Chris SD From Sync Songwriter On Sync Licensing Dos And Don’ts

I am excited to be here with my friend Chris SD from?Sync Songwriter . I can’t believe I haven’t had him on the show yet. We’ve had the show going for years but I interviewed him a little bit before we started this show on my other show. I’m excited to dive into all that’s been going on with him and how he helps musicians. Before we get started, Chris, I’d love to have you let people know a little bit about your music background, how you got into music and what you’ve done in music up until now.

Thanks much for having me. This is awesome. I have always wanted to be on your show. This is fantastic. In a quick nutshell, I started off like a lot of your readers. I started off as a musician in a band. I was an honor student in high school in grades 7 and 8, and bombed out in 11 and 12. I figured education wasn’t for me. I went to college for about one year but dropped out because I realized music was my path. I jumped into a band and toured around. We had some good regional success then I got into producing records. I wanted to understand what the magic was about producing, engineering and so on.

I did that for a while and had the good fortune of winning some awards up in Toronto, Canada. I won some Juno Awards. They gave me a special green card to come down to Los Angeles and do the same thing. That’s the essence of what happened. Along the way, while I was being a producer, one of the things that happened was I would work with big artists who had agents, labels and all these entities pushing their careers along. I also worked with indie artists. A big part of the indie artist experience was working on great songs, putting our blood, sweat, and tears into records, then when the record goes out and it’s crickets. Nothing happens with it. I thought, “There’s got to be a better way.”

That was when I stumbled across sync licensing or licensing music. I didn’t know anything about it. I knew there were some people that I didn’t know that made a lot of money and for very little work with their music. I was like, “What is this?” That was at a time when it wasn’t that cool to get your music into TV and film. A lot of people felt it was selling out like, “You got your song into an ad was the worst.” Slowly people started to figure out that this is a bonafide revenue stream. More importantly, you can find congruency between your music and what it goes into because you can refuse anything. You don’t have to be in a reality TV show.

You can go for the shows that you love, that you know your fans love. It would not be amazing to be in a show that your fan base loves as well. How I got into sync is starting to help indie musicians. I failed badly at it at the beginning. I was cold-calling music supervisors and nobody would write back to me. I was like, “I should have some name in this industry,” but it wasn’t the TV and film industry. I was in the music industry.

Slowly I started to make those connections, built up and figured out how this whole thing works. I got more friends in the industry, and now I have a lot of contacts with music supervisors and music licensing. What I do now a lot is besides working at my studio and producing records, I introduce indie musicians, songwriters, producers and composers to music supervisors directly. That’s how we get so much sync success at Sync Songwriter.

That is such a cool place to be as far as helping musicians get over that gap because so much of it is relationships, and it’s hard when we don’t know anyone. I love that your passion is to help musicians connect with supervisors. Before we get into that, I want to clear up some of the terms because a lot of these have become buzzwords in the years that you’ve been working in the industry. People have been getting excited about music licensing. What exactly are the term music licensing and sync placement? Are those the same thing? How does that all work?

A 101 overview quickly. Essentially, it’s very simple. There’s a lot of complexity in some of the contracts and things that you don’t have to know any of that to be successful. What you’re doing is you’re licensing your music for use. If I am a movie studio and I want some music in there. I can hire a composer. I can have an in-house composer or songwriter or something like that, which normally costs a lot of money or I can go out and find music that’s already been done. I can go to sync agents, libraries, and individual musicians or hire a music supervisor.

I’m the studio. I normally hire a music supervisor. The music supervisor’s job is to go out and find the music. They make suggestions to me based on what I’ve told them I’m looking for. Let’s say you’re on the other end, and you happen to know this music supervisor. You’re introduced to this music supervisor through Sync Songwriter or something, “Music supervisors, here’s your song.” They say, “This is awesome. I think this would fit in this film.”

They take your song. They bring it to me, the director, pretend I’m the director of the movie and like, “This is exactly what I’m looking for to tell my story. This is the synergy between the music and the film is fantastic. I want to use Bree’s song.” The music supervisor comes back to you and says, “The movie studio would like to license your song.” It doesn’t mean owning your song or anything like that. You’re not giving up copyright or anything. You’re literally getting paid cash to let the movie studio use your song in their movie.

