What Is A Music Supervisor? | Wendy Day Interviews Deborah Mannis-Gardner

Hey, thanks for joining me. This is Wendy Day. I have one of my favorite people in the music industry here with me. Her name is Deborah Manus Gardner, and Deborah Manus Gardner runs DMGClearances.com. She is amazing. She has cleared samples for my favorite artists, and she's been in business over 2 decades, almost 3, right?

Thank you for aging, but I started in diapers.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I first met you, you were 5.

Exactly, that was fine.

Exactly, exactly, exactly. I, however, rode my dinosaur to go see her when we first met. Um, but we're going to talk about placing music in, um, areas outside of like iTunes. Like, how do we place music in TV and film and video games? Um, Deborah, I'm going to start by asking you What is a music supervisor?

The music supervisor, which is a title that I've held on a couple things, and I've got right now for a documentary with Dre and Jimmy called The Defiant Ones, which is coming out in June. And the role of the music supervisor is—

You bought footage from me of Eminem! Keep going, I'm sorry. Sorry! And thank you!

I forgot we did. The music supervisor is the one who picks the music or works with the director or producers picking the music that is used in the actual production, whether it's a film or TV show or documentary or video game. The supervisor is the one that actually chooses the music and finds that— thinks that that's the right music. The role of the supervisor is several things. My role as a music supervisor is usually working where the directors— like when I worked with Marty Scorsese for— well, that wasn't me. I wasn't the music supervisor on that one. When Randy Poster was the music supervisor with Marty Scorsese for The Aviator, I was the clearance agent. Marty would pick stuff personally with Randy to be in their shows.

So he played a role?

Yeah, so Marty— when Marty works on a project with Randy Poster, they work really close together. They're an amazing team. Amazing team. So as a director, Marty works very closely with the music supervisor choosing the music. Oh, wow. OK. And then they would pull in me as the clearance agent to make sure the music gets cleared. The music supervisor role that I usually have is, um, I might not always be picking all of the music. The director might, as well as me helping to clear and to guide them. But the music supervisor is a very creative role. A lot of people try to be music supervisors, and it is not easy to be a music supervisor. I've just recently been invited to be part of the Music Supervisors Guild. Yeah, which is huge.

I didn't know they had a guild.

Yeah, and it's a huge honor. They only accept a certain number of people each year, and it's not easy. You need to know unions, you need to know numbers, you need to— there's a lot of stuff involved just picking music versus other stuff that we talked about, which is music placement. And there are people and companies out there that pitch music for placement SugarRoo does that, Shelly Bay does that. There's quite a few companies that do that.

And that's called music placement.

That's music placement. Now, there are companies though out there, and please be careful, that allege to place music and take ownership of your copyright in the contract. No way. Yeah, or take a huge amount of money from that. So please, for these placement companies, read the contract carefully, check the small print about ownership, and if you have any questions, ask a friend to read it, go to an attorney, go to your manager. I go to panels a lot on this stuff. Don't be a sucker because there's a lot of companies out there.

So I don't have to give up ownership to get my song into a TV show or onto a video game?

You should never give up ownership on anything ever.

Could you say that again?

Never give up ownership on anything ever.

Never give up ownership on anything ever. Just wanted to co-sign that. So as, as a, as a, as a music supervisor, um, how do you find the music and what What matters to you when you're trying to like, um, get clearance or, or a license to use a song or whatever it's called?

I mean, you know, when you're placing music and using music, um, sometimes you've got a specific visual going on and you need a certain sound. And maybe you, you have something big that you already know you want to use, like a 50 Cent song or, or an Akon song, but you know it's going to be too expensive for your budget. You know it's going to cost $25,000 a side, so it's $50,000, but maybe you only have $4,000 or $5,000 for that musical cue. You go to your library or you see what people pitch to you, or in my case, I'm doing the film Deuces for Jamaal Hill, where he had a lot of songs in there and he didn't have the budget for a lot of them, so there was a producer that I know that he was able to create or had stuff in his library that we could use and switch out.

Gotcha. Like he had a certain sound or a certain feeling?

Yeah, he had a huge library of music, so he was able to replace an Akon, a Wale, a Beyoncé, everything.

Wow.

For me, and he, he filled 8 slots in a movie.

Wow. You know, and I've noticed that, um, most, um, companies prefer— most film, TV, video game companies prefer working with independent artists because they can clear the music quickly? You know, they contract through the—

they always want a mixture of both. I mean, I'm working on an untitled TV show right now, and I'm not a music supervisor for the show. I'm the clearance agent and oversee the budgets and finances of it. And what we're doing is, you know, we have these like, we call them like needle drops or segues of music between scenes. Oh, and so, uh, for the— to build up the excitement or energy of something that's about to happen. Whatever. And so we might be starting with, you know, purple Lamborghini, which might have one value, or Rick Ross, or, you know, DJ Snake, or what have you. And then if we can't clear it in time or the money's too much, we might have much smaller stuff that we can get for like $1,000. And so we'll do a combination of one episode, a one-hour episode might have 5 big names and then 5 indies so that my budget stays where it needs to be financially and still have both sounds of music, which is really important. Video game-wise, you know, I handle all Rockstar video games and not as music supervisor but as the parent's agent, you know, Sam and Yvonne, they base that stuff They're always looking for new sounding stuff. I mean, your artist Trouble was in one of the games.

