How Do I Get Into Sync Licensing?
Short answer: you get into sync by building a catalog of well produced, fully cleared songs and getting them in front of the people who pitch music supervisors: music libraries, sync agencies, and publishers. Supervisors rarely take cold pitches from artists they do not know. The practical path is to make your music easy to license, sign the right songs with the right middlemen, and keep feeding the catalog, because sync is a volume and relationships business more than a lottery ticket.
Worth knowing who is telling you this: I am Tyler Shamy, a songwriter with more than 800 sync placements across film, TV, and advertising, including Euphoria, Selling Sunset, Shameless, The Kardashians, Love Is Blind, and Lucifer. Sync has been the backbone of my music income for two decades, and everything below is how it actually works from inside.
What sync licensing actually is
A sync license is permission to synchronize music with picture: a TV episode, a film, an ad, a trailer, a game. Every use needs two clearances, one for the composition (the song as written) and one for the master (the specific recording). If you wrote and recorded the song yourself and nobody else owns a piece, you control both. That is called being one stop, and it is the single most valuable word in this business, because a supervisor with a deadline can clear your song with one email.
The money comes in two parts. The upfront sync fee runs anywhere from a couple hundred dollars for a small library placement to five and occasionally six figures for a major ad campaign. Then the backend: performance royalties paid through your PRO every time the show airs, which for a song that lands in something heavily broadcast and rerun can quietly outearn the upfront fee for years.
Who actually pitches supervisors
Music supervisors choose the songs. But they mostly pull from sources they trust, so your real question is which middleman to reach, not how to reach the supervisor. Three kinds, and they differ more than they appear to:
- Music libraries take large catalogs, often non exclusively at the lower end, and place volume into reality TV, daytime, and background uses. Fees are smaller, but this is the most realistic first door, and reality TV placements at scale are real money. A lot of my catalog works this way.
- Sync agencies represent fewer artists, usually exclusively, and pitch the bigger briefs: ads, trailers, premium series. Harder to sign with, better fees when it works.
- Publishers take a share of your composition in exchange for pitching, administration, and collection. A real publisher earns that share; signing away publishing to a library that merely warehouses your songs does not.
Study the credits of shows your music actually fits, find which libraries and agencies placed those songs, and submit the way each company asks on its own site. Ten targeted submissions beat a hundred blind ones.
What supervisors actually need from you
- Broadcast ready masters. The recording competes with major label records on the same episode. A great song with a demo quality master loses to a decent song that is finished.
- Instrumental versions of everything. Dialogue happens. No instrumental, no placement, more often than you would believe.
- Clean ownership and a split sheet for every co-write, so yes can actually mean yes. If a co-writer is unreachable, that song is unpitchable. Splits are their own subject, covered in songwriter splits and royalties.
- Complete metadata: writer names, PRO affiliations, splits, and contact information embedded in the file name and delivery. An untraceable song does not get licensed.
- Emotionally clear songs. Editors cut to lyrics that state a feeling plainly. Universal, present tense themes place; dense wordplay and hyper specific names mostly do not. Song endings that resolve cleanly help the edit.
The realistic first year
1. Register with a PRO (ASCAP or BMI in the United States) so backend royalties have somewhere to go. 2. Get your best five to ten songs finished to a competitive standard, each with an instrumental, each fully documented. 3. Build a target list of libraries and agencies from the credits of shows your music fits. 4. Submit properly and keep writing while you wait, because the catalog you build this year is the pitch material for next year. 5. When agreements arrive, read the term, the territory, the exclusivity, and who keeps the publishing before you celebrate.
The rhythm to expect: silence, then a trickle, then compounding. My first placements were small library spots in shows nobody remembers. The relationships from those led to better briefs, and the catalog kept working in the background. Sync rewards patience with a production habit attached.
Common questions
How much does a sync placement pay?
The range is enormous. Background use in reality TV through a library might pay a few hundred dollars or less upfront; an indie film feature use commonly runs low four figures; a national ad campaign or major trailer can reach five or six figures. On top of the fee, TV broadcast placements pay performance royalties through your PRO every time the episode airs, and on a rerun heavy show that backend adds up for years.
Do I need a publisher to get sync placements?
No. Plenty of working sync writers are unpublished and place music through libraries and sync agencies while keeping their publishing. A publisher makes sense when they bring real pitching relationships and administration you cannot manage yourself. What you should not do is hand publishing to a company that is not actively earning it.
How do I contact music supervisors directly?
Mostly, at the start, you do not. Supervisors work under deadline and pull from trusted sources, so a cold email from an unknown artist rarely gets played. The exceptions are earned: meeting them through conferences and panels, a referral, or their own submission channels when posted. Until then, libraries and sync agents are the door that actually opens.
Can I get sync placements if my song has a sample or a co-writer?
A co-writer is fine as long as splits are documented and everyone is reachable and agreeable, though fully one stop songs clear faster and win ties. An uncleared sample makes a song effectively unpitchable, because no supervisor will touch a use that could trigger a claim. Clear it or replace it before the song goes in anyone's catalog.