You can take your song and license it not to one movie. If you have a good song, you can license it over and over again. You can get into shows, ads and all kinds of stuff all at the same time. There’s no real restriction. There are lots of artists who have had songs synced over and over again in lots of different opportunities. The money is called the sync fee that you get. That money that you get as a sync fee is often in thousands of dollars. Sometimes it’s a couple of hundred. I got an artist for $30,000.

You can get $100,000 if you’re huge. It’s rare but usually reserved for bigger stars. They might even get $500,000 if they’re in a Super Bowl commercial or something like that. There’s a huge range of sync fees. The bottom line is it’s usually a big chunk of dough for what a musician’s used to making. That’s essentially what music licensing is in a very simple exchange between the music and the media.

Is every deal totally different? Is there any standardization in the industry? Is it a one-time fee? For example, something is going to be on a streaming service for the next five years or whatever, do you get paid constantly, or is it different with every deal?

One standardization is that you get a synch fee upfront, which can be anything. It could be free for your friend’s student film if they’re in film school. Reality TV generally doesn’t pay very much. You might get several hundred dollars for that, then you move up the chain into some cable shows, the background part might be $1,000 or $2,000. You then start moving up into the more popular ones and you’re getting into $4,000, $5,000 and $6,000. As it goes, you get into a primetime thing. You’re moving into $10,000. You can get $20,000 and $30,000. I shouldn’t mention the show but I have another member of our community who got $20,000 for a popular show.

There’s a big range, but the standardization is you get a synch fee upfront and backend royalties or performance royalties every time that the show is aired. This doesn’t happen in films in the United States. It happened in Europe and Canada, but Hollywood somehow got out of that. They don’t have to pay the royalties there. They pay a big sync fee upfront. For anything to do with television, ads, streaming, or things like that, you’ll typically get back in royalties that come through your performance rights organization. If you’re with ASCAP, BMI, or SOCAN if you’re in Canada, every time that show airs, you end up on the queue sheet, which is a sheet that marks what shows have been aired. Every time it airs, you get royalty there.

It can have a constant stream of money coming in through the backend. Imagine if you get several syncs even 1 every 3 months, you got four a year. Can you imagine you get those four sync fees every quarter, and then you get the backend royalties from all four shows every time that they’re airing or streaming? It’s pretty awesome. It can be a very lucrative way to get a huge fan base and amazing exposure. For a lot of musicians and artists I talk to, money is surprisingly not the first thing they think about. It’s about the exposure that they get, which of course, is amazing because you’re riding on the coattails of the TV and film industry.

If a show or movie is doing well, and you’ve got a show, you’ve got millions of eyes and ears watching that show, your song comes on, not even half, but there’s going to be a fraction of people who shazam that. I do that all the time. I hear a song in a bar, restaurant, show or in a movie, and I’m like, “What is that?” I’m looking the lyrics up or shazaming it. That’s thousands, perhaps millions of people hitting your song all at the same time. That’s a massive bump. There are artists who get in the charts with one good sync placement. It’s a very powerful way to get this massive exposure for yourself, which I’ve always found super attractive for any musicians helping them.

This is an amazing path if you do it right. The path is littered with failure. There are people reading here who’s like, “I tried that. I’m in a library and nothing’s happened.” That’s true. Ninety-five percent of the people who try to do this are generally a failure unless they are doing it the right way or you have the right person representing them. That’s where I come in. That’s the trick. That’s how we get so many results at Sync Songwriter.

I know you’re very big on connecting with supervisors and relationships. Not that these don’t work. I know that they do work and I know people that use them, but why do you prefer going directly to the supervisors versus going through a library or a sync agent?

The thing about libraries and sync agents, I’m not coming down on them. There are some fantastic libraries and sync agents out there. The whole trick with that is you have to be on the front burner with them. You have to be top of mind and not just once. The way it works is if you think about being in a library, a little bit like being in a big box store, and you’re like a can of soup. You’re like, “Here’s my brand, my music and the flavor of what I do, ”and you’re sitting on a shelf in this roster of all these other people who are in the library. All the other cans of soup and all the other things are in this big box store. The music supervisor says, “I am going to go to this box store and find myself a song.”

