How To Get The Most From Music Libraries & Synch Agencies – Part 2

In the part one of this article, I provided a quick history of music libraries and synch agencies and how their business models work. Many of the challenges that you might encounter when working with music libraries and synch agencies can be traced to a misunderstanding of how their business models work. If you haven’t read part one , I recommend that you do. It will give you insights that could really help you get the most from these important music providers.

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In part two of, we’ll hear from three professionals in this space. Before I introduce them, I want to remind you of the mission of this newsletter. Producer-Director Music Notes exists to empower creative leaders—producers, directors, showrunners and anyone else responsible for the final cut—to get the most from their music and sound teams.

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Music libraries and synch agencies are an important part of this team. This edition will expand the definition of creative leaders a bit to include Music Supervisors and Creative Directors at ad agencies. Both of these professionals play a crucial role when working with music libraries and synch agencies.

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Three Professionals In This Space

I’m pleased to introduce Patrick Avard , Chuck Henry and Eric Campbell . Patrick owns Level 77 Music , which is a music library. Chuck owns 10 West Music , which is also a music library. Eric owns Sus3 Music , which is a synch agency. In the spirit of full disclosure, you should know that I have never done business with, or earned income through my association with, these three professionals.

I attend many of the same conferences as Patrick, which is how I met him. Patrick introduced me to Chuck. Mac Mcintosh (featured in a prior edition of this newsletter) introduced me to Eric. Here is a brief bio on each.

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Patrick Avard is a pioneering entrepreneur, award-winning music producer, and the CEO and founder of Georgia-based Production Music company, Level 77 Music . Avard has been known as the top producer of World Championship cheer music for more than two decades, and his tracks were featured in the hit Netflix series CHEER. Most recently, he is focused on the rapid growth and expansion of Level 77 Music which is a music library and custom music house based in the Atlanta area.

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Level 77 Music creates high-quality, original music for film, TV, advertising, and video games. Patrick produced the album G.I.R.L. (Girls in Real Life) for Level 77 Music’s VIVE Label.? The song Be Mine was the recipient of the 2022 Mark Award, Pop Track of the Year.

Chuck Henry is the Founder and President of 10 West Music , a global one-stop music library with offices in Hollywood and Atlanta. The catalog is distributed in over 70 countries around the world and has a very diverse roster of 300+ composers, writers, and artists from every corner of the globe with the music being used in over 11,000 episodes of 1,100+ different television shows.

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Beginning as a classically trained pianist at age 6, his decades-long career has been that of a composer, producer and publisher as well as a recording artist on 3 different record labels including Intentcity Records as the artist Eterna doing chill-out electronic music with a worldbeat flair. In addition, since 2007 he has produced and arranged the music for the glamorous shows of Dita Von Teese—world renowned fashion icon and burlesque star.

?Eric Campbell is the owner of Sus3 Music , a sync agency providing one-stop songs to music supervisors, production companies and ad agencies. A prolific producer and songwriter, his music has been heard on dozens of TV shows including Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Love & Hip Hop, Real Housewives, Deadliest Catch, Chicago Fire, Shameless and more.

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Career highlights include being an on-set songwriter for TV shows Greenleaf and Step Up Highwater. He also scored a commercial for Dwayne The Rock Johnson’s energy drink, Zoa. A few of his songs have been recorded by signed recording artists including Musiq Soulchild, Bootsy Collins, Jekalyn Carr and Roshon Fegan. Eric also runs CTRL Camp (a free Sync Education Community) and is the author of Easy Piano for Songwriters and Producers which consistently ranks on Amazon’s charts.

The Top Five Challenges

To help you get the most from your music libraries and synch agencies, I asked our three professionals two questions:

1. What do creative leaders tend to struggle with when engaging you?
2. What solutions do you recommend to these challenges?

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Here are the top five challenges they identified:

1. Struggling to find music that's a fit.
2. Misunderstanding clearance.
3. Budget issues.
4. Creative differences internally.
5. Trying to “speak music” without a musical vocabulary.

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Struggling To Find Music That’s A Fit

One of the biggest challenges of working with music libraries and synch agencies today is the overwhelming amount of music available. Patrick says “the biggest thing is there’s just too much music and not enough time. Creative leaders often get pitched to death with music that’s not a fit for their current need. They feel like they’re looking for a needle in a haystack and everyone’s just throwing more hay at them.”

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Chuck notes that the struggle for specific music is often the result of unusable temp-tracks. When a production can’t license a track they love, they often go looking for sound-alikes and this introduces a problem. Chuck says: “Some libraries put their clients at risk by having meta-data and tracks that are too close to copyrighted material. Libraries shouldn’t put the name of major-label artists in the sound-alike field of their metadata tags. There are numerous examples of this where a production got in trouble because a library sold them a track that was too close to the original and the title and metadata made that obvious to the rights holder.”

