 So I started out, as an intern with another music supervisor about seven years ago. a really excellent supervisor named Maggie Phillips, with her, worked on the Handmaid’s Tale.
A lot of incredible TV shows like Snowfall Legion, yeah, some really fun projects. And then, after interning and assisting her for a year or two, I ended up working for Amanda Creek Thomas, who is, another excellent independent music supervisor. Her company’s called Yay Team Inc.
And with her, I was coordinating largely on Ryan Murphy’s projects. she’s her, she’s his Go-to music supervisor. So we’re doing like American Horror Story, Ratched, The Politician, American crime story, and then plenty of other stuff too, like big mouth  laws. and I’m gonna get into all of that, as I get through the presentation. But basically my background was, su you know, supporting these incredible music supervisors on these awesome projects.
And, very grateful to both of them for  so much hands-on experience and creative opportunity, that has sort of allowed me to pursue this on my own at this point. So I’ve been independent for about  two and a half years, working on all kinds of projects, starting with Love Island, the US version, plenty of indie films, lots of other scripted tv, working with a e  exceptional music supervisor, pristine Green Row on Lessons in Chemistry, which just came out on Apple TV and then  Made For Love last season was, for HBO.
and then documentaries, all kinds of  variety of stuff, which is really fun. and that’s a great part of being a music supervisor, is you tend to take on, a wide variety of work. So, anyhow, that’s kind of me in a very brief nutshell, and I want to get into  the life of a music supervisor more specifically, you know, what we do, how we listen to music, how we source music, what the process is.
and I’m gonna actually spend most of our time together today diving into some really fun examples from work that I’ve done. So, first I’m just gonna give some background and I trust that my screen is visible to everybody. so I’m just gonna get into this presentation. Â Alright, so what does it mean to be a music supervisor?
I assume most of you probably have some idea or more or less familiar with the basics, but I’m gonna go through them just so we’re all on the same page as I move forward. And also, we’re gonna be diving more deeply into certain aspects of this. so, first off,  these are some of the responsibilities. in sort of a broad  manner of speaking, we oversee  all of the music for, TV or film production.
And by the way, there are music supervisors who work more like on trailers and advertising and video games. but in my world, I’m mainly involved in TV and film. So overseeing all of the music  in sort of a broad sense, that means, you know, we are sometimes involved in  working on, you know, sourcing a composer who’s writing original music. We’re sometimes involved in those creative discussions of what the score should sound like.
So even though most of our job is this, this highlighted item, sourcing and clearing preexisting music, there’s actually, you know, such a full range of responsibilities and duties that we have to, oversee. so  original music, whether it’s score or songs, on camera logistics, there’s a lot of,  you know, music moments tend to crop up on camera. There’s  characters who are musicians themselves, or there’s a band in the background and, you know, plenty of  paperwork, logistics, union rules, crazy, factors kind of make their way into that process.
we’ll get into a little bit of that as well. I’ve highlighted sourcing and clearing preexisting music, partly because it’s  what we are known for the most, and it is a large part of our job. I do wanna also, mention that it is a highly glamorized job, but reality, I’m listening to music, you know, maybe 25% of my day is, is spent actually listening to music, doing creative work, and there’s so much  other logistical work, administrative stuff, clearance negotiation, managing the budget, Q sheets.
There’s sort of an endless list. and I think it’s important to understand that music supervisors are not just having fun all day and like always available to listen to, for instance, your music, which is, you know, it’s part of the, the process of pitching to music supervisors is  cutting through the noise.
and I do have a little bit on that at the end, but I have a feeling  time might not allow as much. and I think that could really be its own, panel and presentation. So I am gonna save that. But  moving forward, I do just wanna touch briefly on  these other points. So, managing budget, we have to be really  conscious of whether we’re running over budget and how to a  lot for different scenes.
You know, often there are  dozens of music cues within one episode of tv. So like,  what are the most significant moments? How do we apportion the money to towards those and save money on these other background spots? reviewing the licenses is sometimes part of our job, you know, not only clearing the rights upfront, but then dealing with the sort of more legal long form paperwork and redlining and making sure there’s nothing in there that, doesn’t  work for the production company.
and then in, in other cases as well, we are actually coordinating payments, getting invoices from Licensers, other music personnel we might have had to have hired for the on-camera, music moments or, you know, anyone who needs to be paid with respect to music, sometimes we are part of the process tracking that. So it is quite a varied left brain, right brain type of a, Â a job. and, okay, I’m gonna move on here.
So I know you’re, a lot of you are here probably as independent songwriters and artists, and you are curious how people like me find music. And, there are so many ways. I mean, like most of you, I’m listening to music on Spotify. You know, I’m watching TV and film that I don’t  work on, of course, and shazaming finding music that was placed in, I’m, sort of  poking my way around many different playlists.
SoundCloud, you know, sources, the sources vary. But, the ones up here I want to talk about are  mostly from the perspective of who’s pitching to me. so a lot of the music that I do listen to is I receive through pitches. I mean, to give you an idea, I probably receive  somewhere in the range of like a hundred emails a day. Most music supervisors are inundated with emails, pitching them music from various sources.
So here we have, Â starting with record labels. Obviously there are the major record labels and then plenty of independents. and there’s music publishers. So those, companies are working with the compositions, whereas the labels work with the master recordings. I have a feeling most of you know the difference. but there are two sides to any, music clearance, for example, and music copyright that you have to be aware of.
And so the publishing is a separate, side of that. Then there are third party licensing companies, also refer to sometimes as sync reps, sync agencies. and those companies don’t necessarily own any rights. They are just representing, your rights and pitching on your behalf, in a similar way to the publishers and labels. But, taking some kind of upfront commission, and then you retain all of your ownership for backend royalties and all of that.
then there are production music libraries, which are, you know, more unknown, often completely unknown artists and composers who are just creating music for the purpose of being licensed. there’s some variety within libraries. Sometimes they do have indie artists as well. but it is just, you know, a place where you go  to source music of almost any kind for very little money. so that does come in handy, for example, in like, the background of a deep background of a scene, you know, and we don’t wanna put a ton of money into that.
That’s one, one time we might use a library. and then, you know, as I assume, like I said, many of you are independent artists and songwriters, producers, managers of other independent artists, whatever, you know, you are also in a huge part of this ecosystem and pitching directly to music supervisors or, through a sync company of some kind.
so that’s another  obviously huge source of where we receive music. and then I,  here we have a director’s kid and college roommate who likes making beats. And  that is truly  not something I’ve made up. You know, there’s always,  there’s always some, fun little nepotism or, thing we have to navigate, politically and diplomatically with our crew.
but yeah, it really comes from all angles.  And, basically we are really working from as early as the prep stage, or  I ideally the script phase of a project where we can read, scripts and identify moments for music, but also like making sure we clear everything that needs to be cleared up front, that’s attached to picture.  So that is like, you know, usually where we’re starting. And then we’re really working through the very end of the process, as I mentioned, sometimes even up until the final licenses and payments of licensing.
so it’s really an  all-encompassing kind of job that spans from production or pre-production to  post-production is where most of our work happens.