The music supervisor goes in, selects one of the cans of soup or whatever else they’re there for, and walks out. The music supervisor wins. Box store win. Every time the supervisor comes in, they walk out with a song. The problem is if you are the can of soup on the shelf, the chances of them picking you are super low. People can say libraries and sink agents get lots of sink placements. It’s true, they do. To be an artist in the roster is a different side of the coin. The chances of you being picked for that or low. I figured that out early on. I didn’t want it to be a lottery. I wanted it to be something proactive that could promote the independent artist’s music that they could make a living from if they were able to do it consistently and have the talent for writing the songs and producing and approaching it properly.

The way to do that is like a lot of other things in life. It’s about having relationships with the people who can make it happen for you. I knew that all I’ve got to do was take artists that I think have what it takes to make this happen and connect them with people they would never normally be able to connect with. My name is on the line, too, because I bring people to the supervisors. The artists have to be to a certain standard. You don’t have to be great or as good as the latest record on the radio.

You have to know how to write good songs and the rest takes care of itself. I’m a music producer. I help people produce records and all that stuff and get it all ready. The bottom line is those relationships are important. It’s about connecting with the right people in TV and film to make it happen on a consistent level. There’s no real way around that. It’s the way of things.

Is there any genre that’s more popular for Sync? When I watch TV shows, the genres are all over the place. I have seen big band stuff, super ethereal stuff and total straight-up pop. It seems like they’ve been jazz and everything. Does it matter what genre you’re in? Should people be writing for a particular thing, or should they write what they are good at writing and hope that that’s what people are looking for?

The thing about writing music for Sync is that you should never feel like you need to write for Sync. Music supervisors have told me this time and time again, my friends want to hang out with them, and I’m on the phone, or we’re talking about some new artist or whatever, they’re always about authenticity. They want to have authentic music. They don’t want to have music that sounds like it was made for the part. Now that being said, there are people who are good at making music for Sync and who are good at that. It’s so far and few between.

The best way to approach this as an artist is to write music for you, your heart, soul, fans, and the thirteen-year-old self inside you that needs to approve it, write for authenticity, real reasons, and then find the opportunities that fit your music. You don’t just write music and it’s not like a shotgun approach that never works. You don’t put your music out there or start firing emails off or whatever. You’ll end up like I was when I first got into Sync. It won’t work. Trust me.

What you want to do is be able to target your music. Pick the opportunities that you know your music is going to fit into and go after those specifically. That’s a whole other conversation, but that’s sticking to what you love to do. You attract your fans and you get your music into TV and film and reinforce that reach that you’ve got. Make a big splash that way.

If you’re going to release that music anyway, and then you get this big bump from getting a sink from it, how awesome would that be?

You do these things in tandem. I wouldn’t ever say to an artist, “Quit touring if you tour and just work on Sync.” You should be doing all of these things. To put it in another way, they all go together. They all feed each other. It’s important to do all these different types of things. Another important thing that people miss out on a lot is that they forget to make sure their music is out there when they get the Sync placement.

They miss out on that big bump you talked about. People Shazam can’t find it. Always have your music out there. The question I get a lot is, “Can I use a song that I recorded years ago? Will that work?” It can totally work. If it doesn’t sound too dated, or even if it does sound dated, it should go into an opportunity that’s looking for that dated music targeting. You can use songs that you just wrote or were released and it’s not going to matter. It won’t matter whether the song was released or not. It’s fair game.

The question that I get all the time is, “Shouldn’t I release my songs because I might get a sync placement?” They’re afraid that once they release it somehow, it’s like old news, and the sync people won’t care about it anymore.

Not at all. That only matters if you’re like famous or maybe semi-famous where they sometimes like to get the scoop, like when Billie Eilish wrote that song for the James Bond film. It was a big deal. They had her write this song, and then they produced it for the film, and then they got released when the film was released. It was a part of the film in the whole promotion. In those cases, if you’re not Billie Eilish, then don’t worry about it. Music gets picked all the time that it’s been released. It doesn’t matter at all.

I still have a few more technical questions that our audience might be wondering about as well. Since you’re here, I’m going to pick your brain. What about cover songs? Can you present cover songs as potential sync placement?

