The Europe In Synch Podcast

EP04: Emeline Marabelle (Bellemeute Agency & Les Arcs Film Festival) - The Importance of Human Connection.

• Europe In Synch • Season 1 • Episode 4

Share episode

Welcome to Episode four of the Europe In Synch podcast.

This time we are talking with Emeline Marabelle, founder of Bellemeute Music Agency and program manager of the B2B Music Village at Les Arcs Film Festival. 

We step into Emeline's world as she reveals how vital networking events can be for music pros and composers and that, at its core, the sync business is all about being human. We talk through the process of pitching to music supervisors, emphasizing the power of an artist's profile – remembering the importance of radio play, media exposure, and  live gigs. She tells about the candid realities of track selection and how strong professional relationships can turn the tide in favour of a song making it to the final edit of a film or tv campaign. Emeline also imparts her vision of the future trends in music supervision. She tackles the expectations surrounding licensing fees and advises on cultivating an international presence for artists aiming to hit the sync jackpot. 
This is an enlightening episode, covering the complexities of music licensing deals and the emotional journey that accompanies the rollercoaster ride of a successful music pitch.

We recorded this conversation at De Oosterpoort during Eurosonic Noorderslag conference in Groningen on 18.01.2024.

We hope you enjoy the episode and thank you for listening!

Please note that there is a full transcription of this podcast available for you to follow while listening to the audio.

Find out more about our guest:

If you have questions, ideas, requests, recommendations, or general feedback, feel free to contact us at feedback@europeinsynch.net.

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.


Follow Europe In Synch:

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...

Paul:

We're joined on the Europe in Synch podcast by Emeline Marabelle. Emeline is the founder and creative director of Bellemeute, a music sync and music composition agency based in France, and she's head of program at the Music Village at the Les Arcs Film Festival, which is based in the French Alps. Emeline, this is your first time visiting Eurosonic in Groningen.

Emeline:

Yes, first time ever. I'm very excited. I've been to The Great Escape a lot in Brighton which is quite similar.

Paul:

It's interesting that more and more of these kind of conference and showcase events these days are focusing a lot more on music supervision and work you do like with your sync agency, for example. That must be really helpful to close some of the gaps in the business that you're in and Europe In Synch - who we're doing the podcast for -

Paul:

they do similar workshops as well at various events throughout the year. It's obviously very helpful just to generate interest, create new ideas and projects and make new relationships, and I guess if you're a new artist or a new agent trying to get into this business, it probably looks a very mysterious process.

Paul:

It's like a closed shop and you have no idea how this actually works. So opening it up into these locations where there's a mixture of audience and a mixture of new artists, a mixture of professional delegates, that's really helpful in terms of educating everybody, I guess.

Emeline:

Yeah, very helpful and yeah, it feels like from the outside it's a very closed industry and yeah, like this kind of festival, it makes it easier to connect with professionals. The sync industry is a very it's quite a small industry. Relationships are like the core of the business. It's about talent, but also like how you're good at creating relationships with people and keeping them throughout the year, and that's why I keep telling the composers it's like relationships are as important as making music for your projects, because that's how you're going to have business done or have projects coming in.

Paul:

Yeah, I mean, there's no point having great interesting content if it doesn't go anywhere. Yeah, so I guess that's where you come in. You're one of the main people that make this happen, that you find that piece of content and you should know really where to take it, who might be interested in it, and you're the one as well making those relationships to move these projects along, is that right?

Emeline:

Well, so, because, like some artists and composers like don't have the time to make those connections or they don't want to, like, they're not good at it, so I'm the person doing the promotion for them, so promoting those artists to content makers. So, directors, music supervisors but the more you know the music supervisors, you know how they work, the type of projects they work, and you'll be able to tighten the promotion. And you need to be able to answer the briefs and you need to understand what the client wants and you need to deliver a selection of tracks that fits a budget, and that's something that you need to have skills and experience to do it right.

Paul:

So you have to build the experience to be able to analyze a brief very accurately and know exactly what the client wants. And it's the client, your artist or the client the supervisor is my client.

