Music Supervision Mastery: JuxMusic Licensing Agency — Part I

MIDTOWN, MANHATTAN: Over the next few months, SonicScoop will track synch licensing developments — which directly affect artists, producers, engineers, studios, publishers, and many more music professionals – in our “Music Supervision Mastery” series. NYC-based concerns of all forms will be included, and you can expect their observations to be national/global in scope.

Brandon Mason, founder of NYC's Juxtaposed Music.

Their cup runneth over. Music supervisors today have no problem gaining access to tracks to synchronize (or “synch”) with visual media. Their mission is to find the perfect track within the ever-expanding haystack of licensable songs that are now available to them — on time and under budget.

It’s no wonder that services created to catch the ears of music supervisors are proliferating. Rights holders for songs are leveraging their intellectually property in an increasingly complex environment, one where the traditional model for making money – selling songs and albums to consumers – is changing almost too quickly to track.

Meanwhile, electronic media continues to do what it does best: converge and recombine. On that side of the sphere, the possible uses for music seem limitless, and selection of the right song and/or artist has the power to clearly differentiate the TV program, film, commercial, video game, Web show, industrial or brand that it’s connected to.

Exhibit A today is Juxtaposed Music a.k.a. JuxMusic, the NYC licensing agency launched last year by Brandon Mason. An in-demand engineer whose album credits include David Bowie, Secret Machines, and Shooter Jennings, Mason’s world began to merge with music supervisors when he worked on film soundtracks like the GRAMMY-nominated Across The Universe, The Runaways, and The Tempest.

Now he has a growing roster of independent artists, bands, composers and songwriters (or portions of their catalogs) onboard: including The Stripminers (led by Brett Anderson, lead singer of The Donnas), Teddy Thompson, Martha Wainwright, Neal Casal, Jeff Beck, Johnny Griffin, legendary drummer Clyde Stubblefield, Jeff Mercel of Mercury Rev, Craig Pfunder of VHS or Beta, Brandon Curtis of Secret Machines, and Academy Award-winning producer/composer Leo Sidran.

Little wonder Mason has a lot of important observations to share: He’s fully immersed in synch on a daily basis. The first half of his interview kicks off SonicScoop’s new “Music Supervision Mastery” series — look for Part II of our talk later this week.

How have you seen the role of the music supervisor changing in the last year?

My impression is that the role of music supervisors for movies at the highest end of the budget spectrum hasn’t changed much over the last year. What has changed is that overall there are more film projects in production and being released now than ever.

Most are mid and low-budget productions, where the producers and directors of these productions need their music supervisors to cover a lot more ground — this is where the job requirements of music supervisors seem to be expanding the most. For instance, I think more gigs are starting to go to music supervisors that can, in some capacity, cut music to picture, or even act as the music editor.

When licensing pre-recorded music, music supervisors have to be able to draw higher-quality indie music and build support for a placement to artists/labels/publishers in order to negotiate more favorable terms for the production.

Finally, since budgets are smaller, productions often need to hire talented but less-seasoned composers. A music supervisor with production skills can be valuable in this situation because they can act as the music producer, and serve as liaison between the composer and the director.

How about in the advertising world?

Music supervisors/music producers for advertising agencies have continued to expand their mindset, and they’re seeking out pre-recorded music by established and “up-and- coming” artists to serve their clients’ brand identities. This has continued to be the biggest change in music in advertising: Ten years ago and more, placing an artist’s music with a brand was often called “selling out.”

Now, as long as there is a synergistic relationship between the two, matching bands with brands is en vogue for both artists and brands. The youngest and newest music supervisors entering the advertising sector consider this kind of thing to be their specialty.

Do things shift again when you’re talking about the people who do broadcast and cable TV licensing?

I think there are two general types of music supervisors for television programming: the music supervisors that work directly for a network/production company, and the music supervisors that are hired as freelancers on longer-form scripted dramas for national/
international broadcast.