Yes. It happens all the time. In fact, that $30,000 sync I was talking about that I got that artist was a cover song. The beautiful part about cover songs is that they’re already recognizable. You’re not having to teach someone’s ear a new pattern or your own flavor. They don’t even have to learn it. It’s like, “I know this song.” They’ve been flooded with emotions already. There are memories and associations with that song. The trick is when you’re doing a cover song, the hyper important is not to imitate the original version or something that’s been done before that’s popular. You have to bring your own spin to it. You have to do it in a different way. It’s got to be something that is novel.

There’s so much success in music, whether it’s radio, getting signed to labels, TV, film and all these other different things. Music has to have familiarity to it, but with a twist. It’s got to sound new but not too new. You don’t want to be avant-garde where people don’t understand the music. It’s got to be something where people say, “I know what this is. I can speak this language, but I love what they’re saying.” That’s a big secret of how to get your music out there. It’s like you extend your hand in a way that people understand. When somebody puts their hand out for a handshake, everybody knows that.

COVID messed with that a little bit, but normally when someone puts their hand out, we all know. A total stranger, if they put their hand out, we know what that means. The actual handshake and the conversation that follows the handshake or what the conversation is about because of the handshake or vice versa is the novelty. It’s a different person or topic. You’ve never discussed it with them before. Your music should always have that element if you can. Not too familiar all the time because that’s boring and not too avant-garde, but somewhere in the middle.

As far as the payments for Sync, are you being paid both on the songwriter publishing side and the master recording side? Is it all like rolled into one? What if you’ve got a song where you’re a co-writer, but then you own the master? How does all of that work? Maybe just a quick overview. Obviously, there’s a lot of crazy technical stuff.

It’s slightly complicated because it’s different for each medium. For example, micro licensing. That’s when you have your music in online stuff like YouTube or if you’re one of these big libraries that have a batch payment for things. Let’s say you get it into YouTube. You get paid a mechanical royalty. That is not what the mechanical royalty used to be on records, but they’ve been assigned a mechanical royalty, which is like a master royalty. The only way to get that mechanical royalty is you have to belong to an organization that collects those. There are a number of different organizations out there that do this kind of thing. The bottom line is that each time for each medium it’s different.

If it’s TV and film, you’re getting your sync fee and then your performance royalties. You’re not selling. There’s no master payment, for example, in that scenario. If you have a publisher, that throws another thing into it. It’s slightly different for each thing. In general, the thing to remember about this is that you should get a fee upfront and these royalties. One thing that is a bit of a strike against libraries and agents, the way I discussed it before, is that they make their living by taking a cut. It used to be where they used to take a cut of the sync fee. They used to take a minority share in it. It’s progressed and grown where they’ve taken a larger one. Often, you’ll hear they’re taking half and then they also want part of your publishing, which is your backend royalties.

They want to have some of that, so they take part in that. Some people, even you heard in their contract, have in-perpetuity means you’re supposed to sign with them for life for the song. They have full control over how it’s chopped or whatever, no matter what changes in your life forever, which is bad news to me. You should run from that and certainly don’t want to sign an in-perpetuity agreement if you can help it. There are certain downsides to signing with libraries and agents.

It can work great if they’ve got a vested interest in you. You’re on their front burner. They’ve got several of your records. They’ve already gotten you ten sync placements and they’re still rolling, it can be good, but unfortunately, it’s not typical. That’s the problem. I’ve always been a fan of cutting out the middle person, go straight to the gatekeepers and music supervisors. I don’t teach people like, “Just reach out to them and everything will be fine.” You’ve got to be connected with them. That’s the thing because there’s no easy way.

You’re not just going to Google them. Send them a message and assume they’re going to read it.

Everybody does that, but everybody would be getting sync placements if that worked. It’s a difficult thing to do, but it’s not difficult if you do it the right way.

You’re a producer as well and I’m going to ask you this question. What level of production do people need in order to get placed in Sync? Can they produce from home and be able to produce something that’s good enough for Sync, or do they need to come to someone like you to like get it polished off?

