A conversation with Dan Koplowitz, who owns music sync firm Friendly Fire Licensing. He is a former label owner that now does sync licensing exclusively. Whether it is for commercials, blockbuster movies, arthouse films, or an array of online content — music supervisors reach out to him to find the perfect music for their projects.
In our talk, we discuss why this is a fantastic time to be looking for syncs, as there are more opportunities than ever before with all of the content being made. He also gives advice on how you can get pitched and the format your music needs to be in for you to be taken seriously.
TRANSCRIPT
Rachel Hurley 0:05
Hello, everyone, I’m Rachel Hurley from Sweetheart Pub. Welcome back to Music Rookie, the beginner’s guide to the music industry. This week’s episode features a conversation with my friend Dan Kaplowitz. He owns Friendly Fire Licensing. Friendly Fire started out as a super hip label in the 2000s, but now does sync licensing exclusively. Whether it’s for commercials, blockbuster movies, arthouse films, or an array of online content, music supervisors reach out to him to find the perfect music for their projects. Now, in our talk, we discussed why this is a fantastic time to be looking for syncs. There are more opportunities right now than ever before with all the content being made. And he also gives advice on how you can get pitched and the format your music needs to be in for you to be taken seriously. So let’s jump right in.
Rachel Hurley 1:02
Why don’t you tell me how Friendly Fire Licensing started?
Dan Kaplowitz 1:06
Absolutely, I’d be happy to. So Friendly Fire Licensing, the company I run now, grew out of a record label that I ran for the better part of the 2000s called Friendly Fire Recordings turned out to be really, really easy to just replace recordings with licensing the logo, because they’re almost the same amount of letters.
I was doing the label for… Yeah, I mean, starting in about 2003. And towards the end of the label, I realized that, well, sales are sort of going down, I was getting more and more and more licensing requests for some of the items. So over the course of the next few years, I kind of pivoted, and these days, what I’m doing is I’m representing the catalogues of about 50 different record labels and publishing companies from around the world, and working to pitch the music to get it into TV shows, movies, commercials, video games, stuff like that.
Rachel Hurley 2:08
Very cool. And since we talked last, I’ve spoken with Joe Raj, who we are both friendly with. He was talking about how this is an incredible time to get sync licenses, because there are so many different avenues to go. There’s so much content being produced, and so many different whether it’s like from your phone or Netflix, so many different streaming services. Do you feel that way too?
Dan Kaplowitz 2:35
Absolutely. I mean, the amount, the sheer volume of content being produced right now you’re ranging from on one end, huge blockbuster movies, major international ad campaigns down to tiny little indie projects. I mean, it’s an avalanche. It’s like drinking from a firehose, I mean, in the same way that you couldn’t watch every TV show out there, if you had all the time in the world. Well, every single show every single movie, every single ad, every single video, the only music to one degree or another. And here in the States, all of those music uses are licensed or negotiated. So there is the potential for income for all of them.
Beyond that, I think, given the way that the music industry has been affected over the last five or six months, with COVID, it’s no surprise that certain aspects of the music industry are no, I’m on ice right now. I feel for my friends who are involved in live shows and touring and things like that.
Sync has been affected to some degree,I’m not suggesting that it hasn’t been. Certainly some of the movies and TV shows that they would have been filming over the course the last few months haven’t been. But there’s still a tremendous amount of content being made. And I’m lucky enough that my little corner of the industry hasn’t ground to a complete standstill in the way that some of the other segments of the industry have. So I actually think this is a better time than any in a way for artists who maybe haven’t focused that much on sync today can take this time at home and really reevaluate what their approaches to getting stuff into.
Rachel Hurley 4:20
So I have so many questions about all this and a lot of thought up since we talked last. Do you have any certain things that people ask for a lot that people are always looking for? Genres that are more popular than others? What kind of stuff are you being asked for a lot that you can like give advice on. It’s like, you know, if you have this kind of music, you need to be in here working it?
Dan Kaplowitz 4:48
Sure. I mean, my approach has always been on the music itself. You know, I don’t want I don’t want the tail to wag the dog. It’s all based on finding the right music for the right project, I try not to make it fit, it’s not a throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks approach and one of the first things I’ve learned is if someone comes to me asking me for upbeat, happy song with male vocals, I’m not sending them a slow, sad song with female vocals, there’s no faster way to lose your reputation.
Obviously, certain genres get synced and get licensed more than others. You know, avant garde, solo, saxophone probably isn’t going to make it into a commercial for longer. With that being said, I am a big believer that every puzzle piece has its match, so to speak, and there is something for every genre. So artists who are working in more out there genres or stuff that’s a little more unusual, I always encourage them to find a TV show that has your type of music, look up who does it and track them down? Right? You know, look on the IMDb and, and you know, reach out to them if you feel your music would work for them.
