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The Music Business Buddy
A podcast that aims to educate and inspire music creators in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. A new episode is released each Wednesday and aims to offer clarity and insight into a range of subjects across the music industry, all through the lens of a music creator for the benefit of other music creators. The series includes soundbites and interviews with guests from all over the world together with commentary and clarity on a range of topics. The podcast is hosted by award winning music industry professional Jonny Amos.
Jonny Amos is a music producer with credits on a range of major and independent labels, a songwriter with chart success in Europe and Asia, a senior lecturer in both music creation and music business at BIMM University UK, director of The SongLab Ltd and the author of The Music Business for Music Creators.
www.jonnyamos.com
The Music Business Buddy
Episode 54: How to Pitch Your Music For Sync
Ever wonder how your music ends up in that Netflix show or smartphone commercial? The path from creation to placement is paved with gatekeepers, contracts, and strategic pitching—and mastering these elements could transform your music career.
Jonny Amos dives deep into the sync licensing ecosystem, revealing the crucial professionals every music creator should connect with. From accessible sync agents building music libraries for clients to the coveted music supervisors who can catapult careers with a single placement, understanding these relationships is fundamental to success. The episode illuminates how legendary music supervision moments—like Kate Bush's revival in Stranger Things or the gritty soundtrack selections in Peaky Blinders—demonstrate the profound impact of effective music placement.
Beyond identifying key players, Jonny offers practical wisdom on contractual considerations and negotiation tactics. His simple yet powerful approach to quoting fees shifts the dynamics of pricing conversations in your favour. The episode covers the distinction between sync licensing deals for compositions versus master license deals for recordings, revealing how revenue splits typically work with different partners. Jonny also explores the emerging micro-licensing sector, which creates new pathways for music discovery through YouTube, social media, and independent films.
Remember: when pitching your music, you're not asking for charity—you're proposing something valuable to professionals seeking the perfect sonic complement to their visual stories. Ready to transform your approach to sync opportunities? Download free resources including release agreements and metadata templates from jonnyamos.com, and position yourself for success in this lucrative revenue stream.
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The Music Business Buddy. The Music Business Buddy Hello everybody and a very warm welcome to you. You're listening to the Music Business Buddy with me, johnny Amos, podcasting out of Birmingham in England. I'm the author of the book the Music Business for Music Creators, available in hardback, paperback, ebook format. I'm a music creator with a variety of credits I'm a consultant, an artist manager and a senior lecturer in both music business and music creation. Wherever you are, whatever you do, consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of this community. I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over the world in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music.
Speaker 1:Ok, so in this week's episode we're looking at how to pitch for sync opportunities. Now, this episode directly follows on from last week's episode where I kind of started to talk a little bit about the kind of basic mechanics of how sync licensing works. So if you're unfamiliar with the subjects such as sync, metadata and clearance and all that kind of stuff, do by all means just circle back to last week's episode and have a listen or have a recap, because I'm going to assume that you know about all that kind of stuff as I then go into the next steps. So what we're looking at today are the crucial kind of people to work with. So we're talking about ad agencies, music publishers, broker agencies, also sync agents, film directors all sorts of different people that you can actually work with. I'm then going to look also at knowing what to quote and also contractual considerations. So this episode now is really geared towards those that have got their music ready and they want to know what to do with it. Okay, let's get going, all right.
Speaker 1:So it's important to consider which professionals music creators should actually try and be connected with when pitching music for sync opportunities. So let's start with sync agents, right? So they're probably the most accessible licensing agents or sync agents it's the same thing, right? They're probably the most accessible professionals in the list that I'm going to go through. It's their job to basically build a library of music that can be accessed by music users, who then identify the songs that they wish to license, right? So sync agents are always keen to explore new creative talent that can help them to find good matches for what their client base of music users are looking for. So sync agents work with with record companies, with music publishers with independent music creators across a whole wide range of styles and genres.