Emeline:

Yes, I don't really work directly with artists. It's more like big rosters, catalogs, indie publishers, indie record labels. The sync business is very challenging. It's like you never know when you're going to land something. So it's all about like pitching, pitching, and if you rep an artist direct, there's lots of like expectations and lots of up and downs and it brings a lot of emotions. So I'd rather work directly with record labels and music publishers. So it's just like the business, people talking and they know how it works.

Paul:

If you saw a band you really liked and they had music that you thought you could work with. What do you do in that case?

Emeline:

Usually I look up who's the record labels or music publisher. I tend to rep more music publishers because I do a lot of bespoke work and my clients come to me because I rep artists who are composers, who are also performers, so they're like their own artist profile. More and more luxury brands want to collaborate with artists who has like maybe their own profile and, which is way more interesting, to get a bespoke track from an established artist.

Paul:

We should point out that you're the founder and creative director of your own agency called Belmet. You represent a roster of current cutting-edge music labels and you work closely with independent catalogues, composers promoting their music to advertising agencies, music supervisors and film production companies, and you're facilitating the creative collaboration between your artists, content creators in the advertising, film and tv industries. Yeah, that's right. So that's one thing that you work on like on a daily basis, but you're also a head of programming and for a film festival called les arcs yeah, les arcs film festival in the french alps yeah, in mid-december.

Emeline:

So I've been doing it for three years a european film market and there's a film festival as well. And for the last 10 years they've created the music village to get together all the music professionals linked to music and picture, and the aim of the music village is to connect music professionals, composers, composers' agents, music supervisors, as well as music publishers and record labels, think reps so all this community of professionals coming to Les Arcs to just connect all together in like a small, like mountain village. And, yeah, the idea is like to really like put a gap between like film and music and to make sure like it's so both ways or have a place, like in Les Arcs, where they can meet each other and collaborate somehow so the the music village?

Paul:

is this more like the business side of the event, of the festival?

Emeline:

Yes, so at the Music Village we organise different professional events and workshops, such as one-to-one. So we invite European music supervisors and the aim is that they connect quickly during this one-to-one and later during the festival they go skiing together After it. We got some very nice collaboration between French publishers and European music supervisors, so that's great. When this happened and we also organized with SACEM, so SACEM is one of our important partners. At Les Arc for the Music Village, we have something called the Talent Village.

Emeline:

We invite about eight directors, european directors, to Les Arcs working on their first feature films. So they're going to collaborate with young composers. And so we invite four composers from France and European countries to come and collaborate with those young, up-and-coming directors. And it's a very creative challenge for them because they get to compose for directors they've never met. And in this way we ask the composers to choose which project they want to work on, which usually in real life is different. The director chooses the composer and we change the way, which is, like, quite interesting.

Emeline:

And so this is like a way of like for like young composers to start a relationship with directors, which is so important in film. And we do also like, we organize workshop to like how to pitch my project. So before the one-to-one meeting, we have a quick workshop. It's just like, okay, how to build myself to music professionals I have 10 minutes how to make the best of myself and, especially, like most of them, they're just like all the time in the recording studios or making music and it's very hard to just like pitch myself, you know. So we try to train them for, like this kind of professional, you know connections and how to be a better music professional, which is very hard, I understand, when you're in a location like that, a relatively small group of people spending two or three days together in a creative process.

Paul:

That leads to more long-term relationships. I guess you get to know people and then your friends for a long time and there's a possibility of more work being generated for everybody. Yeah do you find that's the case, that it's successful in that way?

Emeline:

the feedback we have from like the Professional we have is just a quite unique place in the dark because it's such a small environment. It's very Family friendly environment so it's very easy to talk to like, even like to actors. You know famous people like everyone's like just wearing ski stuff. It's very chilled.

Paul:

Yeah, I find those kind of events that they're quite exotic, aren't they Definitely gets people out of the office, gets them out of that mindset, doesn't it? Opens them up to probably being a bit nicer and friendlier and uh, and willing to sit and talk to people about all kinds of things.

Emeline:

Yeah, so these are probably why it works so well yeah, our aim is just like to have a more, like an easier human connection with those music professionals okay, how do you go about picking the people that you bring to Les Arts, these supervisors that you fly in for the project? The music supervisors we invite. That's thanks to the support of the CNM, so Centre National de la Musique Pérou, export.

