Yes☺ Lyrical themes are very important when it comes to landing sync deals.
A good example of that right now amidst CV 19 is advertising agencies running campaigns with songs that feel hopeful whilst lyrically hitting the themes of thankfulness, support, being proud, acknowledging courage and hard work, being there and inner strength. We're seeing ads that are thanking frontline workers in all kinds of industry's.
To get the attention of people who license music it's always a great idea to include the themes of your songs. This can be included in the metadata as well as mentioned when reaching out. A key job of music supervisor's is finding songs that not only work in style/genre but songs that are on the nose when it comes to lyrical themes.
Here are a few scene examples,
Someone's heading home after a long trip > songs with lyrics about home, house, warmth, family.
Someone's starting a new job or relationship > songs with lyrics about new beginnings, starting something fresh.
A women is leading a group > songs with lyrics about empowerment, strength, taking charge.
A town of people are recovering after a natural disaster > songs with lyrics about togetherness or community, perseverance, or never giving up.
Having an amazing song is a good start but sync deals happen when everything lines up in chronological order.
This looks a little like this…
➢ You sent a song to a music supervisor and it was loaded with metadata including themes and lyrics which were focused on 'being inspired'
➢ The music supervisor you sent it to tags it and adds it to their personal search tool which could be as simple as iTunes or disco.
➢ The music supervisor starts working on a show whereby the producer or editor has sent them a scene that needs an uplifting, indie pop, feel-good track that has a build and lyrical themes about inspiration.
➢ The music supervisor starts their search for songs they already have tagged and filed on their computer. They start by searching keywords such as inspiration, inspired, feel good, innovation, new, fresh, enthusiasm.
➢ Your track appears in their initial search because it fits the above search criteria and it gets added to a pitch file which includes other songs that also fit the criteria.
➢ The music supervisor then sends a playlist of songs to the producer or editor and they start to marry each song to the scene. They then make a decision and let the music supervisor know that they want to place your song into the scene.
➢ The music supervisor then reaches out to you and you do a happy dance and start the paperwork.
The moral of the story is to make sure that people you send music to KNOW exactly what the song is about. The reason being is that a big part of their job is to quickly find songs that are "on the nose" lyrically.
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