How I Got My First Sync Placement
About a year ago I logged into Tunesat expecting to see the usual blank screen. Much to my shock and amazement, Goal Line Gladiators, an Epic Hip-Hop track I co-wrote with producer Avery Berman, aired on CBS during the Colts-Jets game one chilly November afternoon.
The free version of the tracking service caught my very first network television placement. I was overcome with shock and exhilaration. This thing I’d been trying to do for years finally worked. Somehow I cracked the code.
The Power of Collaboration
Like most things worth doing, I didn’t do any of it alone. My co-writer Avery brings some serious composition and production chops to the table. Plus he’s had hundreds of placements as part of Elevate Audio.
And it definitely would not have happened without Dave Kropf from 52 Cues. Dave provided the brief and gave us excellent feedback that helped us carefully craft a successful track that has aired hundreds of times in the last six months. This collaboration trifecta has been such a blast. I’m so excited to truly be in the game at last. Since releasing this first track Avery and I have written another ten in the last year. They have all been signed to various libraries and are in the queue waiting for their chance to shine.
So how did we go from nothing to eleven signed tracks in a year? Luck, hard work and opportunity all met in the right place. I’ve been studying with Avery since 2023 in hopes my production skills might one day get to a professional level.
I’m also a member of Dave Kropf’s 52 Cues community. The Family Membership includes occasional opportunities to pitch new music to real briefs. In May 2024 we got a brief for a major network sports broadcasting opportunity.
I was going to write it myself, but knew Avery had good experience with hiphop and was signed with other publishers. So we agreed to collaborate 50/50 and it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
Project Management Meets Music Production
The deadlines were tight. We had two rounds and a final if our track was picked. This is when my project management skills kicked in. After 30 years of delivering enterprise software and high profile websites for big brands, I realized I could use these same skills to get our track over the finish line.
Inside my custom Notion database I setup a new project page. I added all of the details from the brief - reference tracks, clips, and a detailed description of what the client was looking for.
Then I added the deadline dates for each round and setup a dedicated folder on my hard drive for our Logic project file and anything related to the track. Last but not least, we worked backwards to establish dates when we needed to work together to turn around revisions and hopefully submit deliverables.
When working on new music, one of the first things I do after making the database entry is to create an “Info Sheet”. This is just a simple text file with all the pertinent metadata and ownership info needed to deliver a track. It lists the track title, the length, writer splits, BMI info, BPM, key, instrumentation and a description. A lot of composers keep this in a master spreadsheet, but I find it’s much easier to keep this simple text file in the track’s project folder for quick reference.
The Payoff
About six months after discovering the track with Tunesat I received my first quarterly BMI royalty payment. That same track earned even more the following quarter, so I’m excited to see how it performs over the next few years.
This first placement changed everything for me. It showed me that my project management background wasn’t something I left behind when I became a composer. It’s actually my secret weapon. In future posts, I’ll share more about the systems I use to finish tracks consistently. Because writing high quality music is just the first step to actually shipping it.