Paul:

Yeah, they have offices in all different countries, don't they?

Emeline:

Yeah, and the goal is to invite European music supervisors that work on feature films, independent feature films, and it's kind of farfetched or harder to find because more and more music subs work on TV series. So it's harder to have music supervisors working essentially on indie productions because there's less money involved. I understand, and Les Arcs, so far we it's only like feature films, we don't do any tv series or tv productions.

Paul:

I get the impression, of having spoken to a few people, that there seems to be a bit of an imbalance between how important music is in a film production and how it's treated within the production. It feels like the music part is left to the end. There's no money left for it. That sounds really difficult and not very viable or enjoyable really. What's your experience of that?

Emeline:

Yeah, and so that's an issue we have at Les Arts, for instance, because as it's a market, so all the producers are busy just finding fundings or co-producers for their projects, so they're not at the music stage already.

Emeline:

It's too early to think about the music. Most of the time they don't have time to meet composers because it's just too early in the stages we try to work on and help out, educate them on how important it is to think about the music in those early stages. On the last edition we did a panel on the collaboration between the film producer and with music supervisors and how the music supervisor can definitely help out the production company from the early stages, like from the script until right the end for the post production and the deliveries, and how they can help out on the creative processes. We have some funding from SACEM for when you want to do original scores so they can help out with like this as well, like the getting the institutional fundings. So at Les Arts we try to educate those film professionals on how music supervisors can really smooth out the music processes.

Paul:

Right. So it's important that not only while you're educating new composers and new business people on your side, you've got to be educating the people that you're trying to get the music to as well, because they're not really taking advantage of what's available by leaving it so late. If they're involved early in the process, there'd be better results.

Emeline:

Yeah, it's also down to the sensitivity of the director, of his music. It depends a lot on this, and if the director is really not into music, it will end up at the end and that the production, the production, will say, oh, we need some music actually, and also a film is so such a personal. You know, it's like a baby for a director, and bringing along a composer it's like kind of like letting go your creative baby you know the ego.

Emeline:

It's a lot of creative ego and sometimes I don't want another person coming in on the project, you know. So that's why it's so important to create those personal relationships between composers and directors. So the composers have to really understand what the directors mind and really understand his or her language and then translate it into music.

Paul:

And where do you come in in this kind of process? You and the music supervisor, You're kind of like the middle people in this process, so you must be kind of always finding it very difficult to get a right balance or a right understanding of when you should be hitting something or waiting for something.

Emeline:

Yeah, it depends on, like for advertising, the deadlines or well project are like very short. So you know like if you pitch something, usually like the film has been shot or it will, it's like within a couple of weeks it will be like delivered. So it's like you pitch, you should like know like within the next weeks. Also, if, like, you're gonna have an answer, or if you can like learn something, but with, like feature films or tv series, the processes are so long. You pitch stuff but you never know if it's gonna end up, usually like you hear back maybe six months later like oh yeah, one of your track has been uh, stuck on the mix or on the edit, so that's good news. It's very, very, very competitive, especially for feature films, tv series. It's the same with advertising.

Emeline:

My job, I pitch music to music supervisors who then do a short list of music they gather from different people and then they pitch the music to the director production company, so it's just so many people involved in the music. So when you learn something, it's like wow, it's a bit of a bit of a chance. And that's why also I'll say for the artists I work with, I collaborate with. It's like when you learn to think it's thanks to the work of different people and it's a work environment. So if, like, the clients, for instance, have never heard about your project, your artist project, it will be very hard for them to pick up to choose you, you know.

Emeline:

But if they listen to your music on the radio, reddit, on the media or it's been like showing up on their like Spotify playlist, it will really like will make a difference and that's why, like I think is related to the work of like PRs, tour, tourman, and you know touring is live. Live is so important and if the artists like perform in the territory, it will like have visibility and and it's all about working out how much visibility the artist will have. That's why, when I sign new catalogs, I'm always asking them OK, how much, to what extent do you invest in France your artists For releases? Do you get PR? Have you got a booker in France? Otherwise, it's too hard.

