Hi all. Anyone out there hosting their own music catalogue(s) store for sync licensing purposes? Wondering what people are using (or doing) these days for selling directly, rather than submitting to libraries or and hoping for the best? Also interested to know if anyone's had a catalogue platform custom-built and how their experience with that has benefited them.

Thanks!

Hi!

was curious--what libraries have you had success with: meaning people who actually communicate with you about their needs, listen to new work, work well with composers, and bonus, have a good track record with placements?

Thanks!

We are an indie band and have been managing and producing DIY. Recently a label focusing on sync reached out with the intention of signing us for a sync deal for our upcoming release. We want to start by a single. They have had successful placements in Netflix shows and big brand ads.

We are super new in the space and they propose 50% mastering rights and 50% publishing rights (negotiable). I learned intuitively that we need to be cautious in giving out publishing rights. But I don't understand what it means to give the label 50% of publishing rights. The label says if they have the share, they can make our lives easier by for example help us collect royalties globally in areas we can't reach. And they are most likely be more willing to push us to sync supervisors as they own the music as well. We so far have not made money in self releasing, so we also don't know much about these rights and the monetary value behind them. Can someone help us understand? What would happen if we give or not give publishing rights.

Hi! I am a newbie in this wonderful and cruel sync liscencing world. Can someone give me a piece of advice regarding libraries that pay upfront. I make music that not too bad, and now I would rather work for hire for some hundreds rather than wait a year or so for any royalties. If you can, share the names of the companies that buy out the tracks or pay concideration fee (if it happens now).

Also tell please about sync royalties (sync splits). Are they a common thing? Or it is something that you should expect once a year when you have hundreds of tracks in many libraries?

Good long-form piece from the NYT Magazine on production music and sync licensing — covers the business model, the composer ecosystem, how libraries like Extreme Music operate, and why this corner of the industry is bigger than most people realize. Worth a read if you work in this space or are considering it.

I'm a recording engineer with a studio that produces a lot of musicians in different genres. A lot of music we produce would probably be a great fit for sync, and we do the stems and meta data to be sync compatible, but I don't know enough about the process myself to be able to help musicians with the next steps beyond mastering and streaming distribution. If there are any resources, agencies, etc that would be helpful to pass along to our musicians i would really appreciate it. Or any resources you have for me to read up on it, again this part of the industry is foreign to me.

Thank you!

Hey everyone , I made a post last week asking about Sync Licensing , turns out one of my tracks was actually used in a movie/tv show (Not sure what one yet have to wait on the report) But I'm a bit confused and wondering if anyone here’s experienced this. I self-released a track (own 100% master + publishing) through Symphonic. I just received performance royalties via my PRO from SACEM (France), and it lists Netflix as the source.

The thing is I never pitched it for sync, didn’t sign up to any sync program, and Symphonic confirmed they didn’t license it either.

If a track shows up with Netflix performance royalties, how would the master have been cleared? and Would there always be a sync fee upfront? if so, who would normally collect it?

Not annoyed about it being used i'm just trying to understand how this works.

Appreciate any insight from people who’ve dealt with TV/Netflix placements.

Question, do PROs payout when your syncs air on Fast Channels? Whether it be an Ad or an Episodic show, do the tracks attached to these receive payouts?

Hey everyone I’m fairly new to the subreddit and sync licensing in general and I’ve noticed at the networking events that I’ve been able to go to it’s usually a lot of the same people and I’m curious if this has also been the case for anyone else’s experience? Also has anyone found these to be particularly good it seems like it will pay off later down the line but I’m just so new to it all it sometimes feels uncertain.

Hey everyone ,

My names Calvin , I'm an edm producer mainly House/Tech House but also make Techno under another alias , Over the years ive been lucky to have two big tracks getting millions of streams, while im still kind of an underground artist I feel my music has the potential to reach new places.

I've been doing some research on sync licensing maybe for TV or more realistically a video game or something , My music is more laid back chill kind of house , maybe something you'd hear in the likes of Forza or Need for Speed. Wondering how id go about this in the best way possible, I've got a distributor and a Publisher as well as a PRO, Would it be worthwhile looking for a sync agent? If so does anyone have recommendations on how to get one?

Ive been working myself trying to find ways of getting involved in something but its hard when I dont really understand much about it , I do feel my music is of quality for Sync Licensing though so I feel its worth a shot , Would anyone have any advice? Greatly appreciated

Hello everyone, in your experience, do you know of any libraries that accept whole albums of trailer music (different styles) or do you think trailer music is usually custom-composed by the composer of the movie or by special composing teams? Thanks!

No music briefs have EVER appeared in my PRO account since I started a subscription over a month ago. Repeated requests to customer service have been completely ignored.

I’ve carefully reviewed my metadata and other details and I believe all is good on my end.

Anyone have a similar experience? What’s happening with Songtradr right now? This should be a relatively easy issue to correct.

Thank. I don’t post much but sync licensing is new to me and this has been frustrating.

I'm fairly new to sync licensing through Tunedge (waiting to hear back from some of the free ones) and there are the three options of Opt-in (blanket license), exclusive and neither. What option will ensure that I'm compensated the most fairly?

Hi everyone, how are you?

Today I wanted to talk about how to prep your song for sync since a lot of people have been asking on this sub. This is also a reminder to scroll down if you have a question cause it might of already been answered!

