Traditional Artistry vs. Sync Licensing: Why I stopped being a traditional artist by Terrell Burt10/31/2022 I met Terrell Burt via Taxi Music, which is where many others and I, first learned about music licensing. Terrell is a rapper and songwriter who can’t remember a time when he didn’t love everything about music. But following the traditional route was not quite working out as he had hoped. I think many of us pursuing a career in music can relate to this. Sync licensing, however is another avenue to take in your music journey. In this blog, Terrell writes about his journey as he transformed from a traditional artist to one who now has many placements in Film & TV with shows such as The Young and the Restless (CBS), Keeping Up With The Kardashians (E!), All American (The CW), Fuller House (Netflix), The Rookie (ABC), The Neighborhood (CBS), Claws (TNT), Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta (VH1), and Black Ink Crew (VH1) and more! Here is his story and advice. As I look back over my 15+-year journey as an artist, I can’t help but think of it in various stages. I became intrigued as a teenager, not only by the idea of lyrical expression, but the idea of actually taking it somewhere. While honing my craft from my late teens until my early twenties, I was on a relentless endeavor as a traditional artist. When I use the term “traditional artist,” I’m referring to the aspiration of building a buzz around your artistry, independent of any label backing, and making as many people as possible aware of what you do. That meant something different than it does now. Now, that might mean growing your social media following or trying to go viral; but before the digital age of streaming and prior to social media being what it is now, that meant performing live at any and every venue as much as you possibly could while actively releasing music (on CD’s. Remember those?), repeating this cycle, and taking it as far as you could on your own until you hopefully caught the eyes and ears of a manager, agent, or label to help take your career to the next level. I don’t mean to date myself, but I came up in the era where ownership and creative control weren't highly valued (rappers like Chance the Rapper and the late Nipsey Hussle are/were big on this), so remaining an independent artist wasn’t the ultimate goal for me. For many, it was always meant to be a temporary destination until you progressed on to bigger and better things. Well after years of consistent devotion and activity on my local music scene, my bigger and better never came. I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do for years, but I had hit a plateau and couldn’t get the music to connect outside of my city—even with the Internet and its possibilities at the time. I took it as far as I could with the limited resources that I had, but there was no manager or label waiting around the corner for me. Fast forward about two years from the dreaded plateau, I got into music licensing (also referred to as sync licensing) and then that’s when I realized that this was my “bigger and better.” Music licensing is defined by studiobinder.com as “a right held by someone to distribute and/or use a piece of copyrighted music. Often seen in movies, a music license is also used for commercials, television shows, internet videos, and any other visual medium that wants to use a song with permission.” I had first heard about sync licensing back in college (my Business of Music teacher had a placement with his band on MTV’s The Real World), but I didn’t really know the ins and outs of it until I joined TAXI Music back in 2014. TAXI helped me to redefine, and even expand, my idea of success. Once I did that, everything changed. My approach to artistry, songwriting, collaborations, etc., it all changed because I finally had a clearer idea of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. This was not the case on my traditional artist journey. All of this caught me by surprise for the better, but when it did, I leaned into it 100%. The main distinction between my journey before sync licensing and now is this: Traditional artistry = making a sale (album, EP, single, stream, etc.) to a consumer once, while sync licensing = making repeat sales to the same consumer over and over again. Repeat sales in sync licensing is when the same song gets licensed multiple times. This has happened to me on multiple occasions and I’m still amazed every single time. My most recent placement is in an independent film called TÁR starring Cate Blanchett. The song “B U NIQ” was created with my collaborator Karina “Kaz” Zabala seven years ago. Artists on the traditional journey are not usually actively promoting songs that were released seven years ago. Your fans, as devoted as they might be, are not largely interested in your older material (unless you are at a certain stage in your career). They are primarily chomping at the bits for new releases, and with 100,000 songs being uploaded to Spotify and other DSPs daily (according to https://variety.com/2022/music/news/new-songs-100000-being-released-every-day-dsps-1235395788/ ), this can be exhausting to keep up with and to cut through all of the ruckus. Now streaming may throw sort of a monkey wrench in my above illustration and cause it to be challenged, because technically you can have repeat consumers if they’re continually streaming your music. Before streaming, my illustration was a bit more robust because consumers were likely only buying one physical copy of your project for themselves. They may have purchased other copies for family or friends, but repeat consumers pre-streaming were not the norm. Or if a parent had a child who really wanted a CD of their favorite artist/band/group, there was a high probability that the parent would only be buying the child one copy. But I think that my illustration still has legs because the artist should not put their end-all be-all into streaming. Because it’s so easy and affordable to create music now, you may be vying to retain the consumer who very well could be a repeat consumer, but there are 99,999 other high quality songs to compete with. Not to mention, there’s not a large enough ROI (return on investment) to devote too heavily into it in my opinion, though some gradual progress is being made (please visit