The Europe In Synch Podcast

EP01: An Introduction To The Europe In Synch Initiative.

• Europe In Synch • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Welcome to the Europe In Synch podcast.

I'm Paul Cheetham and today I'll be introducing you to the Europe In Synch initiative by talking to some of the key people involved in the project.

Europe In Synch is created, managed, promoted, and driven by several European organizations and companies and is truly a cross-border collaboration. 

The goals are to bring together young professionals from the music sector with decision-makers from film and advertising to provide a real-life, hands-on, learning experience, as well as promoting European music in the complex field of synchronization. This is achieved through various forms of communication, knowledge-building and networking via focused mentoring and peer training sessions.

We're going to kick-off our regular podcast series by introducing you to some of the people involved who can let us know a bit more about how the project started and what it is aiming to achieve over the initial four-year span of the initiative. 

So, I'm joined at the table by co-founders, Markus Linde and Nis Bøgvad; music in games expert, Nikolina Finska; and the man in charge of communications, Hannes Tschürtz.

We recorded these conversations around a big table in Hamburg on 12.08.2022.
We hope you enjoy the episode and thank you for listening!

Find out more about our guests:

Europe In Synch is created, managed, promoted, and driven by several European organizations and companies and is a truly cross-border collaboration.
The goals are to bring together professionals from the music sector with decision-makers from film & advertising to provide a real-life, hands-on, learning experience, and to promote European music in the complex field of synchronization, through communication, knowledge-building and networking via focused mentoring and peer training sessions.


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Intro/Outro music is an instrumental edit of "Gimme" by Daffodils.
They're on Soundcloud.

Europe In Synch is co-funded by the European Union.

This is a SuperSwell production for Europe In Synch...

THE EUROPE IN SYNCH PODCAST

Episode 01: An Introduction to the Europe In Synch Initiative.

  • Host: Paul Cheetham.
  • With: Markus Linde, Nis Bøgvad, Nikolina Finska, and Hannes Tschürtz.


INTRO: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Europe In Synch podcast. I'm Paul Cheetham and today I'll be introducing you to the Europe In Synch initiative by talking to some of the key people involved in the project. Europe In Synch is created, managed, promoted, and driven by several European organizations and companies and is truly a cross-border collaboration. The goals are to bring together young professionals from the music sector with decision-makers from film and advertising to provide a real-life, hands-on, learning experience, as well as promoting European music in the complex field of synchronization. This is achieved through various forms of communication, knowledge-building and networking via focused mentoring and peer training sessions.

We're going to kick-off our regular podcast series by introducing you to some of the people involved who can let us know a bit more about how the project started and what it is aiming to achieve over the initial four-year span of the initiative. So, I'm joined at the table by co-founders, Markus Linde and Nis Bøgvad; music in games expert, Nikolina Finska; and the man in charge of communications, Hannes Tschürtz.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:01:35] Markus, let's start at the start, shall we? Where did the idea come from? 

MARKUS LINDE: [00:01:41] It started out with a spontaneous idea, really, some four years ago at a music conference in Portugal. Every conference these days seems to have panels with regards to sync - sync being the synchronization of music to moving pictures - because it's an interesting and creative way for rights owners to make money off their music. They bring in supervisors from America, like the big ones from Disney or from Netflix or from some big movies and you always have a room full of people going there and hoping for advice how to get their music synched, “What is this secret behind getting music on film, on television, on commercials?”. But it's always like a bit of a show off and then you go home and you can't even leave them a CD these days anymore. So, you are kind of stuck and frustrated after those sessions. And after one too many of these sessions, we stood together and said, “This is frustrating. We have to do something. There's never a follow up and there's never something to take home from these panels”. This is where the early idea came from. I think, within days we decided to create a little bit of a project and one of our trio, Nuno Saraiva, well, he came up with the idea of making it a European project and to apply for funds from Brussels. There's quite some pots of money for cultural projects, from all kinds of cultures, from architecture, literature, film, et cetera. And we did a little bit of research and found a scheme called Preparatory Action. It was funding for one year projects…..

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:03:18] This is through the Music Moves Europe initiative, right?