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Eric, who works a lot with ad agencies, notes that his clients struggle with this too. “They try to balance finding new music, artists and styles with the need to get things done quickly and safely. They want fresh music, but they don’t want clearance problems. This sometimes puts them at-risk. How can a music buyer know that all samples in a track from a hip-hop artist are properly licensed?”

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So what solutions do our experts recommend?

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Patrick says: “Pick your partners carefully. Most libraries specialize in certain types of music. If you know what a library specializes in, you can cut your search time by 90%. Make sure your creative brief is detailed. The more details you give, the more likely you’ll get something specific back that's a fit to the brief: tempo, instrumentation, vocal style, genre, information about the scene. What should the music accomplish in the scene?”

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Chuck states: “If the cues you get back have sound-alike metadata and titles that are close to a major artist, that should be a red flag for you. If you want 80s throwback music and your library gives you a title called ‘Strange Things,’ that should be a warning sign. You can get sued for copyright infringement for this type of music. Be very cautious with what you place. It's the intent to plagiarize that’s the problem.”

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Eric says: “Make some time for new artist and partner nurturing. The ad agency industry is right-now focused. But it takes time to develop trusted new relationships. You have to be intentional about this to ensure that the new synch agent, partner or artist is ready to step up when you need them. You don't want to try to do this while responding to deadlines. Build relationships when you don’t need them so they can be there when you do.”

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Misunderstanding Clearance

Clearance is the process by which rights holders grant productions the right to use their music. Clearance involves gaining written permission from those who hold master-recording rights, songwriters and publishers. But clearance also involves negotiating the fees associated with synch. (See the first part of this article for more details on this). All three of our music professionals identified clearance as a common challenge when working with creative leaders.

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Patrick says that “creative leaders often struggle to understand the impact of clearance. They sometimes assume they can add an A-list megastar or pop artist song without understanding how this impacts budgets. Many high-profile artists will not license their music to anything but high-profile projects.”

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Chuck notes that clearance also impacts timelines. “Most creative leaders seem to underestimate how long clearance can take. If they get attached to a song, even one they can afford, but it will take too long to clear, that won’t work.”

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So what solutions do our pros recommend? Hire a music supervisor was the number one answer.

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Patrick states: “Music supervisors will help you stay on track with budget and time. Good music supervisors will give you their sense of whether or not a track is affordable and how long it might take to secure licenses. I think music supervisors are worth their weight in gold.”

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Chuck agrees and also suggests that you work with a one-stop music shop. “Music libraries today offer tracks that are quite diverse and high-quality. But they can also be licensed quickly. Our clients don’t have to worry about clearance issues because we pre-clear tracks. That saves them a lot of time and headaches.”

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Eric says: “Give yourself time to go through the rounds. As a synch agent, I work with a lot of different artists. Many of them tour or perform regularly so they’re not always available to review synch opportunities until they get a break. In the ad space, we get briefs and specific requests and often only get 1-3 days to respond. Sometimes that’s not enough to gain permission from the artists even if the budget is sufficient.”

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Budget Issues

There were a range of challenges the three professionals identified as it relates to budgets for music. Patrick noted that selection of music often comes near the end of post-production. He says: “by that time, music budgets have sometimes been used for other things, which means there’s not enough to do everything the client wants.” Sometimes this leads clients to wonder if they can stretch their budget by asking music libraries to rely on royalties to make up the money gap.

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Chuck noted that there is sometimes a perception that music libraries earn most of their income from royalties. He says: “Royalties are no longer what they were ten years ago. Upfront sync license fees are an integral part of our income, which are now eclipsing royalty payments from the PRO's. We also share all sync income received? 50/50 with our composers.”

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Eric works with numerous ad agencies and says creative directors “are often sandwiched between what their clients want and what they can actually afford. Sometimes their clients have unrealistic expectations about what music costs.” This puts creative directors in a tough position where they have limited options. They can try to educate clients about actual costs, try to find lower cost alternatives (which can be really hard with tight schedules) or ask creative partners, like Eric, to take lower fees.

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So what solutions do these pros recommend?

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Patrick says: “It’s really important not to sacrifice your music budget. This is where so much of the emotion in your productions comes from. If you find you’re coming up short on budget, get creative. Look for a new catalog that wants to work with you and have a repeat relationship. Or look for an indie artist who wants to get into this field. Consider asking for volume discounts if you want more than one or two tracks from a one-stop library. Don't be afraid to ask because sometimes this might work for us.”