Paul:

So it's not just to do with the quality of the music at all, really's not just to do with the quality of the music at all, really it's also to do with the profile of the artist or the composer.

Paul:

Yeah, and more and more supervisors are asking or sync agents, they're asking for the artist to already have some kind of profile. Yeah, to make it easier for you to kind of pitch yeah to the supervisor. That gives the supervisor then more information to pass on to the creative directors in the actual production, who've got no interest in what you're giving them really.

Paul:

But it also means that down the chain, each person is relying on the next person to represent you how you want to be represented. I would find that very frustrating. That must be one of the things you have a difficulty with as well. I mean, for example, if you pitch one piece of music to a supervisor, does the supervisor then pitch that one piece, or does he present your piece within five or six other pieces to the creative director?

Emeline:

no. So the music supervisor, for instance, he would send me a brief that would send it to like different, like other, like sync reps and music publishers, record labels, so sharing the riff to like, depending on like the type of of the search, like, if they want, like neoclassical or just urban music, they're gonna, you know, direct the brief to the right, right professionals and then so we get back to the music supervisors with some selection of tracks. So I'd say Julia sent out max 10 tracks and then the music supervisor would listen to all the tracks he received from all those different music professionals and then he'd make his own shortlist. So sometimes they get back to me saying your track has been shortlisted, so could you pre-clear the track on this budget to make sure if the client's signing off he would like to clear the track easily and passed.

Paul:

So you'd go through the process at that point of clearing the rights, having it ready to go if it was needed. But there's still a good chance.

Emeline:

It's never needed yeah, and most of the time it doesn't land. So, for instance, the music supervisor would like maybe one of my track is solicited, they present it to the creative directors and then they change the brief, you know, or they end up doing like a bespoke track. That happens quite a lot. So it's always good to like follow up on the brief to know like how it's going on, that if you have any new direction on the brief, like happy to send new ideas. But yeah, it's sometimes happen very quickly, just like you like send out like ideas and bam bam bam gets uh selected and that's that's great.

Paul:

Do you find that you have particular music supervisors or creative directors that come looking for you because they know that you've got good quality artists or music or you work in a very professional way or a way they like? Do you think that's important?

Emeline:

Yeah, I think it's quite key to maintain a professional relationship whereby you know the amount of work they have, the amount of projects they're working on and when you deliver tracks, when you share tracks, so like you need to make sure you have the rights to pitch the track on the budget. They are like asking you know. That's simple to know and people come to me because they know like I represent indie labels, publishers, and so they know it will be easy to be clear. There won't be like issues with like a publisher. I represent both sides master and publishing so it's always super easy to like, just like, clear the tracks and go ahead and especially like for like indie labels, publishers, artists are always keen to have things you know yeah, I was going to ask you about that.

Paul:

That's something you identified that what you need is to be working with people that are not going to be putting obstacles in the way. You need to know that you can get the rights cleared on the publishing and the recording and in your mind when you're dealing with supervisors and you know you can get that track cleared in no time. That's the kind of people you're looking to work with more. Yeah, so do you kind of turn down possibilities of working with artists or labels if you think that could be too complicated?

Emeline:

yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah, and I had some experience with like labels who were super keen on having things, but every time I would propose like projects to pitch them, they were like no, it's too low budget, too low budget. And that's also another thing is, like, some artists are quite well known in some territories but, or, like in France, for instance, they're more newcomers, you know. So it's very hard, like for me, like, if, like the label doesn't understand that you need to build up your artist profile in France, for instance, to be able to have higher sync fees on your artists, because if it's not known or established, you won't be able to negotiate higher fees than what they propose. And it was very frustrating because, just like bringing cool project to like this artist and they were like no, the fees are too low. And I was like, yeah, but we can't you know we can't have have higher fees. And just like, maybe if just you accept one thing, it will help out, like build up your artist profile and get to know how bring visibility to artists and forms.

