When Amanda Krieg Thomas was a teenager growing up in Weston, Connecticut, she — like many of her peers — spent her school nights burning perfectly curated mix CDs. But rather than focusing on favorite genres, artists or specific moods, Krieg Thomas’ CDs had a different theme: music from (and inspired by) her favorite TV shows. “The OC, Roswell, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I loved them all,” she gushes.
Teen-oriented TV was in the midst of a heyday during Krieg Thomas’ young adulthood in the early aughts, as networks like The WB (which later merged with UPN to become The CW) and ABC Family (later rebranded to Freeform) zeroed in on young not-quite-adults and perfected a formula they couldn’t resist — usually involving love triangles, a social outcast landing the cool kid and, as Krieg Thomas astutely noticed, music central to the storyline. Popular shows of the day like those Krieg Thomas loved, plus hits such as Grey’s Anatomy and One Tree Hill, eschewed traditional scores for pop music soundtracking key moments, catapulting songs like The Fray’s “How To Save a Life” and Gavin DeGraw’s “I Don’t Want To Be” to mass audiences in the process.
Fast forward to 2026 and a lot has changed. Krieg Thomas, 41, is now a successful music supervisor with her own company, Yay Team, where she and her colleagues find and license the perfect songs to score films and TV shows. Streaming video on demand has largely replaced cable, flooding the marketplace with shows and enabling instant, global viewership. Meanwhile, the music industry has shifted to an all-you-can-eat streaming model of its own.