As far as sort of universal things. Obviously, stuff that’s a little more populating, generally does better. There’s lyrical keywords that I see, particularly for ads, you know, TV and film have slowed down somewhat lately, ads are going as strong as ever, because people still want a drink. Coca Cola still has to sell products. With ads, it’s often very lyric paste. So you know, themes of happiness, non romantic love, swagger, attitude.Certainly, we’ve gotten a lot of searches and recently about sort of uplifting, emotional things, togetherness, home resilience. And, frankly, with the same coming, having a song whose lyrics are too clever, can actually work against you in the context of a 15 second ad.
Rachel Hurley 7:06
You don’t want to be out in front of it?
Dan Kaplowitz 7:10
Yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, there are some of the best lyricists of our time, you know, the the Bob Dylan’s of our time, or telling this weaving a tale and telling the whole story, musically, it’s wonderful. The question is, can you compress it down into a catchy lyric about having fun with your friends? You know, that’ll work for commercial.Sometimes tyou have to be a little broad, and you have to be a little on the nose, particularly for commercial sense.
Rachel Hurley 7:43
It reminds me of when I used to work for Joe, I was his assistant music supervisor on a couple of shows one for Nickelodeon, one for Disney. And you can tell me if this is still the way that it works. But we got music submissions, and I would sit there with a spreadsheet. And I would go through and like list, okay, this the the vocal comes in at this point, this much of it is just instrumental and then tag all the keywords for the instrumental part about what it sounded like was it happy was upbeat that have a you know, sax solo or drum or whatever was in it. And a lot of times when we place that music in these shows, we were only using the instrumental parts of the songs.
Dan Kaplowitz 7:27
Sure. I mean, you touched on a couple things. First of all, the importance of having instrumentals on hand. I can’t tell you what a bummer it is to miss out on a potential licensing opportunity because the instrumental’s not there and mastered and ready to go. And it’s always easier to do. If you’re in a band and you’re in the studio and recording, just take the extra time, get those instrumentals bounced out and ready to go. Because you’ll be grateful if, nine months down the line, you end up meeting them.
I mean, beyond that, I think you touched on something, I realize it’s not the sexiest part of what we do. But having the tags, having the metadata is, I mean, if there’s one takeaway from this conversation that I can give artists, tag your stuff. I mean, treat your music, treat your library like a bonsai tree. I mean, it’s got to be, it’s got to be so meticulously trimmed and labeled.
My approach is, I assume that music supervisors are just kidding, I’m talking about drinking from a firehose, everyone and a mother is sending music to these music supervisors. And well a lot of it is bad, or mediocre, sure. Plenty of good music out there too. So I want to do everything and anything I can possibly do to maximize my chances of having to pay attention to the music and know who to talk to if they like it, and so that means labeling everything really, really carefully. First of all, it may sound obvious, but who is the artist and what is the track of the song? Don’t send something with a whole chain of garbled letters and numbers, clean that stuff up. Who owns it? Is it? Is it one stop in the sense that, you know, it’s all with the artist’s approval is easy to get? Or are there publishers involved? Is there a sample in it that hasn’t been cleared for use? Are there any potential stumbling blocks? Is it a cover? If so, who was a cover of? Who has the original publishing? What year was it done? I absolutely will include tags in the music.
Genre based, lyric based you know, I we get requests for things that sound like Bruno Mars, things that sound like Coldplay, things like sound like Madonna, whatever, you know, the more of those kind of a footholds you can build into the music, the better the chances that a music supervisor will stumble back upon it a week or a month or a year down the line. Say “oh, this is perfect for that search I’m working on
Rachel Hurley 11:08
Is that metadata that you’re putting in are the sorry, the artists are the labels putting in like, in iTunes, like just opening up the song and putting in those genre tags. That’s where you’re looking for those?
Dan Kaplowitz 11:23
Yeah, so I mean, the labels of the artists that I work with, one of the first things I’ll do when we’re sort of onboarding a new label and sell some kind of style sheet so to speak. And you know, every company has a slightly different way of how they format it. And then I, you know, I need to make sure that our contact information is included, because if someone likes the song and doesn’t know who to talk to, that’s a dead end. And iTunes, if you just do at least on a Mac, if you do command die, it opens up a little window. And then you can enter in all of that information, I use a program called disco. It’s an Australian company. disco.ac is their website. They don’t pay me, I don’t work for them. I’m just a fan.But that’s something that was designed originally by music supervisors in Australia, and it’s really designed for the sync world. It’s something that I love using. There are certainly other companies, there’s source audio, there’s sync tank, and these things, these things are really designed to build a content management system, at the end of the day, but if you have a catalogue of music that you’re working with, they’re really useful. And they give you ways to enter in all of these things that we’re talking about: all of the tags, all of the ownership, information, lyrics, and so on. I mean, at the bare minimum, I would say, who is the artist? What is the track title? Who owns it? Who is the mass? Who is the label? And who is the publisher? And who do you talk to? Who do you contact? Yeah, those things are utterly essential. And if you been include more information, all the better.
