Written by Kianna Best on Jul 8, 2024. Posted in General Interest

In Tune With Music Licensing

From evoking nostalgia to creating ambience, music plays a crucial role in the world of film, television, commercials, gaming and more. We explore the new ways that songs and scores are being synced with expanding content platforms.

Whether it’s John Travolta’s strut to the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive in Saturday Night Fever, the electric guitar belt of Metallica’s Master of Puppets in season four of Stranger Things, or the power of Andrea Bocelli’s Festa for John Lewis’ 2023 Christmas commercial, music is a driving force of emotion, embedded in screened content. At the foundation of this pairing between the industries sits sync licensing.

From publishing and masters to library and commercial music, understanding the many facets of sync is crucial for an infringement free relationship, but it is “rarely a priority for filmmakers and drastically misunderstood,” insists Katy McIlvaine, music supervisor and owner of Dawn Patrol Music, which offers licensing for artists.

Licensing an artist that is signed to the majors and works with writers and producers who are also signed to major publishers is definitely more difficult, expensive, and time consuming.

On the one side you have the publishing rights, which is the copyright holders’ right to control the use of a song in a particular format or geographical territory, and on the other is the master, which is the intellectual property of the recorded song. With two sides to the licensing, and an intricate line of ownership to get through, the manual process of attaining clearance can be complex and time consuming.

PITCH TO PAYMENT

“From pitch to payment it takes over a dozen steps, countless emails, and anywhere from three months to over a year,” says Jon Mizrachi, head of sync at Bodega Sync. “This could definitely be improved by minimising the amount of unnecessary or redundant paperwork, perhaps creating an industry standard for automating the administrative side of licensing to be a collective process instead of one that has to be done in parallel with all rights holders.”

Within the many catalogues provided by sync licensing companies, there are both signed and independent artists’ materials available. The latter tend to be the preferred licensing choice for filmmakers due to ease, efficiency and cost effectiveness.

“Licensing an artist that is signed to the majors and works with writers and producers who are also signed to major publishers is definitely more difficult, expensive, and time consuming,” insists Mizrachi.

More artists and more music generally leads to more diversity in style, which offers great options creatively when you’re looking to license music for your project.

Companies like Bodega Sync that work with independent artists are able to aggregate the two forms of rights needed to legally use a licensed song for screen, whilst more famous tunes require multiple spread out negotiations and a higher price.

“A one-stop artist who controls a hundred per cent of their masters and publishing is usually much easier to license and negotiate with,” adds Sam Loughlin, creative licensing and production services manager at Music Gateway, a 360 music industry marketplace. “Whereas, you'd likely have to negotiate with multiple publishers and a record label to license an established artist. Independent music can be just as good if not better than mainstream tracks.”

Some companies are trying to make the process smoother and give easier access to all. For example, social music platform BandLab allows creators to not only share their music but also their creative process with fans and other musicians. They’ve created a direct channel between creators, collaborators and consumers. Last November, it launched a sync licensing arm, providing their 60 million registered users with new opportunities and creating a one stop service for those working in the creative industries seeking rights-cleared content.

Sometimes they will have a very specific idea and sometimes they’ll be more open to inspiration that they hadn’t previously considered.

“More artists and more music generally leads to more diversity in style, which offers great options creatively when you’re looking to license music for your project,” says Grace Hewlett, creative sync manager at music library Soho Production Music. “What it comes down to when looking at having your music matched to a sync opportunity is what the music supervisors and editors are looking for, for their particular project.”

“Sometimes they will have a very specific idea and sometimes they’ll be more open to inspiration that they hadn’t previously considered. In terms of competition for opportunities, there is more music out there but there is also much more media being produced than ever before, so I’m optimistic about the outlook for commercial and library artists.”

A HIGHLY COMPETITIVE MARKET

The 2022 Global Sync Licensing Trend white paper report, commissioned by music licensing platform Songtradr and Digital Music News, highlighted the expanding scope of sync licensing with the value and possibilities of emerging placement opportunities in gaming, long-form web content and even fitness platforms.

Anyone can create music these days and supervisors/productions have limitless options in terms of music they can license – great for them, tough for artists.

“The way music is used on various platforms greatly differs from the linear usage we've understood for years in television and film,” says Loughlin. “Games such as Fortnite have experimented with in-game concerts with Travis Scott and Marshmello; brands are partnering with artists more often (Just Eat with Katy Perry and Snoop Dogg, for example). In this way, sync is becoming more interactive and artist-driven with music being the focus as opposed to a song simply being used in the background.”

But as the music industry gets increasingly saturated, sync remains a highly competitive market for rights holders. With catalogues providing access to thousands of commercial and library-based content across genres, variety for those searching for copyright free music is abundant but artists can find themselves overshadowed by others or more established creators.

Loughlin adds: “Anyone can create music these days and supervisors/productions have limitless options in terms of music they can license – great for them, tough for artists.”

Since there’s a strong reliance on this discovery process in the sync space to find the right song for the right scene, this will likely reduce the influence of gatekeepers like pitchers and music supervisors.

Technology is set to make the process more efficient for creators, licensers and those seeking music. There are more streamlined platforms, such as BandLab, and artificial intelligence based solutions, like Musiio (which has partnered with Audio Network, one of the best known providers of production music).

AI SIGN OF THE TIMES

AI tools have already found their way into the music industry such as helping musicians to write, record and mix music, as well as discovering new artists.

“I would imagine at some point AI will get good enough to do complex searching based on a mix of references and will become the main way people search for music,” predicts Mizrachi. “Since there’s a strong reliance on this discovery process in the sync space to find the right song for the right scene, this will likely reduce the influence of gatekeepers like pitchers and music supervisors. If this is accompanied by solutions for rights management that facilitates and standardises licensing, then it might be possible for more independent artists to get syncs without the direct involvement of music industry professionals.”

At this moment, AI is yet to pose a total threat to those working in sync licensing. Whilst there is a desire for improvements in the predominantly manual industry, the personal skills of specialists effectively pointing screen projects in the right direction for their musical accompaniments, is still hugely important.

“There’s a low ceiling to how well AI-driven search methods can work at identifying music that is appropriate for media,” says Mizrachi.

“AI is a controversial subject in sync as it creates complicated copyright infringements and, without the correct systems in place to identify these instances, it's reasonable for artists to be concerned,” adds Loughlin. “There’s no doubt that technology will keep sync on its toes. That will be governed by the music users or platforms rather than the music owners. Both sides must work together to ensure that all effort is made to proactively eliminate copyright infringements and to ensure artists are paid for the use of their work.”