Emeline:

So always, like, when I sign a new label or publisher, it's very important that they understand how things work in forms and things also like in terms of reactivity like it needs to go quick. So when I sign an email like a brief or need a free clearance or clearance, they need to get back to me within the hour or so. It's a very competitive business, so things need to go fast and if people are not responsive, it's not going to work. And also another thing is you have to be flexible, because in France when you do bespoke, they do publishing. They keep the rights on the master publishing rights. So if you want to collaborate with them, you need to be a bit flexible as well to share some publishing rights, stuff like that.

Paul:

You said earlier that you focus mainly on working in the French and the UK markets. Is that because you understand those two markets most, do you have plans or ambitions to work in other markets, or is it not that simple?

Emeline:

It's not that simple. I tried. So I am working on France and the UK because I used to live in the UK quite a while so I knew well the industry, have some like relationship with, like, yeah, uk music supervisors, and also they come to me a lot for like French artists. So they know I'm like the Frenchie and it's like, yeah, we were looking for like a French up-and-coming rapper singing in French. That's quite a lot like please forget, right, okay, but it's very interesting because, like in the UK, they're very much more keen and collaborate more with like emerging artists. You know, and that's cool because in France like they're more like leaning to like establish artists. Very it's harder for like emerging talents.

Paul:

But is that because they think it might be cheaper to work with emerging artists? It's more like the clients. The client wants to, if they want to think, be cheaper to work with emerging artists.

Emeline:

It's more like the clients. The client wants to. If they want to think, they want to something established, they want to an artist who has lots of streams. You know streams is very key and that's quite new. You know, the more streams you have, the higher your sync fee will be. That's very new. So stats stats, your stats on like, spotify, instagram, are very like linked to the fee you're going to have.

Paul:

So that's something that you're also advising artists to make sure is really up to date and well managed all their online social stats.

Emeline:

Social stats and also like, even like. It's crazy, but some clients will have a look whether the artist is on TikTok, for instance, and sometimes if you're not on TikTok you might not get a job, because the new generation they're all on TikTok and in the UK with more emerging artists coming through.

Paul:

Is it also the fact that it's something fresh and new and people haven't heard? It's kind of the opposite of what they're looking for in France. Is that the angle they have, that no one's used this particular artist before.

Emeline:

Yeah, definitely, yeah, always keen to get new unique sounds, unique profile something we've never heard before. But I feel like in the UK it will be more about the music rather than the artist's profile, whereas in France it's the other, the opposite. Yeah, which is better. Well, in the UK they do both, honestly, they do both, but I'm more like my roster is more of like up and coming in deep, towards more like, uh, middle level artists. So they'd come to me for this and they know, when they reach out to me, they know it will be. It's always like easy to clear one stop, so that's why they come to me, but they won't come to me for, like you know, if you're looking for like a david bowie kind of track, right, it's not, it's not with me, unfortunately and you said earlier, you talked about presenting an artist or a composer with a a possibility and they turn it down because the fees are not enough.

Paul:

If you're new to the business and you talk about music in films, I think generally people would automatically think of Hollywood films and Netflix productions, things like that. Is this something that over the years, might have hurt new artists now, because they think there's big money in sync and in some cases it's okay money, it's not Hollywood money, let's say, I'm just trying to get an idea about the difference between Hollywood film syncs, and is that really important? Or is it better to not worry about that and focus on local or European at least smaller things that are more realistic?

Emeline:

I've never asked myself the question. Hollywood is just like another planet for me, so this is not something, it's not my goal. I'm just like I'm not interested by Hollywood because there's so much work in front in the UK already so I don't have time to work on, you know, hollywood's massive shows and it's just another world. There's so much to do in Europe already and so much amazing content that are made, so I think we just have to focus on locally and, as we said at the beginning, it's such a human relationship business, so just keep like yeah, I think that's a good tip as well. Just start with your locally and connect with local sync professionals.

Paul:

How do you think the European market can get better, how can it improve from where it is at the moment?

Emeline:

I think that's a good question. Keeping, like maintaining those events throughout the year and also the work of the collection societies such as Buma or Sassem and all the different events they organize in this kind of events to connect music professionals with talents is so important. I think it's just like keep investing in the artist. Especially for France, we need more events like Les Arcs. We don't have enough events to connect European professionals with French talents, for instance, and it could work as well. We could have those events for advertising as well TV series and feature films bringing, like European music supervisors to France. You know, specialise in advertising music supervisors coming to France, meaning like French composers, french record labels and music publishers. That would be like very important to have.