Rachel Hurley 13:02
Yeah, I know, I get sent a lot of music. And I’ll go back to clean out the songs that just like I can’t remember what this is for, or where it came from. And sometimes I’ll go into the metadata to figure it out. And there’s nothing in there. So it just gets deleted. It just gets deleted.
Dan Kaplowitz 13:21
You know, I operate on the assumption that music supervisors are super busy. And if I get it, you know, if I get 45 seconds of their time to quickly glance at or listen to something I’ve sent them, great. If they can’t find in those 45 seconds, who owns a song? And who do I talk to,? :ike you say, nine times out of 10, they’ll just say, “No, it’s not worth it, not worth the bother” and out it goes. And I’m surprised by how many people including major labels, we’re not just talking small artists, how many larger labels and publishers will send really, really sloppy metadata. And it’s, it’s not a winning combination.
Rachel Hurley 14:00
I think there’s a real breakdown between the studio and the mastering engineers and the engineers and the artists in terms of that, because I think that a lot of artists expect that when they get their music back from their mastering engineer or their regular engineer, that the songs are in the right, you know, they’re set up for like an album, right? We’re bypassing a situation now where I think that the files used to go be sent off for CDs, right? They used to be sent off to someone else, and now they’re just being given straight to the artist. And if you don’t have a lot of, you know, technical experience or experience in doing that, I think they just expect that when they get those back and they say master and gigahertz and all that extra stuff in there, that that’s the way that they’re supposed to be but you know, you’ve got to go in and clean up all of that mess, because they’re not, they’re not thinking about your music being able to be found after the fact. They’re just like giving you your masters.
Dan Kaplowitz 15:12
I completely agree. And moreover, I think a lot of it is knowing your audience, you know, the way that you send music to a music supervisor is not necessarily the same way that you would send music to, let’s say, a journalist.
I’m not suggesting that music supervisors don’t care about an artist’s story, or press clips or videos, they may, but really, presumably thinking that they’re working on a project and the right song for the scene. So knowing that the band has played this venue, or has a neat video, or there’s a cool story behind them. It’s cool. I’m not saying that, you know, if you have a band with a fascinating story, of course, you want to put that forward. But it’s really much more about the music.
So I’m much more concerned, you know, what’s the BPM? How fast or slow is the song? What are the lyrics about? That’s what’s going to make the final difference,
Rachel Hurley 16:09
I think you hit the nail on the head there. And it’s something that I explain to my clients a lot where they think I’m just sending a song over to a writer, and they’re clicking on the song and saying, “Oh, that’s great. I’m gonna write about that.” And that’s not how that works at all. They need to know everything about the band, and what’s going on, and what’s the angle, because they’re not just gonna stick it up on the Internet and say, “Listen to this, it’s cool.” They’re gonna have to write something about it. So they’ve got to figure out is there anything to write about? Because if there’s another artist, that’s just as good as this artist, and there might be a better story with that one.
But what would music license I’m sorry, sync licensing, you know, they already have in their mind what exactly they need. And they’re just, where is it? I’ll know it when I hear it, I’ll know it when I hear it, you know.
Dan Kaplowitz 17:02
It does come down to the music. Certainly, there are times, you know, we’ll have an ad campaign or show on MTV, and they, you know, they want an artist that fits a certain demographic, of course, you know, or you know, they want something that’s hot and new, or they want something that’s from a certain year. So it’s not that the story is irrelevant, but it is secondary, it does take a backseat to the song itself. I think what’s cool about that is it really is and in some ways, not gonna say it’s a level playing field, because nothing in life is truly a level playing field. But if you have a great song, you can and this is one of the you know, you can be an artist making music out of your bedroom. in Timbuktu, it really doesn’t matter. You know, some of the stuff we work with is from artists, you look at their Spotify, how many plays on Spotify. Like, it’s nothing special. And yet, if they have the right song, we can absolutely get them in a big TV show or movie, or video game. It’s really exciting.
