Wendy Day explains how music sync licensing works: supervisors pick songs for film and TV, placement specialists pitch them to supervisors, and deals are advances against future royalties, not flat fees. Independent artists move faster and cheaper than major labels. Tag your music by mood and genre, get a lawyer, and network at industry conferences.
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Hey guys, so today I want to talk about licensing and sync fees, and I'm really hesitant to make this video because it's an area that I don't know a lot about. It's not something that I personally do, and I hate talking about shit that I don't do. Like, you'll notice in pretty much all the videos that I've done to date, I I'm talking about stuff that I do all day, every day, in helping my clients and working with my clients. But, um, licensing deals and sync fees, I don't do much of that, so I always pass that off to other people. So I'm going to do this disclaimer first where I tell you to go study this and learn this because it's an area where you can make a lot of money, but it's also an area where you can get burned because there are some folks out there that will charge you a of your publishing to do this. I personally don't do those deals. I'm not saying that you shouldn't. It just has to be a really great opportunity for you to give up a percentage of ownership of your song in order to get your song placed in a movie or a TV show or a commercial. There's just got to be some spectacular backend. Whenever a licensing deal comes across my desk, I always pass it off to my attorney because I know that he knows what he's doing. He does these all day, every day. He knows what the going rate is, what's fair and acceptable, what type of advance the, uh, my client should be looking for. So I, I don't get in the middle. I'm not a big middleman person, so I don't get involved in the middle of those. I have my client deal directly with the attorney who deals directly with the music supervisor. So having said that, you're going to go study it, right? And you're going to talk to people that have done this before. If you're watching this on my YouTube channel, these videos start out on my Instagram TV, the next day they go to my YouTube channel. I did an interview with an artist that has made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing licensing deals and sync deals. So I'm going to link that below so that you can check out that interview. I did it a couple years ago. I think that's— it's still topical and it's still very relevant, and it'll be helpful to you. But also go and do research. Talk to other artists that have done these types of deals. Talk to attorneys that have done these types of deals. Read articles written by people who have done these types of deals. Don't just go by what I'm saying here, because again, I haven't done these deals. So it's I hate that I'm doing this video, but I can't not talk about sync fees because it's such a big part of income. Okay, having said all that, in order to get your music into a video game or an online game, a TV show, a movie, a commercial, You're going to do licensing deals and they pay sync fees, and what they do is they give you an advance against those fees. Don't do it for a flat fee, but they give you an advance against those fees and then you get paid publishing for the life of the movie or the TV show or the video game or the commercial. And again, an attorney can help you negotiate this so that you get the best deal possible. But the people that do these types of deals are basically called music supervisors, and they're the ones at the gaming company or the film company that put music into the movie or into the game or into the commercial. There's also people who do music placement, and they're the folks that have relationships with the music supervisors so that if you can't get directly to the music supervisor, the music placement people have those relationships and can pitch your music to the music supervisors. So just understand that this is a whole industry out there of people that do this. I think I sell lists of these people at Rap Resources, and I think that there's like hundreds of music supervisors and, and like close to 1,000 music placement specialists. So it's an entire industry that exists so that you can make money with your music. And either you build relationships directly with the music supervisors— and they change sometimes from film to film, right, um, or from ad agency to ad agency— or you can develop relationships with the music placement folks, and then they get paid a percentage to go to the music supervisor and arrange the deal. And they've already got got the, the relationships in place. So as long as they're legitimate and they've been doing this for a while, it's a great way for an independent artist to get their music utilized in film, TV, games, etc. The reason that they love turning to independents as opposed to established artists is because it's cheaper to use an unknown artist or a lesser-known artist. And when you're dealing with an independent, it's usually 1 or 2 people that can sign off immediately. So they can, they can do a deal in a matter of hours instead of dealing with a major label where they have to go through different levels of business affairs. Then the business affairs department has to reach out to the artists and the publishers directly, get them to sign off, It's just a much longer process, and this is a field where it moves very quickly. So they need to make decisions like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom very quickly. Um, and the major labels can't always do that. In fact, most of the time they can't. And that seems to be the one, um, factor that kind of, um, like every panel that I've sat in on or every article that I've read talks about how these guys just want to move so quickly. So if you can develop a relationship and you can send the music based on genre or based on feel, like sometimes for a film or a scene in a TV show, they might need music for a scary part, or they might be doing a rom-com, a romance comedy, and they need some upbeat, lighthearted, I'm-in-love type music. Or maybe it's, um, a part of the film or the TV show where the drama is very heavy and they need some more dun-dun-dun-dun type music. If you can, if you can, um, code your music so that it fits feelings and genres, um, you're going to be able to send them exactly what they need. So if they call you and say they need something upbeat for a lighthearted comedy, you can have your music tagged lighthearted, upbeat, comedy, so that you can just send them the type of music they need. They can go through whatever catalog you send them. They can say, okay, we need this exact song, send you back the paperwork. You can sign off on it with your attorney in a matter of hours, and then the money can be on its way to you. It can really be that quick. So again, this is a topic I don't know a whole lot about because I don't do sync deals all day every day. I suggest that you sit in on some panels about synchronization and licensing deals at music conferences. South by Southwest is coming up in March. Music Biz is coming up in May. ASCAP's annual conference is coming up. I think it's in April or May. In Los Angeles. So just do some more research on this, get to know this topic far better than I know it, um, share information with me, but most importantly, go make money with your music. That's why you're doing this. Thanks, guys.