MARKUS LINDE: [00:03:22] Right. That was the, like, the cultural initiative in Brussels. So, the idea turned into an initiative, turned into a project, and we were accepted. It took some, like, I dunno, six months or so before we got a decision and, all of a sudden, we were in the position that we had to put it into life.

NIS BØGVAD: [00:03:41] I would love to add to Markus's start with the conferences. An example is we could do a panel with a film score composer with maybe five people in the audience and next door there was, like, a CEO from Coca-Cola, “How to get your music on a Coke ad” and it was packed with people, you know, and that was, not annoying, but it was, like, an eye opener for us to say, well, the four or five or six people in our room was actually quite interested and, actually also stakeholders in our business in general. So, we thought that, well, if we could spend more time and more quality time together, that would be something that we could build on. And that was something that we also missed - to sit down in one room and spend time together. We are all sharing knowledge and we are all getting more experience by every workshop we do.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:04:34] Very good. I mentioned in the intro that this is a cross-border collaboration. Who are the partners and stakeholders involved at this point?

MARKUS LINDE: [00:04:42] Well, originally it was the three of us who had the idea - being Nis Bøgvad from Copenhagen; being Nuno Saraiva from Portugal; and myself, Markus Linde from Hamburg. Nis and I are music supervisors, or music agents, Nuno is a publisher, an artist, artist manager - has many hats on. In step one, it was the three of us. With the new project, it requires at least five partner members and during the first year we’d acquired so many supporters to the idea it was a matter of a few phone calls and now we are eight partners. That's the three of us, that's Ink Music from Austria which is a publisher, a label, a management, lots of synch experience in the background. We are addressing the subject of games with Nikolina Finska from Rebel Studio who is an expert in that field. Music Estonia, which is the Estonian export office, is a partner in it. They run the Tallinn Music Week. They are extremely well connected in conferences all over Europe and in crossing over to other industries. We have Eastaste, which is a sync agency from Hungary and Ren Horvath is also the head of the Budapest showcase hub, so he has two hats on, which are really helpful to our cause. We have SIGIC, which is the Slovenian Music Consulting Office, basically an export office and a music consulting institution, close to the Ministry Of Culture in Slovenia. Uh, have I forgotten anyone?

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:06:22] He's done quite well there. 

NIS BØGVAD: [00:06:23] Yeah, fantastic. Amazing people. We also had the benefit of Daryl Bamonte’s knowledge and Ralph (Christoph) from C/O Pop that started out by discussing these issues. What is amazing is to sit around the table and we all have our responsibilities. We all have our work packages and it's not just the three of us trying to make something work and make something happen. We have the funding, we have the right people to make this fly, and now we are here talking to you because Hannes from Ink thought of the idea of doing a podcast. So, we have four years to make this grow and it's really exciting to see it on this level. It's a dream come true, I think, for all of us. 

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:07:04] It's very good to see so many impressive partners helping you dig below the surface of some of the important topics that conference programs don't have the time or desire to delve further into, I guess. What's the key practical element of making Europe In Synch work at this stage though?

MARKUS LINDE: [00:07:20] The core of the whole thing is the Europe In Synch Academy, which is the workshop concept. To make this happen, it takes a lot of preparation, research, setting up, organization, but also we want to promote it. We want to promote it beforehand, we want to promote the results. We want to get it from a gut feeling thing to an official and scientifically provable thing and make it really serious for the whole industry. So, we have a research team, we have analysis going on. So, we're getting more and more really professional and in depth with very well defined, clear tasks in the whole setup. 

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:08:00] How about the participants? 

MARKUS LINDE: [00:08:03] We are speaking to participants on several levels. We have the participants of the workshops - they always happen in connection, mostly in connection, with events like a music conference or, as we plan, conferences of client industries, as we call them. So, there's usually an open call in the conference program, addressing people from the client industries and from the music part who are involved in sync and they apply by this open call stating their profession and their sync experience and their special demands and requests. Then we pick some 10 to 15 maximum for a workshop. Then we have the specialists that we bring into the workshops, professional specialists from different subjects. These we scout beforehand….

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:08:52] You call these the Catalysts, right?

MARKUS LINDE: [00:08:53] We call them the Catalysts, right. Catalysts because in a room full of participants they get the ball rolling by talking about their jobs, their structures, their case studies. They’re excellent references within such a session. 

