So I wanna share with you some of the secrets of how to get into sinks. Like, you know, the, the, the back door. That is, Â you gotta know who is, you know, how to get there to get in, and I’ll share what I know. Â And, I’m a, you know, a multi Grammy nominated musician.
I’ve worked in some role, whether it’s songwriting, mixing, producing with everyone from Robert Plant to David Bowie, Â MGMT, Sean Lennon Bono, I have an Al Jardine single out right now. He’s one of the co-founders of the Beach Boys. Â
So we’re gonna go to a, a, a keynote that I have that I’m gonna share with you about sync. So,  Walla Walla, Walla Walla, Binga Binga, Binga Binga. Here we go  to the Sync licensing  world. So  here we are. as you could see, I’ve just, you know, shamelessly, shared some of the credentials and work that I’ve done.
it’s a fancy picture from Art Basel with somebody who goes around just painting, do what you love on everything. So it’s a do what you love painting. Anyway, Today’s class objective is just to figure out how to get your songs placed into film TV and commercials. Like, like we can beat around the bush, but eventually you want to have your music heard.
You want to see how you can do that without giving away  all your rights right up front. And you also wanna see how you can make money potentially from the work that you’ve been doing, and certainly sinks, as we all know, which is  how, stands for Sync Licensing, which is how you get songs into films and television shows, is  one of the most direct routes that is happening now in a way that has never actually been as, as open  and available to people like yourself, in history.
And I’ll explain why in starting in the next slide.  So, back in the day,  to get a  song into a film or a TV show, you genuinely, or I should say gen gen,  you had to be signed to a major label. So if you were assigned to Warner Brothers, your record company, Warner Brothers would talk to the Warner Film Department and say, we’ve got this great songwriter, this great singer, this great band, what movies are coming out that we can cross promote.
 And so I put up a picture on the left here of Paramount Pictures, because those are people who are extra standing around at the gate of the big company trying to get extra work. And it’s how the studio system used to work back in the day in Hollywood. And it’s how the major label system worked  really until, streaming and the internet and things changed, where you have a direct access to people.
 Now you have a world, and this is a screen from one of the  really great, sync companies that I work with  who are getting sinks for their writers, and they’re getting everything. They’re getting a Gatorade commercial or a Google ad or something in the Marvelous Mrs. Mazel and, and other things like this. So  there’s all kinds of opportunity out there that weren’t there before.
And the difference is of now is that people want you to not be signed to a major publisher and not be signed to a major record company because then they can one stop shop your songs. And what I mean by that is they, that you or, and or your co-writers  own all of the songwriting rights and all of the publishing rights.  And what that does for the, the sort of sync library or that’s pitching your music,  is that they can, very often, it’s last minute, somebody will want a,  let’s say a, Neil Young song, or a Taylor Swift sounding song, and they’ll go to the record company and the, the quote they’ll get is, you know, $500,000  for a Taylor Swift song.
 And the supervisor will go, ouch. And they’ll think, you know, maybe I could just get a song that sounds like Taylor Swift or sounds like Neil Young. And so they’ll put out the word in a casting to all these different companies, and  they’ll put your, for your music forward in whatever genre you’re writing.
And if, if it’s one stop shop, they could say, here it is, here’s the quote. And they don’t have to go and get permission from your publisher, your label, and everything else. So this is, really an, a great thing. And what’s happened is literally dozens, if not hundreds  of independent music libraries have sprung up all over the world and are always looking for content. And with the advent of Netflix and Amazon and Hulu and all of these online portals for programming, there is a fire hose of content that needs music.
And so you’re in luck. And it’s not only modern music, it’s any kind of music in almost any genre. There is a need in some programming, whether it’s a film, a television show, or a commercial.  So  we wanna know,  what does that mean? You know, what are these companies gonna do? Am I signing my rights away?
Am I, am I, you know, handcuffed? And let’s say I go with some company and suddenly I get a big deal and Universal says, you know, we’re gonna sign you and  you’re gonna play at, you know, go on a tour. How does that affect you? And here is, again, fairly good news, but you have to be open-minded about it.  The standard independent sync library is a 50 50 split, meaning,  let’s say you have a great song and they put it in a TV show, Cobra Kai that’s on, I believe it’s on Netflix, and it’s about,  it’s set in the 1980s, and it’s about the, the Karate kid, and he’s 20 years older and et cetera, et cetera.
So let’s say the fee is $5,000 for the music publishing rights that you get all of, if you are a, single writer or you split with your co-writer and 5,000 for the master, Â the sync person who’s pitching it will get half that money, 5,000, and you’ll get half that money.
So  it’s really found money for nothing, you know, as the dire Strait song goes. And  it’s something that is non-exclusive.  So you can be putting the music out, you can be making videos, you can have it on Spotify. It’s not like that. You’re locked into that one thing.  It’s a non-exclusive deal. And  very often it’s something that propels you and your music into the public eye. There are a lot of bands,  imagine Dragons is one of them that really broke from having so many sinks and people just love them.
the, I’m trying to think if there’s a bunch of, of indie bands that have really, really cleaned up and done well, and we’ll, we’ll discuss what some of the sync, things sound like and what supervisors are looking for in just a moment. But the standard deal is just you get half the money, they get half the money who find it. And again, if, if you want to end the deal, usually there’s a clause where you just sign off and say, I’m ending my, my agreement with you.
I Â have a publisher now, or I have a, a, record deal or some other thing. Â And the only thing that they hold rights to are the things that they brought you, the deals that they got for you that are helping you earn money and helping you get exposure. And again, very often you have a song that’s in a good placement, in a good project, people are gonna like Shazam it, who, what was that song at the end of that movie?
And then people will wanna know more about you and want to hear more songs. So it’s an excellent way in.  I’m gonna continue going, I’m gonna try not to talk so fast. here are some of the sync categories, and the reason why I’ve put this up here is that there is a, a pretty big music publishing company called Cobalt.  And it’s, head of Sinks is a guy named Keith Darcy, a friend of mine, and he comes to my  NYU songwriting class, and he, gives us a, a sort of rundown of the categories of music that he has been successful with his writers that are assigned to cobalt music.
 And one of the first is  good time, happy music, People want,  you know, they want to feel good.
 So I’m gonna play you a couple of things from a playlist in a minute,  but this, there’s a song by a group called American Authors, and it’s this song of the Best Day of My Life, best Day of My,  and it’s got oh,  oh, oh, obviously they’re, they’re singing it better than me, but it’s something that they got an incredible, like several hundred syncs on that one song. I mean, they made much more money on the licensing of it than actually the band probably has made on all of their other songs and records combined.
So people want up music, it goes great for television shows in a happy moment. It goes great in commercials.