The biggest change for the music supervisors at networks is that the execs above them are now often entering into blanket licensing deals with large online music licensing  companies. This approach is effective at reducing music licensing costs, but it takes quite a bit of creativity out of their music department staff’s role because they’re often prohibited from drawing upon sources outside of the blanket deal.

KCRW's Jason Bentley has music supervised TRON Legacy, the Matrix trilogy, and a lot more.

The freelancers that are hired for longer-form scripted series with bigger budgets are primarily selected for their ability to select music by “on-the-verge” artists that serve scenes in an interesting way. Many of the KCRW on-air announcers have had great success as music supervisors for this type of programming partly because they have great access to interesting music through KCRW.

What do you see as the key trends affecting music supervisors’ involvement in the most sought-after projects we just talked about – commercials, TV shows, and films, as well as online media?

A key trend for music supervision in television programming has been with the demand for finding talented “up-and-coming” artists that want the exposure, but that are obscure enough where they can’t really demand high fees for placement. Licensing prerecorded music by “up-and-coming” artists has become more of a priority for films, again due to shrinking budgets.

The scope of original music production for film has shrunk substantially as well… I recently worked on a picture where the budget for original music necessitated that the composer (who was also a multi-instrumentalist) record/overdub all of the instruments himself. He created three compositions around one central theme at different tempos for use at each cue in the film. We chose one of the three tempo/compositions and came up with different arrangements throughout the film simply by muting instrument tracks and editing the compositions in various ways, so that each cue would appear to be different. While this certainly is less than ideal, the results were effective and the film was profitable at the box office.

In the world of online media, I think the key trend this year has been the emergence of Rumblefish’s micro-licensing model, Friendly Music, where individual users with videos to post on YouTube etc… can license a track for their video for $1.99. From what I understand, Friendly Music is granting thousands of licenses a day. It doesn’t translate to a lot for the artists because the public is drawing from a very large catalog, but it sure amounts to something for Rumblefish!

In the advertising world, as I stated above, the key trend is toward matching brands with bands. There are two Heinekin commercials that are a perfect example of this synergistic matching. One features a song by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour called “The Golden Age,” and the other ad uses an older song by Mohammad Rafi called “Jaan Pehechaan Hoo.” They’re probably the coolest ads running right now.

Don’t miss the full length version of the Heineken commercial synched to “The Golden Age” by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour:

That’ a great overview of the major synch licensing sectors. So what particular problems — and opportunities — are created by the growing number of resources available to music supervisors to help them locate music?

With the number of resources for music search and discovery growing, it would be easy to point to problems on the surface.

One could identify that several business models present a “race to the bottom” scenario, where any artist can make anything available in the marketplace and take whatever they can get for a placement (even if it is nothing.) Or that there is “too much noise to sift through” to find something good that will work, or that there is a general lack of specialization, lack of production skills, lack of ability to negotiate more favorable terms, and a lack of ability to serve the needs of music supervisors at a higher level.

But ultimately music supervision, music production, music licensing, music placement is all about the relationships we have with each other day in and day out, and the results we arrive at together.

Music supervisors are not thinking, “I have this need for a music placement in this project and now I am being inundated with tons and tons of music to try to fit into this program.” Quite the opposite is true: When they have a need for music, they already have a pretty good idea of what they are looking for and if they need help, they turn to the resources with whom they have had success in the past, whom they like personally, and who can support them through the changing and varied expectations from directors, producers, and all of the other decision makers involved in their productions.

This is where the opportunities are. If you have deeper production experience and skills, if you’re working with evocative and meaningful music, if you can attract better quality music on an ongoing basis, if you can negotiate more favorable terms for placement, if you can form genuine personal relationships with the artists whose work you represent AND with the clients who count on your production expertise and ability to understand their productions from their perspectives — then you will find yourself and your company on the very short list of resources that music supervisors enjoy counting on every day.

— David Weiss is the Co-Founder/Co-Editor of SonicScoop.com, and Co-Author of Music Supervision, The Complete Guide to Selecting Music for TV, Movies, Games & New Media.

Catch Part II of “Music Supervision Mastery: Jux Music, Licensing Agency” later this week.

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