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:09:08] And it's a form of mentorship then as well? 

MARKUS LINDE: [00:09:10] It depends on the people, but it has happened. Especially a mentorship that goes beyond those workshop sessions where people exchange phone numbers and meet and get a dialogue going. That's the ideal way, yeah.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:09:22] I imagine there are so many areas to cover, perhaps even from a very basic level of understanding about what the field of music synchronization even is. Nis, how important is the idea of knowledge-building and providing all kinds of information and opportunities for the participants?

NIS BØGVAD: [00:09:40] It's the key of the project. It's a common understanding of the field of synchronization. So, you have the rights to a song and how do you deal with that compared to getting on an advert or in a film and there are many ways of thinking about music in media. But this project also highlights and is aiming at the European music industry and, in that sense, it's not for us to go out and say, “You need to place more music in adverts that comes from Europe”. It's a common understanding that, actually, the social network from the region is attractive to a brand. So, we raise the awareness of the importance of the collaboration between artists and brands and film and TV.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:10:24] And how do you accelerate this?

NIS BØGVAD: [00:10:26] Music Estonia is handling the Missions and the Missions is a very important thing. It's, like, going out to all the European countries, conferences, and showcase festivals and meeting the people that we want to invite. So, we have now the possibility of really collecting the new thinkers, the visionaries, when it comes to music in moving media. Without this we couldn't travel, we couldn't meet. It would be like reaching out in blindness. So, now we are actually meeting everyone that is related to professional music life. I think at the end of this four-year period we'll have a network of high level music-understanding people that share the deepest thoughts about the value of music.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:11:09] Right. I read somewhere in one of your reports, I think, about the idea of “educating the client”. Is this an indication that you feel more detailed information and a better understanding of the processes involved in sync are needed by everyone in this business and people on all sides of the table?

MARKUS LINDE: [00:11:28] Of course, it's about educating and, what we call, bridging knowledge gaps. We always use the picture of bubbles. Like, we live and work in the music bubble. Then there's the bubble of advertising, bubble of films and television, bubble of games. All people within these bubbles are pretty self-confident and self-conscious and self-assured, but they hardly reach out to the other bubbles and, when it comes to sync, suddenly there's connections from the music side to another bubble or the other way around and it is like aliens meeting for the first time. We speak a certain language but the terminology might be different or the mentality might be different and if you don't know anything about the other side it's, like, “Are they cheating on the terms? Do they have a proper understanding of what we want? Why are they so slow? Why are they so expensive?”. It's, like, led by prejudices and caution and, I wouldn't say mistrust, but it's not really trust and this is something that we want to overcome with the workshops in the first place and educate about the processes and the mentalities. But we found out that - especially the “educating the client” thing at the Ment workshop in Slovenia, for the first time ever in the workshop we had two thirds of people from the advertising industry rather than the music side attending. For the first time they came to a music conference, getting out of their bubble, coming to us, trusting us, sitting there and, behind closed doors, really poured out their hearts about their jobs, about their love of music, how they are taught to treat and handle music rights. Everyone agrees that is important to have music and great music in the commercial. When it comes to music, everyone has an opinion. Everyone from the managing director to the director, to the producer, to the secretary of the head of marketing of the brand. So, the whole process of making the right decisions is really watered down and is influenced by aspects that don't really have to do with music or with the knowledge of music. Definitely not with professional decisions and the Creatives on the agency and production side say that if it was for them, the decision-making would be much more streamlined and based on competence and everything, but it's the client who makes things different. He comes up with the money in the end so, of course, they feel entitled to interfere and bring in their opinion, but it interferes with the decision in such a heavy way that it is a negative influence. So, people from the advertising industry came up with the expression “Can we go out together and educate the client about those processes?”. But we cannot just go out and say, “Look, client you're stupid and here we are, the experts, and we are going to educate you now and be lucky that you are confronted with such a great bunch of people”. It's a much more subtle way, of course. We cannot come up as Smart Alecs and tell them how to do it. It has to be their decision. Then we come back to trust.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:14:31] So, all about closing information gaps to avoid misunderstandings more than anything. Now, as someone with a background in the live music business, the world of music sync looks and sounds quite complicated to me, but at the same time, a bit like the wild west, where the process seems, well, quite random. I'm probably wrong about that, but certainly, dare I say, it maybe needs a more defined level of professionalization. Perhaps that's not the right word and maybe that's even quite offensive to say but…..

