m
Music Supervisors spend a good portion of their days listening to music, with MP3s replacing CDs as the preferred method of moving sounds around. The Internet has really revolutionized this business. Music Supervisors are always on the lookout for new stuff because the lifeblood of what we do is music. That said they are always looking forward to receiving slip-through-the-cracks music. Ideally the best music is the music independent of major-labels. Sending samples of your music to Music Supervisors is the best way to do this. Dealing with songs isn't a music supervisor’s only responsibility. There are two completely different streams in the film and TV music game: there are the songs, and then there's the composer world of the underscore, which is completely separate 99 times out of 100 from the songs that are used. Music Supervisors usually have a roster of score composers. They pitch them for projects and negotiate the deals for them. Despite the numerous win-win scenarios in attaching songs and performers to popular visual media, Music Supervisors are often mystified when they run into resistance – and in some cases, outright rejection – from major record labels and music publishers they've contacted for a piece of music. There's fear, especially with record labels, that their music is going to be magically extricated from its audio track and somehow placed onto some device by an end user. Again your music will be free from any of this label resistance. Most Music Supervisors don’t use the entire song anyway. 99 percent of the time I'm not licensing the whole song anyway. I'm licensing 30 seconds to a minute of it. Below is a list of things Film Music Supervisors look for in selecting music for TV and Movie Productions.
- Is the music good?
- Is this music compatible to the Movie Production I’m assigned?
- Will it make the Producer happy?
- What Clearance Issues do I have to deal with to get this music contracted?
- How independent is the artist – The less red tape the better.
- My Production deadline is next month – I need a song quickly with no clearance issues in order to make this deadline.
- Can I depend on this artist for future deadlines and productions?
- Does this artist have a wealth of music to choose from in their overall music catalogue?
m