Rachel Hurley 16:09
It just goes back to there’s no one path, or no one set of rules for success in any part of the music industry. You know, it’s kind of all about just keeping yourself out there, looking for as many opportunities as can come through and being ready for them when they do show up.
Dan Kaplowitz 18:22
Absolutely.
Rachel Hurley 18:23
So I don’t want to drill down too deeply into this. But are you just like, are you sending over a player of like multiple songs? Because they’re looking for XYZ? And you’re like, “Okay, try these 10 tracks?” Are you sending over one song at a time? And this is the one and then they’re going “meh?’ I mean, how does that dynamic work? It depends.
Dan Kaplowitz 18:42
It depends. I kind of have two ways of pitching and I call it proactive and reactive, or push and pull. Certainly I’ll put together samples, send them out to you know, we have a mailing list of, you know, maybe 500 music supervisors in the US, but also all over the world. Here’s some, you know, here’s some stuff that we’ve been listening to lately. Here’s some really epic, you know, bombastic cinematic music. Here’s some music from a certain country, here’s some vintage stuff, here’s some lyrical themes, so on and so forth. That’s the proactive way of doing it. And it can be great because it’s just a way of reaching people that you might not reach. Otherwise, when I do that, you know, again, it’s about putting your best foot forward, I’m not sending the playlist with 40 tracks, I’m assuming that nobody has the time for that. So we’ll send five and say, “Hey, listen, if you like it, we have 500 more.”
A lot of it, though, was reactive. And although I realized the word reactive maybe has a negative connotation in the world of sync, it’s a good thing. I mean, it’s we have people coming to us with briefs you know, these are music supervisors from we have established relationships with and they have a specific need they’re looking for, you know, it can be something really, really broad, you know, we’re doing a commercial that is positive and uplifting, energetic, or can be something extremely specific, you know. We’ll put together a list for them. I try not to go above, you know, 5, 10 tracks. It depends. Some people in some supervisors will say, give me everything you got.Sometimes they’ll say we’re working on the new season of a TV show. And we sort of want a bucket of songs from which we can draw over the course of the season. Other people say “We’re in a terrible Hurry, it’s an emergency, we need something we need fast, send us your three best ideas, no more.” But I always operate on the assumption, and I don’t want to do a data dump on people sending someone, because I feel the same way when an artist I haven’t worked with reaches out to me, send somebody a couple songs, and you put your best foot forward and say, you know, if you want more, I’ve got more. And sometimes I’ll hear something that I like, and I’ll Yeah, absolutely. You know what I want to I want to do a deep dive. But I think generally speaking less is more, unless sometimes I truly, truly, truly think that every song I’m sending is absolutely golden. But, you know, I realized that can be a Sophie’s Choice sometimes, you know, taking a 10 track playlist and cutting it in half. But it’s smarter.
Rachel Hurley 21:37
Yeah, I mean, I’m sure it just depends on the person that you’re talking to where how much control they have over, you know. They might be like, “I can decide, send me like three or four tracks, and I’ll decide I’ll be done with it.” And then they might have to present it to other people or multiple people and want to look like, “Look at all that I have to offer you,” you know. We should be able to pick something out of these 10 tracks, you know?
Dan Kaplowitz 22:02
Yeah, I mean, you know, one thing that is easy to forget is we’re all links on a chain So you know, let’s take up a TV show, for example. So you have like the network. And then the network has a director and a producer, and the director has a certain creative vision. But they’re too busy to do the music all on their own. So they hire a music supervisor. Music supervisor’s job is to come to them with a bunch of ideas that will work within their budget, but maybe it’s an obscure genre, or the music supervisor doesn’t know quite what to do. So they come to someone like me, a sync agent, or they go to publishers or labels that they work with, you know, we go into our labels and the artists, so you know, we’re all kind of links in this ecosystem.
I’ve had music supervisors tell me that, you know, often, almost by definition, music supervisors have, you know, they know a lot about music, they’re cool, they know that hip hop underground stuff. And sometimes that works. But if you’re working on a Hallmark Christmas movie, you can’t include that super edgy underground track, you know, you have to, you have to give the director what they want. But it’s then it’s my job when somebody comes to me looking for something that’s a little more down the middle or a little more mainstream to not just send them what I think is the coolest track, but send them what I think the project actually requires.
Rachel Hurley 23:28
Can you talk about any cool projects you’ve worked on recently?
