Andy Lykens

Innovating and operating through growth

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Learn About Music Licensing And Why Getting Music On TV Can Be Valuable

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Music licensing is something record labels, music publishers, artists, songwriters, and pretty much everyone who survives in music is focused on. Music licensing, or more specifically music synchronization licensing, simply means the fixing of music to moving picture.

(Other types of music licenses exist, so clarify music synchronization licensing when necessary!)

Music In Commercials

Types of common music synchronization licenses

  • Advertising – The use of music in commercials promoting products or services

  • TV – Adding music to television programming, or television promotions, to enhance the project

  • Film – Probably the highest profile use of music in media

  • Video Games – This covers everything from consoles to apps and is an area more and more musicians are trying to get involved in

As you can guess, music on television, music in commercials, and music all media serve as excellent outlets for artists both classic and emerging. Let’s look at three key benefits of licensing music.

Benefits of Music Licensing

  • Exposure – Licensing music can be an excellent way to reach a lot of people at once. Music used in commercials, popular TV shows, and big films can end up in front of an audience many times a day for years!

  • Pay – If a song gets licensed, there’s usually a good fee involved. Unlike selling albums where a significant amount of sales is needed in order to generate revenue, a few licenses a year can be enough to live on for a decade!

  • Association – Association creates an instant recognizability. When someone hears your song, they may automatically remember a favorite scene in a film or identify it with values like ones their favorite brands represent.

Lots of other questions arise when you’re considering licensing your music on TV, in commercials, or for any type of media like how to value exposure? What is your song worth? And what do you need to know in order to start the licensing process?

Have you had any experience with music licensing? Tell us about it in the comments or ask any questions and we’ll help you through the process!

Break Through Resistance And Land Music Placements On TV

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MTV Case Study 3

Today we’re going to look at the final case study in the value of exposure series. In case you’re new to the newsletter and want to see how this got started you can do so here. Also, here are links to:

Case Study 1
Case Study 2

Alright, let’s get rolling. Etan wrote in to let me know about how MTV placements, and placements similar to MTV, have impacted him. While Lauren is an independent artist, and Andrew is an artist/publisher, Etan is more of a pure songwriter/producer and publisher. Hopefully his story can help you see yet another way many people are finding success in licensing music, and using music licensing to serve their needs depending on their ultimate goals.

Here’s what Etan had to say about his experience:

In 2009 I received a big envelope from BMI in the mail. 
Thinking it was just another one of their newsletter type things,
I casually opened it to find out that it was a royalty check for my
music being used on….. (drum roll please)… the MTV VMAS…

Now this was an AMAZING feeling and moment for me because:

  1. I had never even had a single thought of trying get my music on TV
  2. I was actually getting paid for my music
  3. I had taken the time, 2 years prior, to learn about PROs, publishing,
    royalties, etc. enough to know that I should sign up and register with a
    PRO and I was seeing the “fruits” of my efforts.

4 years, and what seems like a million hours of reading, learning, and
workshops later, i’ve amassed well over 50 placements on a lot of the
top shows in the reality TV space, heard by millions in what seems like
an unreal amount of countries worldwide…

If I had to offer any advice to others in similar positions, the most important things are:

  1. Learn the business side of music because talent alone is only going to help someone else get rich off of you.  It’s hard.  Very hard.  But worth it.
  2. Build a team and then pass that knowledge on so that you can help each other get better each day.
  3. Learn marketing, psychology, and storytelling because they are just as important as the music (if not more), even though, as musicians, a majority of us do not want to believe that.

The Doc Brown Advantage:
“I would focus a little bit less on me and more on building real relationships with real people.  When you’re young you think you can do it all just off of raw talent once you start seeing a little success (and even before).  At a certain level everyone has talent and it’s EVERYTHING ELSE that actually determines how far you’ll go.”

IMHO: Etan is spot on with his observations about how far talent and music actually take you. In fact, the common thread in all of these stories has to do with simple, persistent outreach and relationship building. All of these musicians aren’t mega-stars (yet!), but they’ve all found some really great success combining their talents with simple, fundamental business sense and genuine connection.

Focus On Your Goals To Achieve Success

My favorite part about Etan’s story is the clear focus he has developing his business. He had his eye on a prize, continues to go after it, and continues to teach and learn from his team. Also, check out his timeline – his success was not overnight (and by the way, if you believe in “overnight success,” please just go find some traffic play in). He worked really hard for YEARS. But the good news is, that work compounds itself over time. It gets easier and easier to create relationships and develop your skills and you make fewer mistakes. It all leads to more success in the long term.

To thank Etan for sharing with us, do me a favor and check out his website here:

EYM Digital

Finally, I hope you’ve enjoyed this series and have had some significant take away from your peers. If you’ve used ANY of my material to help you build a relationship with a music supervisor, I’d love to hear about it. Please email me, I’d love to hear about it!

What Does It Take To Get 6 Songs Licensed By MTV?

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MTV Music Placement Case Study 2

Today we’re continuing the series of case studies from the exposure vs. value post. In this post we’ll be looking at someone who is self-published and has licensed music across a couple MTV series.