Speaker 1:It's advisable, probably, for music creators to pitch their music to sync agents along with a brief outline of how their music can aid visuals. I know a lot of people that have had success that haven't done that, but just from my own experience and in my observation of many others in recent years, I just find that it strengthens the pitch if you can tell them where it can be used. They might have their own ideas as well, but it certainly helps and it tells them that you're serious about what you're doing. It can also really help the sync agent to realise the potential in the song and where it could be placed. It might be that they listen to something they go I don't really know where this fits. Oh yeah, it totally fits for that. Okay, yeah, we can work with this. And it might be the difference between them wanting to work with you and not sync agents. You know they can vary in scale and size from kind of small boutique genre specific companies with a small and very manageable kind of catalog right up to sort of a high level kind of heavyweight libraries that supply to motion picture productions in hollywood. So while some sync agents like to work with an artist's wider body of work, most prefer to work with independent music creators on a more of a kind of song-by-song basis, by offering single-song deals to exploit a particular song and recording of that song.
Speaker 1:So there are a range of sync agents that operate with creators on a global basis, and many can easily be found through sort of internet search engines or on industry listing pages. So if you're not sure where to start, just start, simple, right. Just go into Google and just type sync agents followed by a country name. So like USA, uk, denmark, germany, et cetera, just sync agents followed by that country, and just obviously just skip past all the sponsored stuff. It'll be like the first four or five answers and then from there you'll start to get a stronger indication as to who the right people might be and by all means, of course, go past the first one or two pages of Google and then you'll start to kind of, you know, see a lot more detail.
Speaker 1:You'll start to come across forums as well as the actual libraries themselves. Look at them, go on their website, see the kind of stuff that is already in their library. It might be they have a signing process where you can actually look at some of the songs that they've got or the kind of success that they've already created, what kind of TV shows or ads, et cetera, that they've worked with, and it'll give you an idea of the kind of stuff that they sign and how to work with them. There'll also probably be a Submit my Music or contact page somewhere where you can understand their submission policy. I would recommend reading that, because sometimes you know some people like to receive files, some people like download links, stream links, whatever it is be sure to look at their submission policy, and that is a great place to get started with this. Okay, there are also a growing number of what I refer to as kind of broker agencies.
Speaker 1:Now, there's a growing range of, let's say, music sync companies that aim to connect music creators with opportunities for their music by collecting and receiving leads from multiple music users so that could be music supervisors or ad agencies and making them all accessible to music creators on a kind of subscription basis, right, so places like music X-Ray, taxi, music. They've established themselves in that sector and have proved to be quite valuable in connecting many music creators and rights holders with music sync professionals or even sometimes directly to supervisors. Now, these companies can play a crucial role for many music users as they tend to filter out unsuitable pitches on their behalf. So there's a growing trend for many brokers to kind of implement their own diagnostics, let's say, which determine the mood, theme and genre of a song, and to offer services, like you know, a review function to determine the potential of a song pitch, together with sort of additional option of pitching songs to multiple music users. You know, now I'm not here to say whether those services are right or whether they're wrong, but they do exist and they have definitely yielded positive results for many, many people.
Speaker 1:If you don't know anybody at all, you have no contacts, no network whatsoever, it can be a good place to start now. Those types of agencies usually require some kind of subscription to their service and sometimes even a split on license fees. In many ways, for music creators, this option is comparable, kind of to working with a music publisher or a sync agent, but you are paying them, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as you have the flexibility and your rights, as opposed to being restricted to just one company's pathway. Hope that makes sense, okay, music publishers. So there are a range of kind of avenues that a music publisher can exploit, including TV companies that you know, that create programming for cable and network channels, et cetera. Also film production companies, ad agencies, video game companies Also you know, corporate campaigns and much more agencies, video game companies also you know, corporate campaigns, and much more.
Speaker 1:So either a music publisher will be licensed by a rights holder so a songwriter to exploit their music for sync opportunities, or a songwriter will have assigned copyright control to a music publisher right. So in both cases the music publisher will look to exploit songs or instrumentals for commercial purposes in a way that ensures both that they and the creators of the music actually benefit. So the music publisher will also generally look at how best to administrate and collect on back end royalties from the use of songs in media projects media projects now, traditionally music publishers would not have expected to have seen any of the kind of upfront license money for the use of a recording. But in recent years many independent music publishers have begun, I've noticed, to start taking a commission on the licensing of a master recording if they find the final placement rather than a sync agent. Now this is especially true for music creators who are not signed to a record company, ie the artist is the rights holder of the recording. Now, this is something that can and should be negotiated in the agreement, ideally between a songwriter and a music publisher. Fundamentally, the music publisher will seek a partial split of the copyright of the song and split any of the fees that are attached to the use of the song rather than the use of the recording. But I have noticed in recent years that there has been a shift there.
