In today’s post I’m going to explore my thoughts on whether or not you should pay to submit your music to “briefs” through companies that charge a fee to submit your music through them, to then be sent to the source of the music brief. I’m not going to name any companies by name. The last time I mentioned a company by
name in one of my emails, several years ago, I was threatened with legal action about 45 minutes after my email was sent. It seemed like a harsh reaction, but it’s nice to know that people in the industry are at least following the work I publish.
Instead, in today’s email, I’m going to discuss the business model that several different companies I’m aware of use to screen and submit music to briefs for different licensing
projects. I’ll share my thoughts on this practice and give you my opinion on whether or not I think it’s a good idea, in general, to use these types of services.
There are a variety of companies I’m aware of that charge a fee for submitting your music to specific music briefs, via their own submission service. A few of these companies are pretty well known, and I can think of three off the top of my head that most of you
reading this are likely familiar with. Again, I’m not going to name any specific names. Instead, I’m going to discuss the different ways in which they charge musicians for their services, and discuss the pros and cons of the different types of services.
First though, I think it’s important to clarify what exactly a music brief is and why there is an inherent problem in charging money for this information. A music brief is a
description of a specific project and their music needs. It usually comes from the actual music supervisor that is looking for specific music for a specific project. A brief lists the type of music needed, the budget and payment involved, the terms of the license and so on. In other words, it’s the most important intel there is in the music licensing business. It’s who needs what music, when and for how much. It’s what everyone who is trying to license their music is
trying to figure out.
The problem though, is that this information is usually given by music supervisors to people that they trust to turn to for music, like publishers, libraries and so on. All supervisor-publisher or supervisor-library relationships are built on trust in terms of the ability of the publisher or library to submit high quality music that is relevant to what the supervisor is looking for. Supervisors
typically aren’t going to just advertise to anyone and everyone what they’re looking for, because they know that they will be inundated with way more music than they can possibly listen to and they know that the vast majority of it will either not be very good, or will be off target for the brief. So instead, most supervisors develop relationships with people working in the business that understand both the music and business side of sync licensing. It’s simply easier to do business with people
that really get the nuances of the licensing business.
Here’s what music supervisor Andrea Von Foerster (500 Days Of Summer, The OC, Gray’s Anatomy and more) said when asked if she sent out briefs to
different companies and writers: “The short answer is no. I don’t know any music supervisors that do a big brief and send it out—. In film and TV music supervision, we only have so much time to find, listen, filter, pitch and clear music. So, if you send out a brief with what you’re looking for to the particular companies that you have in mind, that brief is often forwarded and forwarded, and then you start getting music from people you don’t know. It’s not
efficient.”
So, already, you can see that there is an inherent problem with the idea of simply charging musicians for music briefs. Without any sort of quality control in place, most supervisors aren’t going to give out this information and any company that will simply accept anyone that can pay five or ten dollars to pitch to a brief won’t be able to maintain a professional relationship with their contacts for long. You
can’t just take every artist that can afford the submission fee and then send it to music supervisors without some sort of quality control in place.
So, this brings me to the first business model I’m aware of for this type of pitching. This particular model is actually the one that makes the most sense, although still flawed in my opinion. The company I’m thinking of that utilizes this model charges an annual
membership fee, plus a submission fee per brief or opportunity to first screen music, and then they may or may not pitch it to each specific brief, depending on whether or not they feel like the music is high enough quality to pass it along to their contacts. This particular company is at least screening music before they send it to their contacts. This is important, because like I said before, you can’t just randomly submit hundreds of artists for a particular project without some
sort of quality control in place.
So it makes sense that they do this, from the standpoint of maintaining trust with their business relationships. However, the problem that I see with this model, from the perspective of the artist, is that they’re adding another hoop artists have to jump through, in a business that already requires you to jump through multiple hoops and overcome multiple barriers. It’s also adding one more
person’s opinion into the mix that may or may not be accurate. Of course, there’s also the added cost of paying an extra fee for every opportunity you pitch to.
I tried this particular company a few years ago, for a year, and they routinely rejected songs of mine that had already been licensed, on the basis that the production wasn’t high enough quality to be licensed, even though the songs I submitted already had been licensed in
major television shows.
It makes way more sense, in my mind, to bypass this step, and just go straight to the source. Of course, you have to spend some time to do this. You need to spend time developing relationships with people in the business to learn who is looking for what music. But if you’re truly serious about licensing your music, this is time that’s worth investing. You’ll also save a lot of money
in the long run. Paying five to twenty dollars per submission (depending on the service) adds up very quickly, if you’re submitting a large volume of music.
The next type of business model that I’m aware of are employed by services that simply charge a submission fee for a specific brief and then accept everyone who pays whatever their fee is, usually ranging from five to twenty dollars. I’m highly skeptical of these
type of services for a couple reasons. First, there’s the issue of quality control. If you’re simply accepting everyone who can afford the fee, you’re not controlling the quality of the music being submitted at all. I doubt many legitimate music supervisors are open to this for this reason. Most supervisors are extremely busy and don’t have time to sort through hundreds, or even thousands of submissions to find just the right
song.
Last year, a pretty well-known music publisher told me a story that speaks to this issue. Again, I won’t name names, but this particular publisher was approached by a well-known music submission company and asked if they could submit music for a project he was pitching to. The publisher decided to give the service a try and gave them information on the brief he was pitching to. He was sent over 2,000 songs
from this particular company for just one brief he was working on. The publisher had time to listen to about 20 submissions and he deleted the rest. So, in other words, 1,980 people paid to have their music pitched to this guy, and he didn’t even listen to them, because he was simply overwhelmed with the amount of submissions he received. This is just one story, but I can only imagine this scenario plays out a lot with these types of
services.
Now, in all fairness, I do offer a music pitching service as well as several music licensing courses of my own, that I of course charge a fee for. But these are different from the other services that I’m aware of in the sense that I never advertise specific briefs to the public and I don’t charge to submit
to specific opportunities. I don’t do this because I understand how critical the issue of quality control is and I realize this information is sensitive and not meant to be bought or sold.
At the end of the day, no matter who is pitching your music, whether it’s you or someone else, no one can make the supervisor listening to your music like it or choose to license it. You can’t pay someone to guarantee your music is
licensed. All you can do is pay someone to try. If you choose to go this route, just make sure you fully understand what you’re paying for.
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Happy Songwriting!
Aaron Davison