I’ll bring up not a very good example. Billie Eilish and her brother recorded everything in their bedroom on a computer. There’s that. Finneas is a fantastic producer. He is a pro. He became one or worked hard at it. You can record anything you want at home and have massive success with it. The trick is you’ve got to make sure that if you’re starting out and you’re beginning this journey, don’t waste great songs on mediocre production. When I first started producing my friends for a beer, I listen back to those recordings and I’m like, “It’s cool but not really.” I was learning. I got better as I went.

My advice to you is to hire people who are better than you while you’re learning how to do your craft if you want to do it at home. It is important to remember and I elaborated on this in a blog, that money and time are inextricably linked. They go together. You can’t separate those. If you think like, “I can spend a couple of grand and put together a little studio, then I get to work at it for free. I’ll spend all my time making my records and doing that.” If you love doing it and you have an income source to pay your rent, food and stuff, you don’t have to go to work or whatever, kudos. That’s awesome. High five. Good going and keep doing that.

Most of us that got other things in our life, time is money. The time that you’re spending trying to do that, you’re getting better so you’re building an asset, which is great, but in the meantime, you don’t want to waste these awesome songs that you’ve written on production that’s not above the threshold of what you need to get into TV and film. A quick trick to know if your production level is up to par and above the threshold is it doesn’t have to sell at the greatest record on the radio. It has to sound like everything else getting into TV and film. The best way to do that I know of that’s easy to implement at home is to take your mix or song and put it in a playlist with some of your heroes, bands and artists that you love.

Throw it in that playlist and then don’t focus on it. Start making dinner or something and listen to it like background music. Put it on random and your song comes along. How do you feel? If you felt like, “I was still rocking out and I thought my song fit well in there,” you pass a test. You’re good to go. If you felt like, “This is like a drop in the energy. My mixes sound small and tinny,” you’ve got work to do. That’s a good thing because you’ve discovered what the problem is, then you can fix it.

That’s a good litmus test. That’s a big long rambling, roundabout answer to say that you need to have your music above a certain level to get it into TV and film. The threshold isn’t super high. You can absolutely get there. My best advice to you is to hire people who are better than you to learn from them and also get great-sounding recordings while you’re working on your craft. Eventually, you’ll get to the point where you can do it all yourself, and that’s it.

You got to be honest with yourself. I love the idea of putting it in a playlist. I was doing that with Christmas music because I’ve got a Christmas CD. When my song comes on, I’m not like, “This doesn’t belong here.” It doesn’t sound as good as Celine Dion or something, but it still feels like it fits the bill. I love that test. I think it’s great to do that because you don’t want your song to be that one where they’re like, “This is close, but no.”

We can all do that. We have rose-colored glasses on sometimes when it comes to our own music. We also sometimes get this thing called demoitis. It’s like you record your demo, and in the first three times you listen to it, you’re like, “It’s a demo. I need to rerecord that,” but you keep playing it for your friends and your family. You play it because you like it and it’s a new song. All of a sudden, you start feeling, “This sounds great,” because you’re used to it. It’s grown inside you. That’s not a good thing because you wear those rose-colored glasses.

You can go to SoundCloud if you want and start randomly going through songs. We all know when we hear something and think, “They’re not ready to get a label deal or something. It’s not good enough yet.” I never ever think that. I’m not elitist in the least way like the Beatles, who couldn’t get signed. The only reason they got signed by George Martin in his story was he didn’t even like their music that much. He thought it was good, but he said, “When they walked in the room, you felt uplifted. When they left, you felt somehow diminished.”

That’s why he signed them because he said they’ve got something about them. We can work on it and bring it up. I always look at every single artist that way. There’s no such thing as a bad artist. Maybe in the moment, you’re not ready, but you can get there. You put the work in, the elbow grease in, work with the right people, get the right advice, and you’re off to the races. Bob Dylan wasn’t a great singer but he was great. There’s a place for everybody. You have to know how the right path to get there.

I know that you are going to be doing an event that readers are going to be excited about because you guys are all excited about getting involved in trying to get your stuff placed in Sync. Why don’t you let them know a little bit about this event that you’ve got?

What I decided to do is, every January, put together a music supervisor panel. I invite some of my friends who are top movers and shakers in the licensing industry to come onto a panel. Those ones that you would have to fly to Los Angeles for and pay for your food, your hotel and admission. I wanted to do this completely free for independent musicians. I invite my friends out, hang out on this panel, answer questions where you can meet them, get to know what they’re working on, why they pick independent music and use music like yours. It’s coming up on Sunday, January 15, 2023, at 10:00 AM Pacific Time.