Speaker 1:Okay, on to music supervisors. Now they are the undeniable holy grail of the sync business. So music supervisors if you've never heard of that role before, they are basically responsible for selecting and sourcing songs for TV and film the chain of gatekeepers and are highly influential in their positions. So music supervision is very much an art form, and a very admirable one at that. If you think about, you know the tension and grit of a show like Peaky Blinders, for example, you know. And then you look at the lady that did the supervision for that, whose name's Amelia Hartley, who I had the pleasure of interviewing a few years ago. You know she's just brilliant at what she does. I mean, the production's already there. The music comes at the end. That's generally how it works. But some of the choices that she made, her team made on that TV show really helped to kind of not save scenes but certainly embellish certain characters and certain you know certain scenes.
Speaker 1:You know there's other examples that we could pick, you know, for example, if we look at the dramatic regal curation that won Alexander Patsavis her Emmy nomination for her supervision on Bridgerton, you know. Or Nora Feld's superb choice of Kate Bush's Running Up the Hill on season four of Stranger Things, these are all examples of that discipline, right, just the art form of knowing kind of what works, where and for what purpose. It's something which you know there are many music supervisors that are music creators as well, so they just have that kind of that musical nous to them, but there are many that aren't, that are just massive music fans either way, you know there are many people that do that role now, that do it brilliantly, and the discipline of kind of knowing which songs to choose and where to use them is defined really by finesse and a sublime vision of how music is actually used. So music supervisors, you know they can well, they can break an act and change the course of of a creator's career forever. Really they are considered to be, you know, the hardest people to get responses from, due to the sheer number of people vying for their attention, and their duties include not only actually sourcing the music but also creating the path for the usage. So that sometimes, would you know, include, you know, obtaining a clearance on the recording rights with record companies or negotiating rates of pay for, you know, composers and publishers, while also trying to remain within a project's budget, right, so that's quite, you know, a difficult task. There's various other parts to the role than that, but, you know, also to locate and to identify actually locating and identifying suitable songs, you, and finding who the rights holders are. It's a difficult, long task, and supervisors can often use a sort of more filtered search to their approach, which is why a music creator's metadata is so important.
Speaker 1:Ok, what about ad agencies Now? Ad agencies have often been a bit of a goldmine for music publishers and songwriters over the years, but I'm noticing a lot of new terms these days, such as digital agencies or branding agencies, or they're often referred to as creative agencies. But in essence, these are companies that design and execute marketing plans for businesses, right, so that's their core aim and music is a part of that. So promotion and marketing techniques can, you know, take a range of sort of dynamic forms in the modern era, but the the basic principles relate to building awareness of a business and its product or service. So one of the most effective ways to actually achieve that, of course, is through music, which makes these kind of companies key gatekeepers when it comes to opportunities for music creators. And there's a plethora of businesses across a range of sectors that could be used as examples of successful brand and band alignment. You know, very often a lot of companies will want to break an act. You know, bacardi did it a few years ago. There's been many, many companies over the years that have done that. That said, let's sign something here, let's work with an act and actually push that act as well, because it kind of aligns them with youth culture. It gives them a sense of coolness, a sense of kudos that they wouldn't get through something else outside of music, of coolness, a sense of kudos that they wouldn't get through something else outside of music. And ad agencies can be a really key, pivotal partner in making that happen.
Speaker 1:We should also probably talk about film directors here, because they can often play a pretty key role in the use of songs for movies. So you know, it can sometimes be the case that maybe a film director hires a music supervisor or music supervision team to kind of find and clear songs for many parts of a film project, but it's often the director who personally chooses the key song or songs for a movie theme and for its soundtrack. Wes Anderson is known to film some scenes with very specific songs in mind. For example, cameron Crowe also curated a very important scene of the movie Almost Famous by having many of the casted actors collectively sing the song Tiny Dancer by Elton John to enhance the emotion that was needed for that scene. So the recording was only partially used, you know, in a montage scene, but the actual performance of that song was by the cast that were in that scene. Quentin Tarantino is also renowned for his great ear of music for much of his work, and songs are a very central part of many, many of the projects that are directed by Martin Scorsese too. I'm using some big-name examples there, but it helps us to understand the bigger picture of how music informs them of their creativity.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's explore micro licensing. So if anybody's never heard of this before, it's a really growing area of the music sync world. Micro licensing is loosely defined as a subsector of the music sync market which licenses music to independent web-based projects, so this is particularly useful for people like youtubers and small businesses, independent filmmakers or people that need music for their visual projects. Now, the cost for a micro license is much lower than what a tv production company or video games creator or music supervisor would be expected to pay because of the usage of the music is limited to a much smaller audience. So, while micro licensing does not pay rights holders as much as mainstream sync use, it does allow for music creators to actually have their music used on a non-exclusive basis in exchange for micro licensing fees. Now you combine that with audio detection applications like Shazam, which can lead music consumers to instantly streaming a song that they've discovered, and this creates a lot of new pathways for music creators to have their songs actually discovered pathways for music creators to have their songs actually discovered.
