To the average person, the concept of sync is one that most may never have heard of. However, if you’ve ever watched TV, seen a movie, or even had a visual advertisement come your way, the chances are pretty good that sync is a concept that you’ve seen at play.
In simple terms, synchronisation (known colloquially as ‘sync’) refers to the idea of a song being used in visual media, whether it’s soundtracking the media, complementing it, or simply being used in any way.
As with the use of any copyrighted material, the rightsholders are deserving of an income for the song’s use, meaning it can become an important – and at times, lucrative – source of income for artists.
But while we’ve seen some pretty impressive sync deals over the years (on the local front, think Jet on the iPod commercial, G Flip on Off Campus, or Sia on the Six Feet Under finale, or internationally, Kate Bush in the later seasons of Stranger Things), it’s a topic that many artists might not quite be aware of as well as they can be.
Thankfully, BIGSOUND is just around the corner, and this year sees a number of industry professionals with knowledge in the world of sync coming together for the FEEDBACK: Real Time Sync Discussion panel on Thursday, September 3rd.
Featuring the likes of ONErpm's Tristan Berry, Concord's Jessica Barlow, musician Sam Fischer, and – from New York City – Low Profile's Carole Ann Vetter, the session sees speakers reflecting on how songs function in film, television, advertising and games, and how decisions are made when pairing music with visual content.
Ahead of the panel next week, The Music spoke to fellow panel guest, Brisbane-based creative producer Carol Gesser, ahead of the panel for an in-depth introduction into just what sync is, how it works, and why artists should care about this potentially-lucrative field.
The Music: For the uninitiated, what is sync? It's an aspect a lot of artists might not know about, so how would you give them the elevator pitch as to what it is?
Carol Gesser: A sync is what happens when a song is edited into any visual media, such as a film, TV show, advertisement, or video game. Productions/brands/game developers have to pay the rights holders of the song or otherwise obtain their permission in order to license the rights for such sync.
In the bigger picture, sync is a very important income stream for artists, and is a way for them to expand the world that their art sits in, allowing them to reach new audiences through different media.
TM: How does sync happen? Can artists pitch their music for sync? Is it all up to music supervisors? What is the process?
CG: Syncs can happen in many ways. Most of the syncs that we see as an agency come from our direct pitches to music supervisors, on behalf of the artists we represent.
A lot of times, we pitch directly in response to emails from music supervisors that ask for specific types of music for their projects (these emails are called “briefs”). After we pitch for a brief, we will likely wait for several days, weeks, or months, until we hear back that there is interest in using a particular song, and at that point, we’ll receive a request detailing the terms and fees, which we will take to the artist for approval.
At that point, the artist can approve or deny the request. After they approve, we communicate that to the supervisor, and then we will have to wait for the sync to be confirmed. This could take days, weeks, or months depending on the timeline of the project, but usually there is quite a bit of waiting involved.
Once we hear that a sync is confirmed, we tell the artist the air date for the sync, and send them a clip of the use when we have it. And also at that point, we send out our licensing paperwork to the production and wait to be paid. After we receive payment, we deduct our commission and pay out the artist. This is the process from the perspective of a sync agent, at least.
Artists can certainly pitch their own music, and we have seen many syncs come in from productions or supervisors reaching out to artists directly – but most of the time, the more efficient use of an artist’s time and resources is to seek out a sync agent who has an existing network of supervisors, as building and maintaining those relationships is a full time job.
If you’re an independent artist, you’re already most likely releasing your own music, doing all the marketing around that, booking your own shows, or some combination of those things, and therefore don’t have a sufficient amount of time to be pitching your music to its highest potential. And sync agencies will also handle all admin such as licensing paperwork and invoicing, so that is taken care of as well.
While music supervisors are incredibly important in the decision of what music gets synced, there are so many other people involved in those decisions behind the scenes. The director of a film/TV production or the head of marketing at a brand may just not like a song a music supervisor recommended for their creative, and opt not to use it even if it is technically what they asked for.
TM: What sort of licences are required for sync? How does the licensing and royalty side of things break down?
CG: For sync, licenses are required for both sets of sync rights – which are the master use rights and synchronisation (publishing side) rights. Master side refers to a particular recording of the song – if your music is signed to a label, this is the side the label would own. The publishing refers to the underlying composition or song – the melody, lyrics, etc.
You might see fees quoted on a per-side or all-in basis. When people say per-side, those sides are master side and publishing side – and typically these will each be the same fee, on what we call a “most favored nations" or "MFN” basis for short (unless you are licensing a cover – if you are the artist covering the song, you’d only be licensing the master side, and the publishing side may receive a higher fee).
All-in refers to the total fee for both sides added together, based on 100% ownership of the master and publishing.
Royalties are a separate but related income stream to sync. Public performance royalties need to be paid to artists/songwriters whenever their music is played in a public place. So any TV networks, movie theaters, or other media outlets that publicly broadcast syncs need to pay these royalties.
Usually they have blanket agreements with the performance rights organization (PRO) in the territory, so if you are an artist registered with APRA (or the PRO in your territory), APRA will collect and pay you performance royalties for any syncs you have, based on the standard royalty rate. If you have a publisher, these performance royalties will flow through the PRO and your publisher.
TM: Sync options cover a lot of visual mediums, but is there ever a standard sort of sound that appeals to say, film over TV? Or is it something that is always different?
CG: The biggest difference in overall sound preference between visual mediums is between advertising and film/TV projects. Advertising tends to prefer a certain type of sound – a lot of time that is a big, energetic sound with generally positive or confident lyrics, or an instrumental track that is dynamic enough to carry a short spot. That’s not always true, but more often than not, it is.
Film and TV tend to have more variation in the types of music they license. Tracks that are moodier or darker tend to fit better in film, TV, and trailers than they do in advertising. TV shows and films also frequently ask for music specific to a time period or geographic setting. There is just a wider variety of creative asks for film and TV projects.
TM: What are some of the most important things that musicians don't typically know about sync?
CG: Most musicians don’t know how important it is that their music is easy to clear. Aside from the music being good and cool, this is the next most important thing for sync. 100% of both sides of a song need to be cleared for any sync to go final.
If you are an artist who works with others, make sure you have writer splits sorted with your collaborators and that they are easily reachable and can respond quickly should you receive a sync request.
If they give you permission to approve syncs on their behalf, even better. Even if someone only has 1% of a song, if they do not approve a sync in time, it will not happen.
TM: What are some of the biggest misconceptions that exist surrounding the topic of sync?
CG: How big an artist is usually has little impact on their sync success. Yes, some brands specifically want a very recognisable or famous song for their ad, but, as an agency representing independent artists that vary in popularity, we have seen artists who have extremely modest streaming numbers and social media followings do very well for themselves with licensing.
In general, sync is mostly about what songs are both clearable and a good fit for a particular piece of creative.
TM: What is some of the most important advice you can give to musicians (or their teams, etc.) in regard to approaching the topic of sync?
CG: Focus on creating music that you feel good about first and foremost. There is a place for every type of music in sync, it may just take a little more time pitching or finding the right sync agency. With so much AI slop around, people crave authenticity more than ever.
If you want to write to a brief as an exercise or for a specific opportunity, that’s totally cool and welcomed once we are working together, but when I am considering artists to represent, I want to have a clear sense of their vibe right away.
I think if you want to develop skills for writing for sync later, then that’s great, but the artist identity needs to be there first.
Carol Gesser appears on the FEEDBACK: Real Time Sync Discussion panel at BIGSOUND on Thursday, September 3rd, with full details available here.