Paul:

So more of these kind of curated networking events, very focused, with the right people involved and funded. So you're benefiting from funding in an indirect way. Maybe some direct funding in some cases would be helpful and some kind of overall expertise you can plug into or something like this what do you think that the future of music supervision? How do you think things might evolve? You've said already that creative directors now look at social stats and the profile of artists or supervisors do. What other new things do you think might happen that make it more challenging or more successful?

Emeline:

Well, the new thing that is happening right now is just to have new digital tools for the clearances, to deal the rights, to make the clearances easier, quicker and more files. Audio files are so important how we share files, audio files, and how easy it is to share those files. It's in good quality. There's more and more different platforms that have emerged throughout the last couple of years, which is great, and there's a new platform from the US called Codal that I've been collaborating with and using a lot since, and for me it's like the future of sync, because on their tool like platform, it's kind of a mix of Spotify, disco and LinkedIn.

Emeline:

I don't know if you're familiar with Disco. It's like an audio platform where you can manage all your audio files and create playlists, and so Cordal is very innovative the way they've been building their platform, similar to Spotify, but for music professionals, so you'll be able to download the original master, have the instrumental available, the stems available in one place. It's so hard to get most of the time those like the stems or instrumental versions. I just like having one place, having all those audio files mastered, and you have also this tool where you'll be able to see the right holders, who own the master, who own the publishing, and be able to contact those right holders direct on their platform. Yeah, we've been waiting for this tool for so many years.

Paul:

That sounds like a platform that's been developed by people who've worked in this business and they've identified all the obstacles and problems and hold-ups and they're trying to simplify. That sounds great yeah yeah, more things like that.

Emeline:

That sounds like a very small practical improvement, but makes an enormous difference, right yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just like, just like kind of like very practical day-to-day tools that are gonna save up sometimes for everyone, basic stuff, but just knowing the ownership of a track right if that's the job of a music supervisor, it's just like.

Paul:

Sometimes it's just like quite hard to find out, but in this case it sounds like everything that's needed is in one place yeah yeah, that obviously makes a lot of sense but especially like for like some record label I work with.

Emeline:

Sometimes I always like ask if I rep only the master sites. I always ask to know who's the publisher for each track, each project, and sometimes I don't really know. It's like I'm not sure if there's a publisher involved, and that's so important, that's so important information to know before pitching Exactly.

Paul:

We missed out a bit earlier when we talked about the process and the chain and having to wait for responses and answers, but we didn't talk about the bit where you are successful in a pitch and you do end up getting some music into a production. How does that work? Once you've got the feedback, yeah, we're going to use this. What happens then? What's the next process?

Emeline:

So when I have a positive answer, that's oh, your track's been selected by the clients, it's a first mini celebration. But you don't really celebrate because you never know. And I always say to my collaborators don't celebrate until you have the money in your bank accounts, because it can change everything in church or until right the end. And I had some some very bad experience where everything's been signed off. The film was aired but I didn't get an edit of the film and I kept chasing the editing. Can we get an edit? They sent us two weeks later the edit of the film. It wasn't our music on it and you're like, oh my God, and so it's just like this kind of stuff. So, yeah, wait before celebrating, but usually when you have the money in your account, it should be safe, you know.

Paul:

Usually.

Emeline:

Usually so yeah, so when? Yeah. So the process when I get a track signed off by the agency, it depends if I rep the master or the publishing. If I rep both, it will be like I would like do the license myself on the behalf of the right holder and just like very, uh smooth, like yeah, it's quite easy, and just like contracts so at that point maybe you'd bring in a lawyer or something uh, no, I I'm in charge of the.

Emeline:

It depends on on how usually, like, if I, if I do, I rep the track one stop. You don't need a lawyer for sync, I don't need a lawyer, it's just like a license I'm using. Sometimes, like you need a lawyer if, like usually, it's more for bespoke works, if, like, there's quite a lot of like right holders involved, if there's big budgets involved, usually I work with a lawyer.