Speaker 1:So you know, micro-licensing is still a relatively sort of new thing, and it may take several years for it to fully develop, but particularly when it comes to the collection of payments for right holders. However, it's also worth mentioning that in 2022, youtube incorporated micro licensing into its YouTube studio, which effectively allows uploaders to use a range of music provided by record labels and music distribution companies, and many emerging music libraries accept submissions specifically for micro licensing use. So this could be a good and growing option for music creators to explore when trying to establish new income streams. People should also you know, creators, I should say, should also ensure that they choose the right digital distributor when releasing music, because many distributors are now providing micro-licensing access to build numerous digital partners, which is why so many distributors now build in social media content IDs Facebook content IDs, youtube content IDs, etc. To deliver to social media and multimedia platforms as additional options. In essence, the gatekeepers for the use of music in micro-licensing sector are the public, those that are wishing to put those films together, etc. And they don't have the budget that uh, you know that a major production house would so, therefore, I've noticed that some distributors have actually started to move a lot more strongly into this.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's think about the contractual side of things, because there's basically two different types of contracts here. Right, there's the sync licensing deal, which relates to the use of the song, and there's the sync master license deal, which relates to the recording of the song. So you know, like with many contracts, of course, things can differ, right, quite considerably in terms of you know what the offer is to to the music creators. But it can also depend on who you're dealing with. I mean, it could be a sync agent, it could be a broker service, a music publisher, perhaps even a supervisor directly. All of that will dictate you know how much money you're going to make, because it depends who else is making money from it, right?
Speaker 1:But let's go, let's look at sync agents, right? So many sync agents will look to secure 50 of the upfront fee that the music user is paying, with the other 50 going to the rights holder or the independent music creator. Now, some sync agents will not ask for any of the music publishing share of the back end of the royalties that are generated once a song, actually you know know, once a TV show is aired, while others will ask for a percentage split of the publishing rights for a set length of time. Now, some sync agents will offer a kind of, you know, an exclusive agreement. Some will offer a non-exclusive agreement which allows the music creator to enter into similar agreements with other sync agents on a non-exclusive basis. But some sync agents will also look to retitle a song's recording. Now this is a practice which you don't see as much of in Europe, but it's a term commonly used in the USA whereby a sync agent gives a song's recording an alternative title in order for it to differentiate between its work and its work of another sync agent working with that same song. So this means that a music creator can have one song with multiple titles with different publishers.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not encouraging you to do that, by the way. In fact, if anything, I would encourage you not to do that, because it's a bit of a dated and tired kind of concept. Now especially will start to probably erode that type of practice. So it's not advisable for creators to consider that as a sustainable option. But the reason I mentioned it here is because there are a lot of publishers and sync agents that still do that. And I'm not saying you should or you shouldn't. It's totally up to you, but it's something to be aware of because it's common practice still for many to do that. Totally up to you, but it's something to be aware of because it's common practice still for many to do that.
Speaker 1:A publisher's primary interest of course right will lie in the actual exploitation and collection of a song's use right, while a record company's interest will lie in the use of the recording but of course both generate fees and royalties. So the percentage split on sync placements with either a music publisher or a record company will be outlined in the actual contractual agreement that it enters into with a music creator. Now, broker agencies are usually quite sort of transparent about what their offer is to music creators and it's always a good idea to read their website before you even consider pitching to them so that you know what kind of deal you could be entering into if you actually work with them. So there's often the subscription fee that's involved with a broker service and sometimes perhaps even a percentage on a master license sync fee, although that will generally be a much smaller percentage than what a sync agent would expect. That will generally be a much smaller percentage than what a sync agent would expect Generally speaking. You know a broker service would not expect to see any kind of back-end royalties as they're remunerated through the subscription fee and also any split of the master sync fee.