Dan Kaplowitz 23:34
Sure. A lot of things pending that I’m not allowed to talk about, but they’re cool ones that I’ve done lately. I did a really, really cool project with Apple recently. I’ve done a couple of them actually, we just had an ad go live in, in Brazil. But the one that I have in mind was a project that we did specifically for Thailand. So in traditional Thai culture, this was news to me, I think it’s super cool. Every day of the week is associated with a color. So Sunday is yellow and Monday is blue and Tuesday is green, Wednesdays orange and so on. So we did a project in conjunction with Apple in conjunction with a record label, a contemporary electronic label out of Bangkok called Contra Records or the shot on iPhone campaign for the canvassers
Rachel Hurley 24:34
I think they have that- I think that’s the first thing that comes up when you log on to tik tok Sorry, go ahead.
Dan Kaplowitz 24:39
Oh, cool. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, um, so this is a really cool project was the seven little, you know, 12 second long Instagram things with each one with photos and videos in a certain color by Thai artists, and each one had a custom composed track that sort of evoked those colors. That was a really fun one that we did. We recently did a fantastic work with an Israeli band called Lola <arsh. They did a cover of the Frank and Nancy Sinatra song, “Something stupid.” Custom recorded cover of that that was in the TV show. Better Call Saul. For fear of revealing spoilers. I won’t say more than that. But I will say I mean, the episode actually won an award at the Guild of Music Supervisors awards last year for Best Original Music for Television. So yeah, we do a lot, you know, it ranges from custom and bespoke stuff, you know, from getting songs and pretty big ad campaigns down to honestly some of the stuff from the crowd is done is when we’re able to get something really, really off the wall, and really left wing, sorry, left field rather. There’s a movie that came out a couple years ago called The Green Room. But Patrick Stewart, it’s a horror movie. We managed to get like a crazy grindcore song into it. This is not what you would think of as sync music. For a couple weeks ago, I worked with a vintage portrait Portuguese solo accordionist. Her name is Eugenia Lima, she was the queen of Portuguese accordion, and we managed to buy one of her tracks into a Google app. So I love you know, I love being able to find something that’s really musically unique, and maybe won’t work for 99 out of 100 different contexts. But when we find that one context that it works, it’s a really thrilling feeling.
Rachel Hurley 26:59
Do you find yourself watching television shows and paying more attention to the music cues and what’s happening?
Dan Kaplowitz 27:05
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it’s a, it’s a music discovery tool. You know, we talked a little bit about how it can be good just purely from a financial standpoint for an artist to have you get us all on a TV show or movie or commercial can be good money. But there is absolutely something to be said for music discovery. If you have a song in a big commercial, if you have a song over the end credits, you know, really powerful episode of Netflix TV show. I have Shazam, like from the front of my phone. If I’m watching something, and I want to hear what a song is before it goes away. I know you know, I tell artists and say, “Oh, just you know, you should do this for lousy money or do it for free because it’s good exposure.” that I feel is a bit of a disingenuous argument. But for me as a music fan, absolutely. I think film TV commercials and video games.
Rachel Hurley 28:11
I mean, I looked up who the music supervisor was for killing Eve.
Dan Kaplowitz 28:17
Yeah, we had something in, we had something telling me recently. And it’s like, that’s one of those shows that you watch. And then you go, and you look up the soundtrack on Spotify,
Rachel Hurley 28:26
Right? I was just like, “What is that music?” but that’s the music cues. I was like, “Those are crazy music cues.” It’s like a whole nother character, you know, and it was like subtext to what they were foreshadowing and all that and you’re like, “Are they telling us that this is gonna happen?” But I also want to ask you about what you just mentioned about the payment. What kind of numbers are we talking about for musicians? What are the different kind of, you know, amounts people can get paid? I know that they’re small projects and big projects, but what are some of the numbers?
Dan Kaplowitz 29:05
So it’s hard. I don’t want to give you what seems like an evasive or a slippery answer. I want to answer as honestly as I can. That being said, of course, it depends. It really does. It depends on a couple things. The first and most obvious is what is the project, you know, a tiny little indie arthouse film, you know where they barely have two pennies to rub together. You know, the money you’re getting might be nominal. A major international TV commercial, you know, if it’s going to be online and on TV and you know, it’s going to be ubiquitous. For a major brand, a car company or a pasty brand is presumably going to pay a lot more.
There are certain things that I look at when we’re going into a negotiation for something. So first is what’s the format? TV shows, a movie commercial, if it’s an ad, what’s the duration? Your TV shows and movies, they almost always want the song for perpetuity. Because they don’t want to renegotiate the music rights. You assume with a TV show it’s going to live forever on Netflix or the streaming service. Yeah. But for a commercial, you know, it’s not necessarily going to live forever. So is this going to be let’s say, it’s going to be on TV, it’s going to be on for a month, three months, a year? If it’s online, is there going to be paid and media behind it? Are they you know, they’re going to have it show up, you know, when someone clicks on a YouTube video? Or is it just going to sort of live on the brand’s own Instagram feed? For example?