We’re doing this awesome music supervisor panel. You’re going to meet people who work on the top shows in movies in Hollywood and get your foot in the door in terms of knowing what it takes to get them to listen and pick your music. This is a resource I wanted to do for independent musicians everywhere so they understand. Not just hear it from me but hear it from the actual people who do it. We’re super excited. It’s always awesome. We get lots and lots of people out every year. I can’t wait.

It’s a super powerful event. I have definitely told my audience about it for the last few years. If you want to join in that, it is totally free and you can go to?ProfitableMusician.com/Chris ?and grab your free spot there. There are a lot of people that go to this. Make sure that you grab your spot and don’t forget. Put that on your calendar. You’re definitely going to want to go. Do you have a chance for them to ask questions? What are the supervisors talking about? Are they talking about how they figure out what they’re going to choose as far as music or what their criteria is? What are the subjects they’re discussing?

It’s essentially one big Q&A. We grab questions that come in from people and we ask the music supervisors. Show up and ask your question. We can’t get every question, but we certainly try to get it to as many as we can. Mostly we pick the questions that we’re going to cover off. If we see ten people asking the same question, we’ve hit it. All the things that you want to know about what happens behind the scenes in the licensing industry. It’s about how music gets picked, why would they pick your music and what you need to have for them to do that. There, I’m going to tell you about how you can connect with these music supervisors on the panel.

It’s going to be exciting. Ultimately, this is trying to make it like it’s got to be real for you so that they’re not these people sitting in an ivory tower that are in an office somewhere making these weird decisions. These are cool down to Earth people who love music and, more importantly, love supporting independent music. They have friends who are musicians. They were musicians themselves. You want to know them and how they think. You want to get to understand that behind-the-scenes stuff. What the panel is all about is for that a-ha moment to go on for you. There’s an opportunity for you to connect directly with them, which I’m going to talk about on the panel. I’m looking forward to it. If you can make it, that’ll be amazing.

Go sign up. Remember?ProfitableMusician.com/Chris . I hope to see you guys there on that Sunday panel because it is going to be amazing. Any parting words you want to say? I’ve loved promoting this every year because it is one of the biggest events in the music industry online.

I was going to do a blog, and another one I was thinking about what I wanted to get across. For 2023, a great theme and thing, especially for independent musicians, is there is much opportunity out there for you now. There str many doors open that did not use to be that way back when the industry was closed and cloistered. It was a funnel that you went up. Yet because it’s open, there are many people vying for those spots. If you know how to get through to the right people and the channels to get in so that you’re not competing with a bunch of people and you’re only competing against a few people, that is the whole trick.

“Give up on giving up,” was the line that came to me. Work smarter, not harder, and know what to do. Coming out to this music supervisor panel, the Sync Songwriter Music Supervisor Panel is going to be a huge step in that exact direction of working smarter, not harder. Lastly, I want to thank you for having me on the show. It’s great. I’m always a massive admirer of what you do for independent musicians everywhere. You’re a real icon. I knew about you long before I was even out here doing that. I knew your name and stuff. I’m happy to know you and have been able to come on here and connect.

Thank you. There’s a picture of us up on my shelf hanging out in LA. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you and everything that you do for musicians, all the intricacies of music licensing because that is not something that I teach. I love being able to be connected with people that do teach it so I can get all the talented musicians that are in my community more opportunities for their music. Thank you much for opening that up to people. I appreciate your time and sharing all of your knowledge about music licensing and sync with us. I hope you guys are all going to go to the panel. Go to?ProfitableMusician.com/Chris . I’ll see you there on Sunday, the 15th of January, 2023.

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?Important Links

• Sync Songwriter
• ProfitableMusician.com/Chris

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About Chris SD

Chris SD is an award-winning music producer who’s helped hundreds of musicians and artists get their music placed in top shows on networks such as Netflix, Hulu, ABC, Fox, NBC, FX, HBO, CBS and more. Chris shares his industry knowledge on his website, syncsongwriter.com, and offers a program called “the Art of the Song Pitch” to help musicians get their music licensed.