Speaker 1:Okay, knowing what to quote this can be a challenge. I've been put on the spot a few times with this one. Over the years, many, you know the years, um, many, you know, creators will have, you know, poured their, their heart and soul right into, you know, into creating something special and meaningful which then becomes hopefully useful to others, um, and it's difficult to suddenly expect to put a price on that um. However, it's a business, right. It needs to be done. As cold as that may sound.
Speaker 1:Now, it may well be that you have to quote on sync feeds only if you work directly with a music supervisor or a director, and this is where working with a sync agent or a publisher can kind of come in handy, because you don't have to worry about that. Generally, they'll be there, you know, negotiating on your um, your, your, your, your behalf, um, but let me tell you what I do, right, see, if this is useful to you, right? So there's been a couple of situations in recent years where you know someone said, oh, you know, okay, what? What do you want to charge for the use of this song? And I kind of sit there and think, oh, I have no idea, but I don't want to say that, right? So instead I will say what budget are you working towards? Because what that does is it takes the pressure off you and it shifts it directly back to the client. And also, there definitely definitely will be a budget right, because there always is.
Speaker 1:So, you know, song selection and clearance is often the last part of the completion process in television and film and there will almost certainly be a specific budget in mind. And budgets can vary dramatically, by the way you know, depending on you know the project is is actually going to be used for. You know. You know a small indie flick will be different from a hollywood blockbuster, but there's also everything in between. And it's it's unlikely that you'll have any idea what the budget looks like for the whole project or how much of that budget budget has already been spent. But if you're, if you start by quoting too low, your offer will be gratefully accepted, of course. But even trying to gauge a ballpark figure can be difficult if you have no idea of the intended use of the song. So it's also good to actually kind of consider what the ideas are in terms of how the show or the film will be licensed. It will give you an indication as to what that audience size then might look like, because the audience size will always dictate the budget. So another consideration is also what are you quoting on?
Speaker 1:It's likely that this will be an upfront fee which covers the master recording use rather than the use of the song, but sometimes it's both, and perhaps there's a separate fee for the use of the song. But, but sometimes it's both, and perhaps there's a separate fee for the use of the song, but perhaps not. You know, some music supervisors know that songwriters and music publishers will collect their royalty revenues through their PROs and therefore the budget only covers the use of a recording. I mean, that's kind of kind of wrong, right, and it's something that a lot of publishers have tried to battle with over the years, but it is a it's a common thing, because a lot of music supervisors will say oh well, you know we don't want to pay for that, because you know we don't want to pay for the use of the song because they're going to make their money not through us but through their PROs once it's collected. So why do we have to pay for that song? I mean, I'm not saying that's the right thing to do, I don't think it is, but they're definitely well aware of how that works, which will then, of course, bring down the cost of the upfront fee for a song very often, but it's, of course, very important to be clear. You know about this, because it's difficult to know what to quote if you don't know what you're quoting on.
Speaker 1:You know there might be also additional factors which contribute towards the fee. So might be also additional factors which contribute towards the fee. So, for example, full songs with vocals often command higher fees than instrumental versions of of songs or even the same song. So perhaps the song is quite central, right to a story's essence, or it's pretty crucial to a specific scene or a particular character. So when dealing directly with the source, understanding how the song will be used can actually be quite helpful in determining its value to the user. Okay, right, so there's some thoughts on uh, you know, on pitching and creating opportunities for uh, for songs, for instrumentals.
Speaker 1:Just remember as well, everybody, you know, when you're pitching something, try to remember that you're not asking for help. You're proposing something that could be incredibly useful for someone that is doing their job. There's nothing charitable about it, it's just business, and I know I make it sound simple, but I wish someone had told me that many years ago. But anyway, I hope you find that useful in some way. So there you have it Now.
Speaker 1:I did mention in the last episode I'll mention it again. There are some crucial documents that can be very, very useful to you, such as producer release agreements, performance release agreements otherwise known as work for hire agreements Excel, metadata documents, all of these things. Don't go paying for any of those things, right? You can just go to my website, johnnyamoscom, and just click on music industry resources and you'll see on there there's a whole page of like resources that you can click and download those documents so that you can grab them and use them for free, which will help your clearance process and all that kind of stuff. Okay, that's enough for me from today. Thank you for being here with me. I hope you found that useful. Have a great day and until next time, may the force be with you.