MARKUS LINDE: [00:15:03] No, it doesn't. It's exactly the term. “To professionalise” turns up most in our goals. That's basically the starting point of the misunderstandings. That's what, in a lot of client’s heads is the situation, “Who am I talking to? Who is that person who says, ‘I want 500,000 Euro or even 50,000 Euro for this music in a small TV commercial’, and this can't be right, can it? Like, 50,000 Euro for a song which I can get for free on Spotify, which is ridiculous”. So, of course, you're entitled to have these misconceptions about the whole thing, but it definitely is not the wild west. The licensing itself, the process itself, is very, very simple and they are not invented newly every time you do a license. They are there. It's the copyright and it's the rights in the recordings. So, that is really simple but behind every rights, there's rights owners and there's stories of rights owners and there’s ownerships changing partners, there's budgets and opinions and deadlines and stuff. When all this comes into one pot, it can look a bit wild and it's our job as a music agent or as a supervisor, or sometimes as an expert on the publishing side, it is our job to make this situation clearer and make it transparent and understandable for all sides and to see that it's not wild west, it is a fair business, it's a win-win situation in the end. Basically, your preconception is the best argument to attend a workshop or to come to one of our panels. If you're insecure about that field, that's the first address. 

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:16:40] Good point.

NIS BØGVAD: [00:16:42] But still, it is a complicated situation. There's a lot of elements that the music side needs to be more professional around. And at the same time, you cannot, as a client, just believe that this is all sorted out because it is somehow a messy situation for a lot of people. So, from both sides you need to know the rules and you need to know the standards.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:17:04] Right. What about at the end of the initial four-year lifespan of the project? What do you want in terms of legacy of this initiative? 

MARKUS LINDE: [00:17:12] We want to become recognized ourselves in the first place. We want Europe In Synch to become a recognizable, trustworthy brand of competence of bringing potential partners together. So, establish ourselves and establish what we are doing as really trustworthy and culturally worthy and economically worthy. There is no end goal of a mission – “mission accomplished” and we all go home, shake hands, and have a drink or something. It is quite ambitious to fulfil our own expectations, but we are setting in motion a process and that process is ongoing and you see new stuff that needs to be addressed in the goal to get the sides to a better understanding. We can hardly expect this to be finished within four years or within ten years. The client industries change a lot. The players change and there's new generations on the creative side as well as on the business side. We see ourselves as setting things in motion, bringing partners together, creating new, potentially successful situations, and that never stops.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:18:22] Could the Europe In Synch organization develop into a kind of trade body? 

MARKUS LINDE: [00:18:27] We haven't thought that far, but spontaneously speaking, it would be a natural step. From the way of how we are organized and how we form the competence amongst each other, I think that could be a given as well but is much too early to say that. Our first goal is to fill these shoes and then take it from there.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:18:46] I guess the obvious legacy is that there will be more music supervisors and related music sync people operating successfully in Europe?

MARKUS LINDE: [00:18:54] Of course we want there to be more music supervisors, but…..not so much as music supervisors, but as competent people in the sync business. Let's put it that way. There's not too many music supervisors or music agents professionally in Germany. There's very few in Austria. In a lot of European territories there's no one doing that. So, there's a lot of demand for competent and trustworthy people to bring people together. 

NIS BØGVAD: [00:19:20] We, of course, need more music supervisors and we need to broaden the understanding of the value of a music supervisor on a project. But I think we need to highlight the issues and if we can provide the knowledge gap around all the fields of usage of music, we've done our mission. 

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:19:39] Well, it's been very useful to hear how you got things together so far. It's certainly an interesting and much needed initiative, full of very knowledgeable and determined people.