https://www.nmpa.org/publishers-streamers-reach-deal-for-highest-streaming-royalty-rate-ever-heres-how-it-works-billboard/ for more information). Even with over six million streams of my viral TikTok song “Limits the Sky,” (please visit https://ritzherald.com/houston-producers-song-takes-off-on-tiktok/ for more information) the ROI has been significantly greater for me in sync licensing. For example, I released a song back in 2012 called “Visions of a Future” on all digital outlets. My all time payments to date, after ten years, was only $13.72. Three years later, I got this same song signed to a music library (the terms "publisher" and “music library" are interchangeable in sync licensing) and one year after its signing, it got placed in a TV show called Containment. The sync fee, or the upfront payment paid to the copyright holders of the song to synchronize (or sync) the song to picture, was $500.00. I made more in one year from the initial signing to placement than I have in ten years of streaming and digital downloads. And this was three months after my very first network TV placement on a show called Grandfathered starring John Stamos. My portion of the sync fee for Grandfathered, after splitting half with my co-writer Kaz Zabala, was almost more than the entire sync fee for Containment. These two placements were some of the confirmations that I needed to go all in for sync licensing. Nothing that I did as a traditional artist compares to what I’ve been given the grace to do in sync licensing. But truthfully, I wouldn’t change or re-do anything because everything that I’ve experienced and all of the people that I met along the way was for a reason greater than me. I will never discourage an artist from learning how to market their music or growing their social media following, because at the end of the day you have to do what works for you. But I know firsthand what it feels like to do all of the right things and it does not go the way that you intended. Can you pursue both? Of course you can, in theory, but depending on your stage of life (family, 9 to 5 job if music isn’t your full-time income, hobbies, etc.), it may be difficult to juggle both pursuits. If an artist dedicated their time to learning and understanding sync licensing the way that they have dedicated to their traditional artistry, you may not regret it. For the artists that this may have resonated with, and for those who would like to transition into sync licensing, these are some of my top practical tips. I learned all of this from TAXI Music, so please check out their website at www.taxi.com when you have the chance. 1. Typically, songs for sync jump right into the "meat" of the piece from the opening notes after a short intro. The reason for this is because a music supervisor on a TV show or film is going to be sifting through hundreds of songs, and they'll press play and listen to the first few seconds of a track before deciding if it's something they like. So those first few seconds must count and the song has to represent itself fully from the beginning. Long intros just don't work for film/TV songs like they might for radio-type songs. 2. When writing lyrics for film/TV, make them universal/general and avoid specifics like names, places, dates, times, and brands. The reason for universal lyrics is that you don't want to hinder any potential placement opportunities for your songs. Besides Hip Hop, I love classic R&B/Soul music and Gladys Knight’s “Midnight Train to Georgia" is a timeless song that I appreciate. But in theory, it doesn’t necessarily work well for film or TV because it lists a specific time of day and a state. It would only work in a scene about a train going to Georgia. But the industry moves fast, and while new content is being made every day and creating endless possibilities for sync artists, you wouldn't want to wait around for a project like that. A lyric like "Taking a train to the city" would work much better because it can be applied to any context anywhere in the world at any time. 3. Start paying closer attention to the music that is used in the TV shows and movies that you watch. Music that is synced is typically not the focal point. It is usually more in the background as the characters are engaged in dialogue that progress the storyline. My placement in Spenser Confidential, a #1 on Netflix at the time right before COVID lockdown, was like this. The actor Winston Duke had on a pair of headphones and my song “Gimme That” (a co-write with my friend Owen Chaim) was what he was listening to. When I posted on my social media pages about the placement (as I tend to do), many said that they couldn’t hear my song and they were absolutely right. It was faint because the focal point was the dialogue between the characters of Winston and Mark Wahlberg meeting for the first time. A few websites that will help you on your Sync Licensing Journey Tunefind.com – find music in your favorite shows and other shows Taxi.com – learn about music licensing through a weekly on-line web cast, their forum, and music conference and music briefs Ispot.tv- music in ads Syncsummit.com - learn about music licensing through weekly free on-line meetings, listening sessions and conferences RobinFrederick.com- courses on writing hit songs as well as songs for Film & TV Licensingsongs.com- Free checklist and mini courses on Sync Licensing Terrell Burt is a rapper and songwriter who can’t remember a time when he didn’t love everything about music. Writing lyrics and recording music on his computer as a hobby during his teenage years, has progressed into Burt becoming a successful rapper with placements in TV shows. While working full time and still pursuing music through film and TV placements, Burt received his Masters of Business Administration from Saint Leo University in the spring of 2017. In September of the same year, he married his bride, Lindsay, who has been an encouragement to him in these pursuits. http://www.terrellburt.com/
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AuthorMichelle Lockey is a multi-award winning singer-songwriter sharing the knowledge she has learned over the years writing for Film & TV. Like what you are reading? Please Sign up to receive a FREE Music Licensing checklist! 10 Steps to Sync Success
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