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A recent Holby City ended with the sound of KT Tunstall singing Under the Weather over a montage in which each of the episode's storylines reaches a climax: ambitious heart surgeon Connie stares moodily into the distance as she contemplates a rare defeat; troubled couple Mark and Daisha enjoy a night out; a patient sleeps and bleeps softly in intensive care.

Words and pictures fitted together so well that viewers might have thought the lyrics - "constantly baling out water/ but still feel that I'm gonna sink" - had been written especially for the script. But, like the other songs used increasingly in this way by Holby City, it was merely a clever choice from a sound library. Its use is an example of the growing phenomenon in TV drama of what might be called a "songtage" or "foundtrack": the choice of an evocative tune to echo the emotions of the characters during a slow, silent section featuring the actors looking thoughtful or mournful.

Songtages are now standard at the end of every Holby City. Sometimes they have them at the beginning and the end; last year's Christmas edition even closed with the long-lost son of one doctor performing an instrumental version of Fairytale of New York on his violin.

When writer-producer Tony McHale, a veteran of popular TV who has worked on EastEnders, took over at Holby City two years ago, he examined how the 10-year-old show might be modernised. "I was looking at ways of dragging the show into the 21st century," says McHale. "This was one of them. I originally thought of specially commissioned music but the budget wasn't there for that."

Although prone to melodramatic plot-twists, Holby City is regarded as a naturalistic show. McHale discovered that jump-cuts and other cinematic editing techniques were banned. Dropping a pop-video sequence into the middle was clearly out, so he proceeded cautiously, using a thematic justification for the first musical experiment: the character of a middle-aged record producer awaiting an operation permitted a sequence in which he listened to music. The track was Friends Are Family by young British musician Ollie Sloan. "And if you learn to trust your soul," sings Sloan, "the pain will end and you'll be whole."

"There were a couple of letters of complaint," says McHale. "But no more than that." So he carried on. Sometimes he chooses the music at the editing stage, but scriptwriters will now often indicate the track they envisage. Recent simplifications in licensing music mean that selections are rarely frustrated. "A writer specified Beast of Burden by the Stones," says McHale. "I thought it would be hard to clear, but there was no problem."

Fans of US medical soaps will not have been surprised by the appearance of songtages, as they were popularised by Grey's Anatomy, which began in 2005. "I really didn't know about the Grey's Anatomy thing until someone pointed it out after we'd started," says McHale.

Music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas had practised the technique at The OC, a teen series aimed at the MTV generation, and now applied it to a broader audience. The songtage for the first ever Grey's Anatomy even included the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. As the habit became fashionable, the range expanded. Emilíana Torrini, who sang Gollum's Song in The Lord of the Rings II, wrote a number to be premiered in one episode; other artists, including rising country-pop star Taylor Swift, have given the drama the exclusive first play of a track from a new album, a new twist on the kind of deal previously restricted to radio stations.

In fact, the songtage has become a major new publicity tool for musicians. Snow Patrol owe much of their US profile to the use of their Chasing Cars track in a particularly dramatic Grey's Anatomy finale. Moody and gloomy, the song was a perfect candidate. The lyrics - "If I just lay here/ If I just lay here/ Would you lie with me?" - perfectly suit a show in which half of the major scenes involve characters flat on their backs in bed for either clinical or erotic reasons.

Gary Lightbody, the Snow Patrol frontman, told me in an interview last year that he was not a fan of Grey's Anatomy and, on hearing that Chasing Cars had been licensed for the soundtrack, was uncertain about it being latched on to a narrative with which it had no direct connection. But he now accepts that this kind of airing brings spectacular returns.

KT Tunstall is another good example. The Scottish singer-songwriter's breakthrough came when she performed on Later With Jools Holland; although that late-night BBC2 show confers greater musical credibility, her disembodied presence on Holby City will have been heard by up to 15 times as many people. Indeed, since the disappearance of Top of the Pops, use on a peak-time drama is probably the best mainstream exposure a British band can have.

Apart from Holby City, the main songtage devotee in Britain is Channel 4's Skins, where the form perfectly suits a show in which, as with The OC, the central teenage characters are the sort of people who carry MP3 players crammed with three-minute music videos either downloaded or created by themselves. The approach also has the advantage of taking the pressure off lesser performers in the more emotionally complex scenes: a track married with rapid reaction shots can often convey exchanges more powerfully than dialogue.

In fact, the opening episode of the third series featured no fewer than 21 different songs, from Son the Father by Fucked Up to Nefi + Girly by Asobi Seksu, a New York indie band that, fittingly for Skins, takes its name from the Japanese expression for casual sex. Very much the modern TV drama, the show employs a full-time music supervisor, Alex Hancock, who engages viewers in debate over his choices through a blog on the Channel 4 website. "After the huge reaction over MGMT's use in series 2," he says, "I've decided to let more mainstream indie music in the show without kicking up too much of a fuss and throwing a tantrum in the Skins office. It works pretty well, dunnit?"

All successful TV devices eventually become wearisome cliches, however. If French and Saunders or Dead Ringers were currently on air, the songtage would be an obvious satirical target, with actors moving in moody slow motion to inappropriate songs.

Although some musicians remain suspicious - the songs of Neil Young are said to be hard to use in this way - the boost that songtages give sales will only encourage record companies in their belief that one of the best ways of getting noticed is to be in the background on TV. "We'll certainly go on doing it," says Holby City's McHale. "It seems to work for everyone involved."