First, if you’d like to check out the origination of this series, you can do so here.

Also, here is a link to the first case study. Caught up? Man you can read fast. Nice work. Here we go.

I like a lot about Andrew’s story because he’s done two very smart things (which is 2 more than most people do); First, he’s acting as his own music publisher, and second he’s outreaching directly to a music supervisor. Here’s what Andrew had to say about his experience:

“I am new to the licensing side of music and when I first decided to give it a shot I was really surprised at how hard it is to get someone to listen to material! But after lots of research, emails, calls, and follow up emails I got in contact with the music supervisor for 16 and Pregnant. He listened to some of my twin brother and I’s material and liked it (and more importantly he liked us) and decided to use 6 of our songs for his shows! It was amazing!”

Pretty awesome right? Here’s a guy who literally just boot-strapped his way to some placements, represented his own catalog, and got a really nice result. Here’s what he has to say about what he gained from the experience:

“I hear a lot of people say MTV doesn’t pay much for their music but for us the amount we got up front was pleasing.  On top of that MTV soundtrack was tweeting our twitter handle and song name every time our song played on the original air date…We Also got the opportunity to be the featured artist on MTV soundtrack website and with that we got extra tweets and Facebook shout-outs.

Music Licensing Can Be Great Money!

I will say that the number of fans we got wasn’t as good as the money we got from the licensing fee and royalties for being the songwriter and publisher. Over all we gained some fans and got credible placements that generate royalties! We also got to establish a solid relationship with someone who can really help us.”

This is awesome and you can probably see why this is one of my favorite stories. Let’s do a brief recap and then I’ll offer some insight of my own to see where Andrew might start setting himself up for more big wins like these.

Value Gained: Andrew got the best of many worlds. Multiple placements that paid him out fairly, royalties, exposure as featured artist and lots of twitter activity.

The Doc Brown Advantage: Like Lauren I asked Andrew what he might do differently were he given the chance again:

“Well one thing i found out is that it’s a very long process. It took me well over a year to get those placements and in that time I learned a lot. One thing I learned and will always do is to build a professional relationship. These guys get thousands of songs every single week so it is very important to stand out and be memorable, if they get an e-blasted email addressed to them and every other music supervisor I know for a fact they wont bother to read it….The reality is that i have tried ALL of the sites where you pay to submit songs for big deals hoping that it will get used in something. The most important thing I have learned is if you want something to happen you have to make it happen yourself.“

IMHO: There are three highlights I’d like to make about Andrew’s situation. First, since he was representing songs he had composed, not only is he directly negotiating his own fees & terms, BUT he also gets to keep ALL of the money generated from the license. He keeps the sync fee, the writer’s share, and the publisher’s share of the performance royalties. Generally speaking if you’re using a library or placement service, you’d get ONLY your writer’s royalty. If you had a typical publisher, you’d get half (or less) of the sync fee plus writer’s share. What a HUGE difference it makes to do it yourself. More work? You bet. But I think it’s totally worth it for a number of reasons.

Great Relationships Mean More Music PlacementsNext, let’s not overlook the value of the relationship he established with the music supervisor. Yes, the placements are awesome, the upfront money and royalties are great, and all the social media attention is nice. But probably the MOST valuable takeaway from this experience in my opinion, is his music supervisor relationship. That person could go on to work on many more shows, films, at an ad agency, you name it. If Andrew periodically checks in with the music supervisor, it could mean YEARS of placements, royalties, and heck, even a new friend. This is why I constantly stress being professional and building connections in a genuine manner. It just works better for everyone.

Finally, Andrew REALLY worked hard to get these placements. One year is not an atypical amount of time to securing your first placement (sometimes it can be longer)! Remember to keep on plugging away, stick to your goal and follow your plan. Stay in touch with the good connections you end up making and let yourself grow with them. I’ll talk about this more in my upcoming book which I think you’re really going to love.

If I were to offer advice to Andrew, I would tell him first and foremost to keep following up with that music supervisor. Ask him what new shows he’s working on or even if he wants to grab coffee sometime soon as a thank you. Second is to reflect on that year of research and outreach and try to hone in on the processes that worked. What did that music supervisor respond well to? Was it a particular email or phone conversation? What were key talking points with him that might be relevant elsewhere? Use it as a starter-template to start outreach to new connections. Finally, Andrew had a lot of social media attention but it seems like there’s more opportunity there to engage fans and potential fans. What about creating an email list sending a free single to anyone who saw his music on the show?

I hope you enjoyed Andrew’s story as much as I did and Andrew, I hope you’re really proud. You did excellent work and I’m really happy it paid off for you. You’ve all heard my opinion, what about yours? What would you tell Andrew to do as far as social media goes? Have any of you found really effective strategies for capitalizing on quick bursts of activity online? I’d love to hear about it so send me an email!

We’ve got a couple more case studies to review and I think you’ll find them equally as interesting. Also, please do me a huge favor and check out Andrew’s band Ratham Stone online as a thank you for sharing his story, ideas, and thoughts with us:

http://www.rathamstone.com/