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Chuck states: “I recommend that they set an initial music budget that's reasonable and cordon it off from the rest of the production budget so it doesn't get absorbed. How much you need depends a lot on the production. But I recommend 10-20% of the gross production budget should be set aside for music. I also recommend that they think through, up front, what they want. An instrumental-driven music approach will cost less than music with vocals and a lot less than pop songs from major artists.”

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Eric recommends that creative directors apply pressure judiciously. “An ad agency’s clients usually have no idea what the music team is going through and the music team usually doesn't understand the client's situation. Only the music supervisor or creative director has a purview into both. Sometimes, it might be best to go back to the client and ask for more budget. Other times, it might be best to ask the music provider to work with the budget. But I don't think it makes sense for a creative leader to simply pass along demands from a client. Some creative leaders come to learn that they can push back on the client and that this will ultimately benefit the client, the ad and the final outcome.”

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Creative Differences Internally

Productions today are usually made up of teams. It’s very common for team members to have distinct ideas about music and sometimes those ideas are not aligned. Chuck notes: “When you get 5-6 people on a call, it can be chaotic and overwhelming. Sometimes they struggle to articulate their creative vision. They might provide a lot of input, but if it's not congruent from one person to the next, it's hard to make sense of everyone's ideas.”

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Patrick notes that he sees this too. “Sometimes there are too many cooks in the kitchen. The tell-tale sign is when creative briefs are light on details. When we ask questions to get more direction, we sometimes hear different answers from the same group. That’s a red flag that they don’t have one creative vision guiding everything.”

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Eric sees this too, particularly when it comes to decision-making for unique and hard-to-find music. One major decision his clients sometimes struggle with is whether to build a custom piece of music or to conduct a broad search, looking for options from numerous partners. “If they wait too long to make this decision, that puts them under a lot of pressure. Creating custom music has a much longer cycle than buying from a synch agent. But if they don't start the custom music process soon enough, the synch agent is their only option.”

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So what solutions do our three pros recommend?

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Chuck states: “I recommend that conference calls are limited to 3 people. This should probably be the creative director and a couple of people they trust. I like to get reference tracks before the call so I can share some music on the call that might be a fit. This really moves things along. I like to ask them to listen to the tracks I put forward and then ask them to list everything they like, and don't like, about the track.”

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Patrick says: “Create a plan internally, in advance, for what to do if there's deadlock. If you wait until the moment when you need to make a decision, things can get really tense. Make sure you have a final decision-maker.”

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Eric states: “Once you know you need something niche, make a decision as soon as possible about whether to create from scratch or look for something existing. Send an email asking your trusted partners if they have anything like it. If no one comes back with a yes, you're probably looking at a custom music project or a much longer timeline to find something already created. Give out as much information as soon as possible so you can make an informed decision. Don't wait.”

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Trying To “Speak Music” Without A Musical Vocabulary

Musicians often speak to each other using technical musical terms. But what do you do if you need to describe what you want in a piece of music, but you don’t “speak music”? Eric notes that his clients often have “a natural language barrier. Some creative directors don't have the technical language. Briefs are how they try to express this today. But if briefs aren’t written by musicians, how can they know they’ll get the results they want?”

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Patrick describes a similar scenario. “Sometimes clients have a specific idea but don’t know how to express it musically. This is especially true when they have a temp cue that they like but can’t use. Some clients will have spent a lot of time searching for a piece of music and listening to sound-alikes before they come to us for something custom. They know what they like when they hear it, but often don’t know how to tell us what it should sound like or how to create it.”

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Chuck describes something similar. “Everyone loves music, but not everyone can speak in musical terms, like genres, tempos, instrumentation and the like. They might love a moment in the music but not be able to describe why it moves them. I once had a client say—I like that bouncy-bouncy part. They were referring to the section of the track where the tempo went to double time.”

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So what do our three music professionals recommend?

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Both Eric and Patrick made a similar recommendation. Hire a music supervisor. Patrick says: “Retain a music supervisor who can help you write a very specific and well-informed brief. You're relying on that brief to get you great results fast. The better your brief, the faster you'll get good results.”

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Chuck thinks it’s a good idea to establish a relationship with a synch agent who can come to understand you. “The more I work with someone, the better I can interpret what they want in actual musical terms. I do this now for a few clients. I learn how the words they use translate to specific genres and emotions. After we’ve worked together on a few projects, I can quickly give them options that fit. But I also like to give them tracks that may not be exactly what they described but that could work. Several of my clients have picked those tracks for their projects.”

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Wrap Up

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I want to thank Patrick , Chuck and Eric for their insights in this article. They actually had many more ideas than there was time to cover here. I’ve included links to their LinkedIn bios so you can learn more about them and even reach out if you feel there might be a fit to your needs.

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Until next time, happy storytelling.

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Randall