And also, of course, has to do with the length of the usage? Is it a little snippet? Or do they want to use the full song over the end credits? How badly do they want the song? You know, in other words, if it’s a rock song, being played, in a scene, you know, played in the background, the scene at a restaurant, and all the music really does is kind of establish a sense of place, oh, we’re at a bar, and there’s some music playing at the bar, you have to realize that maybe you’re not in the position to drive to it could be anything. And just like you say, with trying to get press coverage, you know, if they’re offering you $3,000, and don’t want to do it was probably a band waiting behind you that will do it for $1,000. So that’s something to bear in mind. If it’s a song that’s really really unique, either because it’s a big name, artist, or because it’s just such a unique track. You know, it’s hard to replace Bohemian Rhapsody.
I think another thing that’s worth considering is that some licensing uses pay royalties, paid residuals, and others don’t. My job as a sales agent is to negotiate the upfront fee, the master side fee and the publishing side fee, which will, except for in the case of covers, will almost always be 50/50. So whoever owns the master recording, whoever has the publishing rights, that money is split. But assuming for the sake of argument that as to bring the song yourself, you know, make sure that you are signed up with ASCAP BMI. So it’s something to consider, you know, so there are certain things like MTV, for example, because I’ve done a lot of stuff with them, their fees are not ginormous. But if you’re on a show that’s being you know, played all the time, you know, that check in the mail that you’re getting from ASCAP or BMI, might not, you’re not gonna be able to buy a yacht with it. But it’s something to consider when you’re thinking about the actual financial envelope.
Rachel Hurley 32:58
So say yes, so that reality show that’s in constant reruns
Dan Kaplowitz 33:03
Say yes to the reality show that’s in constant reruns. I mean, you know, I realize you have library music and production music. And I do think, you know, there’s a certain point at which a fee is simply too low, and not fair to the artist. And, you know, there’s a lot of crummy music out there. And, you know, the point is not about making it a race to the bottom, because I don’t, I don’t like to encourage the use, you know, you shouldn’t want to use a song you should have more than 50 bucks to pay for it, you should be able to, you should be able to reimburse the artist properly.
But that being said, you know, assuming the usage is non exclusive, and assuming that it’s not something really odious or offensive or awful. By and large, I encourage artists to do it. It’s a way to get your name out there. It’s a way to get at least a little bit of money, if not more. And it can sort of have a snowball effect.
Rachel Hurley 33:59
Yeah. And how often does it work out that you’re asking people to record something specific, like you mentioned earlier? And I assume that pays more, right?
Dan Kaplowitz 34:13
It all depends. In all the patents I’ve had. Again, it sort of comes down to negotiation. How desperate is the, you know, how desperate is the client for your artists and your artist specifically to do something? Ultimately, are they reaching out to 15 different bands and all having gone to the studio on spec?
I think certainly, and especially these days, you know, having easy access to the recording equipment in the studio is a real advantage. I found the artists who are some stylistically nimble, who can kind of have a few people I work with and just whatever I throw at them, so we need a Scott Joplin style Ragtime piano Finn. Great. I’m on it. I’ll have something for you in three hours.
I think it’s important. And certainly I encourage artists and artists were able to do that. I often tell them to sort of create a separate wheel, saying here’s my artists work. Here’s the stuff that I’ve put out on my album. Here’s some soundtrack or jingles or what have you.
Nobody can do everything. And I think it’s okay. I actually, when someone says, “Oh, I do everything, you know, there’s literally no genre,” I can’t handle that kind of bullshit. You know, it’s okay to say, “My specialties are a, b, and c. And here are some things that I can’t do.” Because the artist that I work with, if someone wants a big symphonic trailer style cue, or some people go to and if they want a goofy jingly Casio thing, it’s a different set of artists who I go to. So it’s completely fine to specialize.
But the ability to create custom work, or the very least to have, you know, have the stems and the instrumentals, for the tracks you’ve already created, is really valuable.
Rachel Hurley 36:11
I don’t know if this sounds dumb, but do you encourage your artists that you work with to kind of share that side of them when they’re creating music on their socials? And, like, get out there that way?
Dan Kaplowitz 36:24
Sure. I mean, you’d be surprised how many, I mean, there’s a lot of artists out there who their artist’s name, their band, their you know, this is them creating their art and speaking from the heart. Music can be really out there, it can be really emotional, it can be really non commercial. Oftentimes, the same people under a different name or under their own name, their day job is there. They’re making jingles and fun little stuff in the studio. And it’s, it’s much you know, it’s much more commercial, when someone says, Give us a suspense cue for a suspense scene in, you know, a Law & Order episode.
