Now I’m gonna talk about the gatekeeper, or I’m gonna refer to the sink agent as a gatekeeper because I think, it’s a good way to explain what a sync agent does in terms of opening doors for songwriters.
Also servicing the music supervisors, within sync. So often, sync agents are referred to as, as gatekeepers. And, reason for that being is, you know, we are kind of on the end of the briefs and we’re between the artist and the, the, the, the music supervisor.
So we can open the doors, if you like, open the gates to, to the opportunities that are there. So what I’ve written here, also, one second, just want to want to move this down for a second. I can’t do that. Okay. I’m just gonna move that across. So, and I’m just gonna minimise that for a second. Okay. So yeah, your song sync agent music supervisor equals a sync.
So basically if you give you a song to a sync agent, then the sync agent will, pass the song onto the music supervisor and then that could end up in a sync. and that’s kind of how it works, but there’s obviously a little bit more to it than, than than just that. But, that’s, that’s the basic idea with it. you know, you could, you could use other words like conduit. The, the syn agent is, is, or you know, the source to get your music to into sync.
It’s, it’s a way of doing it. And, you know, a question is, you know, can you do this without a sycn agent? Yes, you can. a sync agent or a music publisher is not the only way you can actually, get your music sunk. You, you can very easily, or not easily, but you can just as well get relationships with, music supervisors yourself and, provide music for, for them.
And you may well get a sync that way. So I’m not saying you have to have a sync agent or a record company or, or, or, or music publisher, you know, it’s, but I think in the main, it makes it easier and gives you more of an opportunity to, to, to get, your, your music out there to the right places. Because as a musician, you’ve kind of got enough to do yourselves with writing the songs and promoting and all the rest of it.
So sometimes it’s best to use services to, to do the lifting in these, instances where, where you know, you can get some help. So I think it is, it is a very valid thing to use a, a sync agent. Okay, I’m gonna move on to the, the next, next slide. Before I do that, is there any questions if anyone has a question?
- Hello? Does someone have a question? hello. Let’s, let’s see. Any questions? Anyone? Oh, okay. Okay. So yeah, here’s a good question. So there’s Terrell. Thanks Terrell for that. yeah, so do sync agents provide feedback? not usually.
it depends on, on what sort of feedback you, you, you, you are talking about in, in relation to what. So, in terms of if we’re pitching your, your music and we don’t have any responses from the music supervisors and we don’t get any feedback from them, then we’re not gonna feed back to you to say, you know, we don’t, we don’t, didn’t have any luck with that, or, you know, that song wasn’t quite right.
So usually the feedback is when it’s good news and that you actually have a sync because, because we’re pitching so much all the time that if we fed back to everyone, we really wouldn’t have any time to, to actually, you know, get, get the work done. So, okay, so Charles, again, if the submission was not the right type of song, yeah, now that’s something, that’s something, it’s quite a wide subject.
If the submission’s not the right song. Usually, again, if you submit something, let’s say a sync agent is looking for a certain type of, song, and you submit something that’s not the right type of song, we are not really gonna have time to, to write back and go, yeah, that was good, could use it for this or, or that later on. But right now it’s not right. What, what we’re looking for, it’s usually we just don’t have time to, to critique everything because there’s just too much going on all the time and you’re constantly moving on to the next thing.
So if it’s not right, then you are most likely not to hear from us. and that also goes from us to to to the, with the music supervisors. Because often, you know, we might say to an artist, oh, by the way, we picked your stuff for X, y, Z show. and then sort of in a month’s time, the artist might reach out to us and say, you know, how did it go?
Basically, if it didn’t go in, to the show, we are not gonna then reach out to the music supervisor and say, oh, that stuff that didn’t go into the show, you know, can you give us some feedback on that? Why it didn’t happen? ’cause they, they really don’t have time for it. it’s, it’s basically as the gatekeeper, and we go back to that, that, that wording, as a gatekeeper, it’s our job to to, to service the music supervisor as best as we can.
And one, one way of servicing them is to, to not annoy them. So asking for feedback is, is something they just really, really don’t, don’t do. You know, maybe you can have a sit down with a supervisor and go, oh, you know, all that stuff that we pitched to you, you know, we thought that was gonna be really good. What happens to that? You know, in a, in a, in a conversation face-to-face, you know, you might get some feedback that way.
And they go, oh yeah, well, the director completely changed their mind. And, it went in a completely different direction, which happens a lot, you know? So you might pitch something and you might think this is absolutely spot on, and it probably is really spot on for the job, but then the director changes his mind, or she changes her mind, and then, then then you, you are onto a different search and, and a whole load of new music needs to be submitted, and that’s what might end up in it. So, yeah.
But good, good question, Terrell. I mean, feedback is always really valid and useful for, for, for honing your skills and getting better, but unfortunately, sort of the reality of the, of, of the industry doesn’t, doesn’t allow that. So it’s, it’s, it’s hard to to know where you’re going wrong or right. I mean, one, one way to to find out is, you know, if you pitch for something, didn’t get the job, the, the, the film or the, or the show comes out and is broadcasted, then you look at that film afterwards and look what music was, was used and compare it to yours and think, okay, ah, right, they wanted that kind of song, not that kind of song and so on and so forth.
So that, that can be, a good way of, getting, getting extra feedback.
Licensing songs for film, TV, adverts, games, events, Insider knowledge for getting songs placed, Song placements in synchronisation, The dos and don’t for pitching for film and Tv, Use a sync agency, Writing for others,