MARKUS LINDE: [00:19:49] Well, hopefully there will be more talks like this as we move along because you feel our excitement about being at the starting point of something. We've done the first workshop, even before the kick-off, we hit the ground running. But we have an absolutely full calendar for the rest of the year. I think I'm going to eight, nine countries between September and end of November to do workshops, panels, reaching out in connection with the workshops and with the Europe In Synch Academy. Every one of us has a lot of tasks on the desk, but I think it will be much more colourful, whatever you want to call it, if we come back and talk about our experiences in the workshops about what we have achieved. At the moment, it's not all theory, but it's a lot of theory and a lot of expectations and hope and optimism, but there will be stories behind them. That will be the interesting part. That's what we are looking forward to. 

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:20:43] Absolutely. We'll be following up as we go along then. Thanks to Markus and to Nis, for now. We'll talk now with Nikolina about her role in the organization and hear more from her about music in games, which is an extremely important field of music sync.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:20:58] Nikolina, what is it about the project that you find so attractive? 

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:21:02] Coming from the gaming industry background, you know, we all use music in games. When you think about it, you can't imagine a game without sound or music. On the other hand, I think there's lots of opportunities here to collaborate even more or in a better way that are just not utilized. There's a little bit of a silo between the industries. I don't think they talk too much directly. So, very often in the gaming industry, we have our own composers who are working only for the games and there would very little going out of the circle of the people whom we know that are making music. And if somebody tries, it's very cumbersome because we don’t know where to look, we don’t know who to contact, very tight deadlines, so it kind of turns into a “Ah well, let's just go with the tried and tested”. So, for me, this was very interesting to participate because it's really about getting games and music and advertising all together. It is the creative industries in Europe that we can actually pull these barriers down and really learn from each other how it works and how can we collaborate better and just make better art in every aspect.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:22:09] Right. And what would you say are the main challenges involved in getting music into games?

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:22:14] It’s very different how we utilize the music in games, depending on the gaming platform. So, when you think about the console games, it's almost like a movie, like, it's the score, it's, you know, there's lots of sounds, but you come with mobile games and the sound and music is more like a commercial jingle. So, it's a very different type of music that goes into the game because they're just consumed differently and have different users. We always fall down on the same things. There's lots of repetition. There's not lots of creativity. I think there is much more room to collaborate together and now, especially going to do Web3 and Metaverse, you know, for example, some studios are going as far as organizing live concerts within the games and it would be great to do more of these collaborations, not just for the really big studios, for the smaller studios to build this bridge to figure out, “Well, how can we do this?”.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:23:05] How do you think you can make the improvements that seem necessary? 

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:23:09] I think it's first demystifying the process. It’s a huge industry. It's actually bigger than music and film put together. It's worth 200 billion annually. So, it's a massive, massive business. But very often in the gaming industry, we think with our own ‘gaming head’ and we think, “Oh, if I want to get this song into my game, it probably costs me millions”. But it's not necessarily that expensive. Or it's very difficult to get, you know, “I'll probably have to talk to 30 people just to even, you know, get the rights”. So, I think it's just a little bit about demystifying the process and to understand what we need because I think every industry is a bit different, so it's really understanding, “Ok, what are the needs of the gaming industry? How are we going to utilize the music and the sound? What is important for us?” and then have this mutual understanding about what can we do for each other to help each other grow.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:24:00] Is it the case that most money is in console games or…. 

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:24:03] No, that's another misconception. Actually, more than 50% of the gaming revenues come from mobile games. It's about approachability of it so anybody can play a mobile games. If you want to play a console, you have to invest in a console. If you want a new generation, you might have to stand in a queue for six hours to get your latest version. So, it's about accessibility. Everybody has a smartphone, everywhere in the world, and everybody can spend some money on it if they want. So, it's about the numbers game, small amounts spread over more markets, more people, but consoles still make lots of money and console games have bigger budgets, for example, and I would say that console games act in a very multimedia way. It's really important to get the real feel of trying to get into the different world. And that's why the right atmosphere, the right feel for the game, music and sound, it's really, really important. 

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:24:53] You've talked about collaboration a lot and how important it is to have more of it but what about competition? Is it a very competitive field? 