Paul:

What are the differences when we're talking about music in film and music for TV or music for commercials? Is there big differences in how the process goes or the kind of the briefs that you get?

Emeline:

No, the briefs are quite similar. I say like for advertising. They most of the time they are like looking for new releases or like new stuff, whereas like for PNM series, like it's all about the music, they don't care if the music was released four years ago or yesterday.

Paul:

And the fees.

Emeline:

The fees are very, very, very different, non-comparable. It's just like advertising. But it's normal because in advertising your music is connected to a brand, so the brand is paying for having an artist's creation connected to their brand. So it makes sense that it's more expensive to have your music used on branded content rather than on a feature film or a TV series. And also they don't have the same budget feature film or tv series. And also they don't have the same budget. You know an advertising campaign will be the same amount of budget of, like, an indie film. It can be like that. So it's just like not the same same industry. So we have to be flexible and an artist will always be very eager to have their music plugged on the tv series or a feature film. That's quite a dream of an artist to have your music used on a cinematic scene or whatever. But I think some artists don't want to have their music linked to a brand, so I don't understand it?

Paul:

How often does that come up? Do you find that you have artists that are against putting their music to certain brands? Is there any pushback on that, or is that getting easier and easier with artists?

Emeline:

I'd say most of the artists I work with are up for anything. My job is to educate them on sync because a lot of artists have so many expectations on sync. Because, like, a lot of artists have so expectations on sync and how, oh, if my music is used like on a ham campaign, it's gonna affect my profile and some tell me that, yeah, this band won't accept any. I don't know mcdonald, amazon campaigns and I do respect this. But also I try to educate them and my point of view is when you're an artist, you have a lot of people working with you and not accepting a sync is also detrimental to the project.

Emeline:

Most of the projects like say, need money, you know. And also a sync is a way to invest on your profile, on your project, and it's just another way of like getting money. Also, there's so much content nowadays. So if, like, you're a big fan of this artist and you get to see their music on a campaign, on an advert, you won't stop listening to them. Just understand you need to make a living. Your manager needs to make a living working on you, so you need money somehow. So you need to find all the different ways to get money from your project. Reason, reason.

Paul:

Some artists have very strong political beliefs on certain things, where it's understandable but, it's good to make sure everyone is educated as to how this could work, how it could benefit other areas of their work if they do a deal for this particular sync.

Emeline:

Yeah, and also, as I say, it's like maybe don't say I don't want to work with this brand. Just wait to have the request coming in, you know, and if we learn something, maybe you'll be able to say yes or no, but just wait to have something like concrete coming in the sync business. What I say to the artists I work with is like, don't focus on it, it's just a bonus, it happens, it's amazing, but it's not like your goal in life. Just keep focusing on making great music and a thing will happen when it will happen. But it's not to be. It's just too uncertain to just make pressure on it.

Paul:

Do you find that, though there are some of your artists and their labels that maybe see this as a really big shortcut to success for the artists, so they they do focus on it more than you would like. Does that happen a lot?

Emeline:

yeah, because uh also they have, you know, budget issues and they need to find, like different ways to invest in their, in their project, and think is a way to, you know, make money for like an artist. So I understand why they and they have to, as, as, when you're a record label or music publisher, this is part of your job, you know, to have your music synced, so you need to, you know, connect with like sync professionals all the time and to make sure your music reach out to those music providers.

Paul:

There's a lot that goes into what you do and it's it's very impressive and I guess the better you get at that and the more experienced and more expertise you have, the more successful you become as you go along doing it and you know more and more what people are looking for. You've got your own kind of network or database of people you go to for for music. You've got that managed because you know what can be cleared. You know who's going to avoid certain brands and things like this, so. So your work then with the supervisor is usually can be as quick as you can make it. Do you have one final piece of advice for people getting into the business or working in the business that you would always give?

Emeline:

The human relationship is key. Being genuine and a nice person, friendly and nice and funny is always a bonus.

Paul:

Excellent, emmeline, thanks so much for your time and for talking to us.

Emeline:

Thank you for the invitation. Thank you very much.

Paul:

Enjoy your time at Eurosonic and we'll see you sometime soon.

Emeline:

Thank you.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Paul Cheetham

Host