Always, they, they called me early in Trouble. Like, we had just put out our first mixtape on him when they reached out. Like, they wanted cutting edge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty much that. That's how, you know, and, and, and what's great about like the, the Rockstar games is, you know, you have so many channels, radio stations of different genre of music. And so yes, you have your standard rock, and you have your standard heavy metal. And the last game, we had punk rock. So I was like, woo, I'm in heaven. And I was helping them, telling them, watch the end of world civilization. It's got to be Crash and the Germs, and trying to teach them stuff. And that was hard, because punk rock does not like to license their music. They're anti-everything.

Oh, really? OK, yeah, they're anti-corporate, yeah.

Yeah, so not easy to clear punk rock, please. They were like, fuck you, we don't need the money. I'm like, really? Yes, you do. That's funny. So, you know, and you as artists or producers or whatever pitching your music on and on, it's a shot in the dark if you're going to get picked or not, you know, for that stuff. The biggest thing is make sure your metadata is correct on your music before you send it out. So, because if you send something out in January You need to make sure that in December when the music supervisor finally listens to it, or after they listen to it, they know how to contact you, right? So metadata is really important.

That's great advice. And, and how do, how do people get paid if, if a TV show, for example, or a video game wants to use a song? How, how, how do you get paid? We know not to give up the publishing. We know not to give up the ownership.

This is called a synchronization license and a master use license. So if your song gets chosen to be used, um, you negotiate a fee or they'll offer you a fee. And if the song gets used, they're going to do a paper trail. Everything has to be papered in synchronization deals. So when they send you a request, they're going to ask you to sign off on it, showing that you've granted consent and what the fees are. And then when it gets used, they're going to send you a confirmation letter saying, this is to confirm that your song is going to be used in this episode or in this movie or what have you. And then they're going to ask for a W-9 and an invoice, and they're going to pay you. You are not owning— you're— excuse me, you are not losing any ownership or any rights to your song when it's synced up for a TV show, for a movie, or for a video game. You are licensing your song. It is not a work for hire. You are not giving anything up. You do not owe anyone money. This money goes to you unless someone pitched it for you or you have a publishing company or record label and they get their cut.

Right.

What is important also, if it's something new, is you need to make sure that it's registered properly with your PRO, with your ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC, because then there's, um, there's PRO income that's going to come from it as well.

I've noticed that there's two checks. There's two sides to the, to the sync license. There's the master use and the publishing use.

That's correct.

Um, can you explain what that is for anybody that wasn't smart enough to watch your video where you explained that at length?

Well, there's two sides to a song. There's the recording, which is the part where the artist records the, the song, and it's either owned by the artist or owned by a label or owned by somebody. Someone owns that recording. And then there's the composition side, which is the publishing and the writer side, and also owned by or administered by someone. So when a song is synced up to a visual, they need to get permission from both the publisher and from the record company. And so that's why there are two checks. Or if it's the same owner, it's one check to the same company. It depends on what you have set up. I see.

Is there, is there ever a time where there's a deal where, where you'll get recurring checks, where maybe they'll pay for something but then pay royalties afterwards down the road, or does that not exist?

Not in synchronization, except unless it's like a DVD, and DVDs are usually a royalty-based deal where it's an advance against, uh, 12 cents.

I see.

And that would be a royalty if it's used in a DVD. Um, There are some video games that do royalties. I mean, not the company I work for, not Rockstar, because we have close to 250—

That'd be a nightmare.

And it would be a nightmare. But I think the smaller games that maybe EA has or Activision might be royalty-based. Usually when it's heavy music, if it's just music, like a Dance Dance Revolution or stuff like that, that's usually royalty-bearing, because without the music, you wouldn't have a game.

Wouldn't have it, right? I see. Okay, cool. Did I leave anything out about music supervision that you think would be important for our folks to know?

Um, I think as long as you remember, don't ever give it away for free with the idea that, you know, we're helping to promote you, or, you know, we're gonna kairon this. There always should be financial consideration for utilizing your material. You don't expect to get coffee for free. I don't know why people should think they should get music for free. Right. So I think that's really important. Don't annoy a music supervisor. Once you send it, you can follow up, but if they've got it, it's in their library, it's a hit or miss kind of thing. If you're tied to people,— you know, like myself, where I get emails from different shows that are looking for something, like, oh, we need to replace something that sounds like something, we only have $1,000 and we need it in 24 hours, and I send it off to my producers or my people and then they get it to me and there's usually a Dropbox that we submit it to them and then we either wait or see if it happens or not, you know. It's as simple as that. And so that's what you need to get tied into. Is someone to handle it for you.

Beautiful. And then that person also collects the money, correct?

If someone handles it for you, based on whatever your negotiation is, then they would get a cut of it and they would collect it for you, or however you set up your deal.

Okay, good. Thank you. And the one last thing that I want to say is keep your publishing. Do not give it away. Do not do work for hire. Work for hire is evil.

That is correct.

Deb, thank you so much for joining us. This was really informative.

It's my pleasure.

Thank you, love.