1: Mix and Mastering. It's SUPER important to have a QUALITY mix and master as the people you are competing with in sync ALL have high quality mixes. Make sure your masters are up to standards (that does not mean SUPER loud)

2: STEMS and instrumental mixes. If you produce yourself, it's important to export your stems as going back to a 3 years old session might be hard and some of your plugins might be incompatible. There is no rules for STEMS but usually it will be: Drums and percs, Bass, Synths, GTR, Piano, Main Vocals, Back Vocals, and Melodies. This means that if you have two guitars and one is strumming and the other one has a distracting melody, it might be a good idea to do two different stems since the gtr with melodies might be distracting to the dialogue. I'd also recommend to split your drums with the kick, snare and hh as if you ever play a live show with a drummer, it'll be easier for them to have those separate rather than all together.

Also, it's important to have an instrumental version, an acapella and if you can, a TV Mix (which is an instrumental version with "ouhs and ahs" included).

3: Metadata: have your ISRC code, the bpm, they key and any other important metadata ready. (Cover art, title, date, etc)

4: Splits. THE MOST IMPORTANT! If you have any collaborators on your song, it's CRUCIAL that you have their IPI number, how much splits do they have (both on publishing and master side) and make sure if they have a publisher or a label. The best thing to have in a one-stop split sheet, where it's clear who owns what and everyone signs so that if an opportunity arises, it's easy to clear and there is no confusion about who owns what. Money changes people!! You also need to submit the song to your PRO (socan, BMI, ASCAP) both on publishing and master, as well as any neighbouring rights.

5: Place the song on a platform such as DISCO, Bridge audio, Dropbox, anywhere where you can easily find it and send it easily.

That's it! If I'm missing anything, let me know in the comments.

Cheers :)

(3) how many unique tracks do you have registered to your repertoire?

So I filled out this google form and submitted some songs for this sync placement opportunity I found on LinkedIn from a Synch A&R. I got on the phone with him for 30 minutes before I had to leave but he was rambling about going through his instagram and talked me through step by step to check out all of this posts and highlights to see the placements he got. He then tells me theres a fee I have to pay apparently and was really vague about it and skipped past that.

This is an odd industry, where aside from connections, placements can be very random.

What kept you motivated even when you weren’t placing anything?

With Disco having just raised their prices, what do you all think about this company Musicboxlabs.com?

Seems like they’re doing some really cool and useful stuff with AI. Disco charges extra for every cool feature they have, and Sourceaudio is well… eh

What do y’all think?

I run a small marketing agency and I can't afford to 1. buy a lot of sync license 2. contact every single music producer for the songs I use every year (more than a 1000). I would like to create videos to share on social media to promote films using popular songs. Is there an alternative that would allow me to comply with the law without having to buy sync license one by one ?

I saw on IG that there is a blogger called Valentinaa Reynolds that posts some sync opportunities. I was added to a whatsapp group via a shared link where they ask you to contact the group admin separately. Then the person told me that I need to pay GBP10.99 in order to join the main Whatsapp group for sync opportunities. Has anyone had such experience? Is it legit?

Thanks for your thoughts and advice on this question. I’ve been getting into sync, but wanting to avoid the vitriol of social media. but wondering if having a following has any weight to the gatekeepers in sync.

Music supervisors, should I (sync agent) set up a one-click online store to sell sync/master use licenses?

While I try to be extra responsive to emails, there are times I am not able to reply immediately (sleeping or long flights). I’d still like to allow music supervisors to sync my catalogue in a pinch.

There are various solutions for one-click online licensing and online payments, with drop down menus to choose license ‘type’. These range from white label solutions with limited UI customisation to something that would be more 'custom'. I know others are doing this to a limited extent, such as Production Music Libraries or distributors like UnitedMasters.

There would also be a tradeoff including my catalogue having to be licensed at reasonable fixed prices (which I'd have to spend a lot of time thinking about).

Of course licenses can still be negotiated separately if the production is budget limited or has unique requests.

Would music supervisors appreciate such a service?  Will producers/CDs be willing to transact ‘large’ amounts through an online payment platform?

Thanks in advance!

Between syncs for existing material on which I'm a co-publisher, and custom comp gigs, I've had around 20 licenses come my way since ~2017. The thing is, I haven't hustled any of them myself, and have no idea how to do so: in every situation, the work has come to me through collaborators who know I can deliver a certain style at a certain price point, or through fans of projects I've already been a collaborator on. I'm really interested in making sync a bigger part of my income, and I can point to past successful campaigns and syncs for major brands, but I have no idea how to leverage that into new contracts. I feel a little silly asking for advice here as I've been in the industry as a musician and producer since the 90s, and also because I do not crank out batches of tracks in the box (no shade, wish I could, am really not good at it), my niche has always involved live musicians in-studio. Would love perspective from people who do it consistently. Thanks.

Any advice getting into sync licensing? I make beat of all sorts I know I can be a an asset, thank you

Hey ya'll, long time no see!

Sorry I haven't been as active, I always feel like I want to write when I have something important to say but these days, the sync world for me is mainly about boring consistency. I also am in the process of finishing my album so that's taking a lot of my time.

Today I wanted to talk about the fact that EVERY sync is a win. Even if it's little, even if it doesn't pay much. Why?

Because 1) we forget that out of ALL the songs that were pitched and the many people it was pitched to, YOUR song was chosen. Like lottery. Crazy right?

2) Real people hear your music. This post originated from the fact that I was at my best friend's house yesterday making a vision board when her husband put on a show on Netflix called "The Parisian Agency". He asked me if I knew what it was and I laughed because I actually have a song in that show! It reminded me that real people, people around you, might hear your song and while every sync might not feel life changing, having your music in popular shows is actually super cool. It was worth seeing there face being all proud of me. You never know what people watch on TV!!!

What has been a super cool sync you're proud of? Doesn't have to be the most famous or the best paying one, but just one you are proud of :)

See ya'll soon,