Sync licensing is how a song ends up under a scene in a film, in a series, in an advert or in a video game. The name comes from synchronisation: your music is synchronised with moving pictures. For independent artists it can bring real income and attention, but it runs on its own rules. Nobody finds your song on a streaming platform and simply uses it. Someone has to clear the rights, and you have to be easy to clear.
What sync licensing is
A sync licence is permission to use a piece of music together with visuals in a specific project. It is agreed for each use: one film, one campaign, one game. The licence spells out the details:
- which part of the song is used and for how long
- the media: cinema, TV, online, social media, in-game
- the territory: one country, a region or the whole world
- the term: a few months for an ad campaign, often far longer for a film
- whether the use is exclusive, so nobody else in that category can use the song at the same time
Payment usually comes as a fee for the licence itself. If the film or series is later broadcast or shown publicly, the songwriters can also earn performance royalties through their collecting society, which is one more reason to register your songs there.
Two licences: the master and the composition
Every recorded song carries two sets of rights. The master is the recording itself, owned by whoever made or paid for it: often the artist, sometimes a label. The composition is the melody and lyrics, owned by the songwriters and their publisher if they have one.
A sync needs both. The production signs a master use licence with the owner of the recording and a sync licence with the owners of the composition. If you wrote, produced and own everything yourself, you can sign both, which makes you very attractive: one person, one answer, nobody to chase.
Problems start when ownership is unclear. A co-writer who never signed anything, a producer who believes he owns part of the master, a sample nobody cleared: any of these can kill a placement at the last minute. Before you pitch, write down who owns what, in percentages, and get everyone involved to confirm it in writing.
Music supervisors and how songs get chosen
Music supervisors choose and clear music for films, series, ads and games. They work with tight deadlines and budgets, so they need songs that fit the scene and can be cleared quickly. A brilliant song with messy rights loses to a good song with clean rights.
Your music can reach them in a few ways:
- Directly, with a short, respectful email and one or two songs that fit what they actually work on. Look at their recent projects first.
- Through sync agents and music libraries, which pitch catalogues to supervisors for a share of the fee. Read the terms carefully: some are non-exclusive, some want exclusivity or part of your rights, and some re-title tracks.
- Through local productions: film students, indie game developers, advertising agencies and video creators in your own city. Small placements build a track record and relationships.
Say Lalə Nova has a moody, mostly instrumental track called "Gecə qatarı". She sends it to a small studio making a road movie, with a note that she owns both the master and the composition and can send stems the same day. That last sentence often matters more to the supervisor than the song's stream count.
Files to have ready: stems, instrumentals, clean versions
Editors often need to cut your music, loop it or lower it under dialogue. Have these ready before anyone asks:
- a high-quality WAV of the full song
- an instrumental version without vocals
- a clean version if the lyrics are explicit
- stems, such as drums, bass, music and vocals, as separate files of the same length that all start at zero
- short edits if you can, for example 30 and 60 seconds with a proper ending
Name every file clearly with artist, title and version. Someone working late before a deadline will not guess what "final_v7_new.wav" is.
Metadata that makes your music easy to license
Sync is a search business. Supervisors and libraries search by mood, tempo, genre, instruments and lyrical themes, and they need contacts and ownership splits straight away. For each track, keep a simple sheet with:
- title, artist, songwriters and their shares, publisher if any
- owner of the master and a contact for clearance
- the ISRC of the recording
- tempo, key, genre, mood words, vocal or instrumental, language of the lyrics
- whether the song contains samples and whether they are cleared
Put what you can into the file's own metadata too. If the song is already on streaming platforms, the ISRC ties the licensed recording to the released one.
If your release is in Content ID through CULT, a whitelist request can be sent for the client's channel. Rights are checked first and approval isn't automatic, so start before the campaign goes live.