My name is Greg Savage, I’m a music composer and sound designer with 20 years of experience. I make a living composing music for TV, Film, Games and designing sounds/preset banks for commercial synths and plugins.
I’m here to dive a little deeper into sync licensing and share resources that will help music creators get the ball rolling with creating a side stream of income from the comfort of their own homes.
Side note: The words ‘Publisher and Music Library’ will be used interchangeably
What is a Sync License Anyway?
A sync license is when a piece of music is synchronized/used within a visual: TV, Film, Ad, etc. The owner or admin of the copyright is paid a sync fee upfront and royalties are paid on the back end (unless negotiated otherwise).
The writer/creator is always the owner of both the song or composition and the master recording unless the rights have been assigned to a 3rd party (like a music publisher) to admin, control, or own.
How The Sync Process Works
- You submit your music to a music supervisor or publisher
- The music gets pitched or selected
- Once accepted, a sync fee is paid by the licensee (user) depending on the negotiation
- The music gets used in a television episode, film, ad, commercial, etc (sync)
- The licensee (user) submits a cue sheet to your PRO
- Broadcasters, Television Networks, etc report the number of plays/airings to PROs
- PRO pay royalties for the life of the song/track’s usage (Writer’s share and Publisher’s share)
Sounds pretty straightforward right?
Going With Exclusive vs Non-Exclusive Publishers
What’s important to understand here is that you can work with BOTH exclusive and non-exclusive music libraries.
Exclusive: With an exclusive library, they are more likely to pitch your music and have good relationships with their clients (tv networks, film directors, etc).
They also give their writers briefs. A brief is a request outlining what TV Shows and Film Companies are looking for musically.
Non-Exclusive: Some Non Exclusive libraries pitch music, most of the time it’s sitting in a searchable directory. You can maximize the amount of money that you could potentially make by pitching the same music to multiple publishers.
Where to Send Music
For many, one of the hardest things about sync licensing is knowing where to send the music. There are a lot of libraries you can send your music to, but here are a few companies to start with.
Before reaching out to these publishers/music libraries make sure you have a PRO, it’s vital for collecting royalties.
Music Gateway
Sync licensing opportunities delivered to your email address! They offer both Exclusive and Non Exclusive options, both allowing music creators to keep their writer and publisher share while only retaining a small percent of the original sync fee.
The Good: Upfront paying sync projects, keep 100% of your royalties as well as a lot of options for; Collaboration, Distribution, Music Storage, etc.
The Less Good: Not free, there is a monthly subscription fee associated with their platform.
Artlist
This is another good non-exclusive library you might want to pay attention to as they are centric on promoting their artists and openly cater to the modern market in terms of how content is created. They offer packages for YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok content creators, to name a few.
The Good: Non-exclusive agreement, keep the rights to your music, easy sign-up process
The Less Good: As with most non-exclusive libraries of this nature, backend royalties are harder to obtain.
Pond 5
Pond 5 is a huge player in the licensing world when it comes to royalty-free music. As a music creator, you have a couple of different options when working with Pond 5.
1. A standard non-exclusive agreement. 2. Pond5 Publishing. Pond 5 will administer and collect your publishing for you. They pay everything to the writer, minus the admin fee.
The Good: You’re allowed to set your own price, or let Pond 5 handle the pricing. Agreements are non-exclusive.
The Less Good: Music suppliers only retain 35% of the profit generated through Pond 5. No guarantee on backend royalties
Epidemic Sound
When Getty Music put an end to their music sector, they pushed everything they had in their music library to Epidemic Sound and it’s quickly becoming one of the biggest royalty-free music libraries out today.
The Good: They pay upfront for the music and offer profit sharing with all of its writers based on their music’s performance.
The Less Good: At the time of this writing, you can’t be affiliated with a PRO while contributing music to their catalog.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this has given you a little more insight into the world of sync licensing. Not only how it works, but how you get into the game as well. Not only is sync licensing a good way to produce a side stream of income, but it’s also fun. For more information on music licensing please contact me via my site Diy Music Biz or Instagram