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:25:03] Yes and no. I mean, of course, you know, we are all competing in the market, but on the other hand, European market, European game developers usually prefer to collaborate and learn from each other. But if you go more to the north American market then it's more like a sharp competition. And I've seen there's lots of collaboration when you come to, like, indie studios, smaller studios, even the midsize, they kind of try to learn from each other but, of course, when you come to the really big studios that are on the stock exchange and things like that, they have the trade industry secrets and I think it also, kind of, maybe, prevents collaboration and enhances the competition.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:25:41] Does it mean that, overall, it's not really a level playing field? 

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:25:45] It's just a natural cause, unfortunately in any industry that comes to this, like, you know, the big guys buy the small guys or the small guys die out. But I think that with the growth of games, because everybody's playing games, from children to, actually, pensioners these days because they're so approachable - I think there's room for many different studios, many different games, many different trends, that we shouldn't look only at one trend because the market is so big and it keeps on growing that there is definitely room to have more diversity, more different things, more exciting things in the games.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:26:21] Talking of diversity, what's your point of view on the subject when it comes to this project and in the business overall?

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:26:28] I've been working in a gaming industry for about twelve years now. Before that I worked in tech and they're very traditionally male industries. There's some statistics that say that in our industry there's 80% male, 20% female, but when you look at the leadership structure or when you look at the people who actually create games but they're not in supportive roles, like HR or financing, then the numbers are even worse. Then you're looking at about 5% being female and non-binary and 95% being male and, of course, it's a problem because when you're doing something creative, you want to see many different viewpoints because, even if you have best intentions, we all have subconscious biases and if you have only one perspective you're gonna get products which are presenting, well, one perspective. But it's a hard job to try to diversify the industry and to diversify actually the product as well. It's not only about the gender. It's also about, you know, cultural background, coming from different countries. It's about different races, sexual orientation. ‘Cos if you have a physical disability or, for example, you are visually impaired, you will need certain things in the game to be able to have the same playing experience. So, diversity is very often more than we just think and I'm trying to do the same now working together in EinS (Europe In Synch) group, that everything we do from our visual output, webpage, promotional material, any outreach we do, that we really speak to as wide a group of people as possible. Really reach out to everybody who wants to join the creative industries of Europe.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:28:00] We heard from Markus and Nis earlier, who pointed out that music in games is quite a specialist subject and you've been brought in to share your experience and know-how in this area. What do you think you'll be able to teach them?

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:28:12] I think it actually goes both ways. They teach me as well because, you know, before getting the project, I didn't know much about the workings of the music industry as well. So, I think it goes both ways. We are all learning about each other. I just hope that I can share some of the experiences we have in the gaming industry, especially when it comes to, like, digital output where the gaming is really leading the way. That can help us as well. And experience I have implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion in everything I do in my operations that help put this in EinS as well and transfer this also into music industry as well. So that whatever works well in a gaming industry that, you know, they can take this and implement in the music industry, but also vice versa.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:28:55] Ok, what comes next for you then? Will you be joining the others in attending some of the conference events to promote Europe In Synch?

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:29:02] Yeah, I will be joining some of the music events and advertising events, but I'm also very excited that we participate in the first gaming event as well. We are going to the Reboot, which is happening end of September in Dubrovnik. So, it's going to be the first time when EinS team members are going come and meet the gaming industry of Europe. So, I'm really looking forward to that. I think it's going to be a great experience that we can all learn from each other and, yeah, I'm super excited.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:29:27] Nice. And do you also like the fact that the project includes so many nationalities?

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:29:32] I think it's really, really important that we have this pan-European perspective because we have lots of differences in our regional markets and it's not necessarily the one solution fits all or the one situation is the same everywhere. So, I think it's really important because, as I said, it's also part of diversity as well. Even if we’re all Europeans, we all have our own, different cultural backgrounds as well and knowledge of the local markets and it all brings up into having this common knowledge. We can really collaborate and understand each other better and come up with the better solutions.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:30:05] One last question for you, Nikolina. What are the one or two goals you would like to see achieved with this initiative? 

NIKOLINA FINSKA: [00:30:12] One of the things that I would definitely like would be to see the barriers between the gaming industry and the music industry become smaller or disappear. And, of course, second one would be just to see improved diversity in all of entertainment industries of Europe. So, even if it can leave a small footprint or make a small improvement, because it's a giant task, it'll make me very happy. 