So I understand certainly for you know, they want to keep their personal art separate from the commercial work, plenty of other artists. Hey, every you know, it’s two sides of the same coin as far as they’re concerned. And certainly, if you had a song on a TV show, had a song in a movie, if you have a song that’s in, you know, the new EA Sports game, why wouldn’t you want to talk about that? Because then it becomes a selling point. And then that’s the type of thing that you include as a bullet point and the press release that a publicist might send out.
Rachel Hurley 37:37
I see a commercial almost every day on MSNBC, with the song in it is a song that I first heard on Tik Tok. It’s like some pop song that I heard on Tik Tok. And it was in every single video, and now it’s in commercials. And now I can’t get away from it. But I mean, like, those songs they get in your head, and then these advertising agencies, they’re jumping on them?
Dan Kaplowitz 38:02
Absolutely. We have art. And we work with a French artist called kid Francisco Lee. They have a track called Moon that I’m sure you’d hear. I mean, it’s, you know, on Tik Tok alone, millions and millions and millions and like The Rock used in one of his videos. And I mean, this has absolutely catapulted their career, you know, you go and you look at Spotify, and you look at their tracks, and this one is just far, far, far and away the most played one. And it’s all from this all fromTik Tok, and it does begin to snowball, then you start getting more requests, and you know, people start coming to you get to do more of the need to react to incoming requests, as opposed to kind of pushing the song out there.
Rachel Hurley 38:03
It’s really interesting, because obviously, I’m reading the trades every day, and I’m trying to keep up with the new presses coming out about new artists and you know, who’s hot and who, you know, and I, for the most part, you know, I think I’m on top of things. And then like, I do go on something like Tik Tok and see, like some songs trending. And then I go check it on Spotify, and I’m like, this is 10 million streams, and I’ve never heard of this person before.
Dan Kaplowitz 39:11
It’s I mean, in a way, it’s, at least for me, as you know,, we’re music industry people and we’re, we’re in it, right? And yet, we all have blind spots. And I’m amazed, sometimes. Five new artists, huge artists that were you know, they might have 100 million streams on Spotify, and I’ve never heard of them. I listen to music like you, I mean, all day, every day.
I mean, you know, to me, it’s a wonderful thing. There’s this incredible, incredible wealth of music out there. And I think it’s all the more reason why it’s important that there be people like me, like you. I don’t just mean there’s cameras or thousands of people in our positions, but we can kind of take that just that deluge of music, weed out the gravity crap and hopefully be able to present, you know, Find the diamonds in the rough.
Rachel Hurley 40:07
So do you work only with labels? Or do you work with independent artists also? Do they just reach out to you via your website?
Dan Kaplowitz 40:20
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m not. I’m not coy about money. My email address is dan@friendlyfirelicensing.com, I’m always happy to check out music. You know, these things that we’ve discussed having the metadata, you know, what I guarantee when someone’s sending you music, one of the first things I’ll ask is, who’s the label? Who’s the artist? Those are, those are just kind of foundational questions, obviously, has to be something that I like, it has to be something that I feel is unique. There are certain genres that we sort of feel we’re, we’re good on, we try to be very choosy about what we take on. But at the same time, for artists, and if I were an artist, I would only want to work with this sync agent who really wanted to work with me. Yeah, I certainly encourage artists, I mean, there’s a few ways to do this. Certainly, you can try and establish direct relationships with music supervisors, be respectful, get their name right, do a little bit of research and actually learn, you know, who they are and what projects that they’re working on. But since agents, either myself or there’s a variety of sync agencies out there, if you’re published, talk to your publisher, ask your publisher, do they have an in house person pitching for licensing, are they collaborating with a third party engagement in, you know, like us or someone else? Or, you know, I feel if you’re an artist, and you’re working with a publisher, it’s okay to be a little bit of a squeaky wheel and make sure that your music is sort of front of mine.
Rachel Hurley 41:53
And Joe Rudge was also telling me that he works with a lot of distributors directly.
