Industry news & advice blog

In our continuing series of blogs brought to you via our partnership with legendary recording studio Strongroom in Shoreditch (who are offering a massive 50% discount - full details here!), in this instalment we have over to Strongroom residents We Are Golden who have penned this latest blog with some important insight on their often-overlooked corner of the music industry.


For artists starting out in their careers, one part of the industry that can be particularly fruitful and is sometimes overlooked is music sync.

Music sync, in short, refers to the process of combining music and media. This can refer to advertising, TV, video games and film. One of our roles as music supervisors is to find new, up-and-coming artists who have a strong sound that could work well to picture. Whether it’s on TV shows like ‘Love Island’ and ‘Made in Chelsea’, or on major advertising campaigns, music sync offers new artists a lot of exciting opportunities, and getting your music on the radar of music supervisors is vital.


So, what can you do as an artist to give yourself the best chance of being noticed?

When reaching out to music supervisors and synch agencies, simplicity is key. We get sent a lot of introductory emails from artists and management companies, so it is easiest for us to look through a short stream link with a handful of your best tracks, rather than an entire catalogue. Sending this alongside a short bio and information about clearance is most useful.

Speaking of clearance, if you self-release and are unpublished, it is helpful to let supervisors know that you own 100% of both the publishing and master rights to your music (and no samples would need clearing). This is referred to as ‘one-stop’ clearance, and is appealing to supervisors as it means that the music can be cleared quickly and easily, as they will only have to negotiate with one entity.

As is the case with so many creative industries, it’s vital to go out there and meet people! There are lots of sync events, film festivals and conferences that happen all year round, and this is a great opportunity to introduce yourself to labels that specialise in sync, as well as music supervisors and filmmakers. A couple of events worth checking out are AIM Sync and Ditto's Meet the Music Industry.

One way to demonstrate your music’s suitability to sync is to see if you can get your music placed on any student/short films. If you know any young directors working on projects, pitching your music to them is a great way of building a sync portfolio, and it’s also valuable having connections with directors at the beginning of their careers so that there is potential to collaborate in the future.

Having your music registered with rights holders such as MCPS and PRS is also a worthwhile investment, as it means your music can be used under blanket deals by larger broadcasting corporations such as the BBC and ITV, who often work this way. You can find more information on how PRS and MCPS royalties work here.