featured in S6E21 of The Sopranos, in several episodes of Glee, in S3E2 of Scrubs, and so on. It’s, of course, not complete (e.g., it misses that the song was also featured in the movie Monsters, which isn’t indexed yet), but that’s to be expected. Users can add new songs to movies/episodes and vote if they are correct.

Caveat 1: You can’t directly search for a musical work. You have to start from the directory of all artists (or use the search function), visit the artist’s page, and then make an on-page search for the title.

Caveat 2: They don’t curate the artist list very well. For example, the song When Things Explode (from UNKLE feat. Ian Astbury) is not listed on the page for "UNKLE" (and they don’t have a page for Ian Astbury), but on the page "UNKLE featuring Ian Astbury".

Caveat 3: The same title can appear several times on an artist’s page, e.g., when users entered it coming from different albums, or with the title written in different ways, or for no obvious reasons. For example, the song Sinnerman (from Nina Simone) is listed on her page under "Sinner Man (The Best of Nina Simone)", "Sinnerman (The Thomas Crown Affair (Music from the MGM Motion Picture))", and "Sinnerman (The Essential Nina Simone)". Another example: The song Intro (from The xx) is listed three times on their page, but in all three cases as "Intro (XX (Bonus Track Version))".

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    This answer was nominated as a gem on this game on Meta. :)
    – user3955
    Feb 15 '20 at 9:52
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For games, there is a community sourced project going on called Video Game Music Database. All you need to do is head to their Search page and enter the musician/artist/band name in the Performer Contains field and it should return your results.

For movies, there's a site called TuneFind but I'm not sure how user-friendly it is.

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    The VGMdb seems to list only soundtrack albums (i.e., releases), right? Therefore you’d only find featured musical works that are also released on the soundtrack of the game, and not necessarily all works on the soundtrack are also featured in the game :/
    – unor
    Apr 8 '15 at 17:38
  • That seems to be the best there is at the moment.
    – Johnny Bones ♦
    Apr 9 '15 at 0:02
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I was searching for a similar website and couldn't find any so, I kind of created one. Check it out at http://songfind.herokuapp.com/ . It is still a Work in progress and right now it checks TV shows for a particular song. I am going to make it better soon.

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