Dan Kaplowitz 41:56
Sure. I mean, there are, you know, a lot of the like, let’s say, The Orchard for example. They will often have non exclusive licensing arrangements where they say, hey, if you want us to, in addition to making sure that your album is up on all the streaming services, you know, we have an in house to you, and we’ll pitch it. So if you’re working with a digital distributor, and they have a sales team, absolutely, no, make sure the terms are fair, I frown on anyone who’s pitching and taking their, you know, outrageously high commission or percentage. There’s a practice called retitling that you can Google. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s technically, it’s legal, but I find it to be pretty dubious, since for basically certain, you know, certain things agents say, we’re going to pitch your song. And if we get your song into this TV show, for example, we’re actually going to resubmit it, we’re going to re register it with BMI under a new name, so that every time the song appears in that TV show, we get the money and not you. Again, it’s legal, if you know, if you’re open to it, and the sync agency that you’re working with has been transparent about the fact that they do that and why they do it. Okay, fair enough. My personal opinion is that it’s kind of a, I don’t know. It feels sleazy to me. So always, always look at the terms, you know, if you’re working with the same page, and are they pitching you on an exclusive basis, or an honest, who said, both are fair, both are legitimate, but these are reasonable questions to ask. You know, because you are entrusting your music with someone else. And you know, you want to make sure that it’s being pushed conscientiously. At the same time, I always had Arsenal, understand that what we’re doing is speculative, you know, none of us can snap our fingers and magically make something happen. All any of us can really do is kind of try and build relationships with music supervisors. And, you know, get, get some songs in front of them that we feel really fit. And then, as I said, it’s a whole chain of people notice on work, so
Rachel Hurley 44:16
it just seems like your best bet would be to connect with someone who does sync licensing who does the pitching like you. Because you’re going to reach out with multiple people that gives your someone’s music, multiple opportunities to be heard, versus trying to reach out to individual music supervisors. You know, and mostly you’re just going to be, you know, there’s too many things in their inbox that they have to take care of, then, you know, checking out some one or two random songs from someone they’ve never heard of, and then getting back to them. You know, it seems like it’s better. It’s just something that I would tell a musician about hiring a publicist. You know, you’re welcome to try to reach out to these writers on your own. But you might get more traction. If you reach out to someone who has preestablished relationships with multiple places.
Dan Kaplowitz 45:06
It’s you know, it’s about building a team and finding a reliable, trusted partner who’s on your wavelength. You know, I don’t want to put words in the mouths of music supervisors, certainly there’s providers who’ve gone directly to bands. And that’s fantastic. You know, if you’re a band and you’re friends with a supervisor, they approach you out of the blue. Awesome, hell yeah, you know, nurture that relationship. I think a lot of music supervisors, not only do they want to get the right music, they want to know that they’re not, there’s no nasty surprises down the road. They don’t want to get they don’t want to use a hip hop track on electronic track and learn a day before, you know, the editing locks that there’s a sample in it, that hasn’t been clear, you know. So it is a relationship based industry. And I think a lot of music supervisors want to work with people who aren’t going to, you know, who are reliable.
That may, if you’re a musician, or artist, and you’re listening to this interview, that may well be you. I’m not suggesting that artists aren’t or can’t be reliable. But a music supervisor doesn’t necessarily know that until they’ve met you and worked with you. They just don’t know. Right? Which is why they often work to build relationships with directly with labels, publishers and sync agencies, because we do this for a living. And so hopefully, most of us sort of know the pitfalls to avoid the red flags to point out at a time.
Rachel Hurley 46:31
Right. All right, well, great information, any final thoughts, anything we didn’t cover that you think’s important?
Dan Kaplowitz 46:39
None, and I guess I just reiterate what I said earlier, I think many, you know, beyond the financial value in it, it’s also incredibly cool feeling to see your art also be incorporated in someone else’s art. You know, to get a song into a big TV show, or you know, even just a tiny, you know, special little NBR house phone is, I think, worth it. And so I encourage every band, every artist, especially if they have some extra time, because you know, they’re not going out on the road, wherever they are in their career to think about how they can incorporate licensing or build a licensing strategy into their general career roadmap, there’s really not much to lose.
Rachel Hurley 47:22
That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for spending the time you know, and giving us all the great information. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Rachel Hurley 47:33
And there you have it. Thanks again to Dan for taking the time to chat with me. To sum up what we talked about, there’s never been a better time to put together a sync licensing plan for your music. And the best way to do that is to find a sync agent. You can certainly reach out to them on your own. But a better strategy may be to get an introduction. If you don’t have any connections, it’s time to start networking. You should be talking to other musicians and industry folks you know. There’s tons of online groups you can join and virtual conferences you can attend. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Thanks for listening. If you’re interested in more insider information just like this, be sure to check out our weekly newsletter. You can sign up on sweetheartpub.com, and don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast to be notified when the next one comes out. If you have a specific question, feel free to reach out. You can tweet me or shoot me an email. I’m not hard to find. The music in this episode was created by Frank Keith of Great Peacock, and big thanks to Brandon Kendor for producing this episode. Now, go do something useful.