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:30:31] Sounds wonderful. And let's look forward to those goals being scored then. Thank you, Nikolina for your excellent input. And finally, for this introductory episode of the Europe In Synch podcast, let's bring in Hannes to tell us a little bit more about the setup of the platform.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:30:46] Hannes, you’re on board, not just as someone who works in publishing and music sync, but to also manage a lot of the promotional aspects of this project. What will that involve?

HANNES TSCHÜRTZ: [00:30:56] Well, as you might see, it's an incredibly complex and fragmented, wide field that we tackle. Sync has so many different colours and so many different meanings to everyone involved. So, the matter of communication is a crucial and most important one, obviously. It goes deep into every single task that we have to find a joint language among several different industries - to use the right terms when we speak about something, because right now it's very difficult to say something and know that the other party understands what you're saying. So, it goes into very little details on the one hand. On the other hand, you have the bigger tasks of actually getting the message out of what we are doing here.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:31:37] What are some of the platforms you are using to get that message across?

HANNES TSCHÜRTZ: [00:31:41] Exactly the one we are doing right now, for instance. So, the idea of the podcast will be to really get people together from different industries and talk and think about the things that we try to tackle here with Europe In Synch, meaning getting the people from different industries together and work jointly on creative products that end up being, hopefully, very creative and successful. And, of course, we have our social media platforms, we'll have a website platform, a newsletter, sort of, standard tools for communications, if you like. But first and foremost, I think the most important part is that there are many, many people involved and we all consider ourselves to be ambassadors of Europe In Synch and get people to talk to each other and talk with us and be, wherever possible, at many different types of events, be approachable and find the right people to connect with the other right people.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:32:31] What are your physical next steps going be?

HANNES TSCHÜRTZ: [00:32:33] So, we’ve been planning the actual second phase of the project, If you like and now, since we've prepared the actual launch, we are going to have Reeperbahn Festival as, sort of, our kick-off event where every one of us is present and will have knowledge about the project and will try to give meaning and sense to it all. And from there onwards, we will try to be at as many events as possible so we have all the different industries coming together and, in return, we will try to attend events of the advertising industry, of the film industry, of the gaming industry and, obviously, of the music industry and get people also to mingle within the industries much more because we believe that knowledge is key and awareness is key about the many different things in the industries. So, this is the key angle for us in the first place.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:33:20] So, regarding this podcast - and the series of podcasts we plan to create following the official launch of the project, what would you like the podcast to offer?

HANNES TSCHÜRTZ: [00:33:30] The Europe In Synch podcast should be a place where we all can learn something. So, basically, we are looking for people who can teach us a little about their respective field or industries. We will want to look a bit behind the curtain and learn more about it and, therefore, also explain more of the business and make it easier for other people to follow in these footsteps.

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:33:50] Good to know. And will this be something that participants or listeners will be able to interact with? Maybe send in questions, requests, recommendations, or personal experiences for us to incorporate into the content? And can they be in touch in general?

HANNES TSCHÜRTZ: [00:34:05] I very much hope so. So, Europe In Synch will have social media. Wherever possible use the handle “EuropeInSynch”, with “ch” at the end. Please reach out to us. We are very approachable and all the Europe In Synch ambassadors are very approachable too. So, you've heard some of the names in this podcast. Please feel free to get in touch with us on whichever platform you like. 

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:34:29] We'll include all the relevant links and contact info in the episode description and everything will be easy to find on the Europe In Synch website. What's the website address again? 

HANNES TSCHÜRTZ: [00:34:40] Europeinsynch.net 

PAUL CHEETHAM: [00:34:42] Europeinsynch.net. Ok. That all sounds great and hopefully you, the listener, have all the info now you need to get in touch and find out more about this project. So, thank you to Markus, to Nis, to Nikolina, and to Hannes for giving us this introduction to Europe In Synch and make sure you tune into future episodes of the Europe In Synch podcast, where we'll be talking to all kinds of people about their life and work in the various fields of music synchronization. So, until next time, Ciao.

Thank you for listening.

  • The Europe In Synch Podcast
  • EP01: An Introduction To The Europe In Synch Initiative.
  • Recorded: 12.08.2022, Hamburg, Germany
  • Released: 17.09.2022

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Paul Cheetham

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