It is indeed great to define a good sync as one that matches the visual energy as well as taking emotions inherent in a story and enhancing them. Beyond a good license fee, a good sync is capable of making the licensed music numbers spike up. This is something that has proven to work. A good case study is Nirvana’s ‘Something in the Way’ used in Batman which experiences a spike in streams after sync usage, it also debuted on the billboard chart for the first time. It was used in the film twice and appeared in the trailer.
Why should we be bothered at numbers experiencing a spike after sync? A brief study of the IFPI Global Music Report 2022 indicated that “Synchronization Revenue – the use of recorded music in advertising, film, games and TV- climbed by 22.0% (US$549.1 million) in 2021” and “Streaming continued to grow strongly in 2021, up by 24.3% to US$16.9 billion (a rise of five percentage points on the prior year’s growth rate of 19.1%). Overall streaming accounted for 65.0% of total global recorded music revenues and was the leading revenue format in nearly all markets.” With the growth of streaming across various territories particularly Africa is fair to say part of the rewards of a good sync is actually the spike the song experiences on streaming platforms which enables the Artists/Labels to benefit from streaming revenue and the Publishers/Writers to benefit from Mechanical and Performance rights revenue.
Tiktok at the moment is one of the greatest vehicles for measurable spike in listenership after a song is synced to a video content but the Euphoria teen Drama series has shown the power of TV series as well to be a medium for increase in listenership of licensed tracks. The Billboard reports that songs featured on Euphoria TV series earned a streaming increase of up to 2,316% and Shazam searches up by 10,000%, what could be the secret? Well I figured three interesting facts that paved way for success of licensed music deployed in the TV series.
1.The weekly release of episodes as opposed to a one time release give users room to recall the music used in the past episode.
Richard Davis in his book Complete Guide to Film Scoring points out that film producers are intentional about the last music heard in a film because the song being the last thing heard in a film will stick in people’s mind and make them want to buy the soundtrack album (or stream the song in this era). I tend to agree with this theory most especially for songs that have personal connection with the audience as seen in the last music heard on the Euphoria TV series titled “I’m Tired” which continues through the end credits.
Tunefind contains an index of music and songs appearing in popular television shows and movies and for about five weeks in a row, Euphoria features the most popular song on the platform; This shows the weekly strategy was indeed a great move that yielded results. What’s the status of weekly releases for African Content? For SVOD platforms we tend to have just a few TV series that use the weekly release model, for example The Real Housewives of Lagos showing on Showmax.
2. Here from ‘Euphoria’:
One of the popular keywords to describe music discovery lately has been “I heard on Tiktok” or “that song from Tiktok where people are…” As at the time of writing this article a song titled “Gentility” by Melvitto featuring Wande Coal is currently experiencing a spike despite being released three years ago with the major discovery platform being tikotk, this is not the first time this is happening as Love Nwantiti by Ckay also experienced a similar spike in listenership after being synced to visuals on tiktok. A good sync can play a good game in not just discovery of music but increase in listenership. A brief analysis of music licensed in Euphoria shows the diversity of music choices with tracks as far back as 1969 being licensed as well as recent music. A popular saying goes thus “Streaming makes Catalogue Records New Again”. To show the great impact of the Euphoria TV series to licensed music, when you search most of the songs you will most likely see a comment making reference to Euphoria. The same way Tiktok is resurrecting past catalog is the same way sync is also obedient to the call of resurrecting past catalog and make them new again.
3. Content is King, Context is Queen.
Unlike a music video, music used in film is not usually the foreground material and would always recede to the background when sound or dialogue gets involved hence, context at which music is used contributes to its success in experiencing a spike. Using the Euphoria TV series we see music used in such a way that enable the audience to have a recall after watching the episode; Key examples include Rue and family members singing along to 2pac “hit em up” being played as a digestic sound, other context includes the characters lip syncing while engaging in a workout session, another context is the song being used to establish tension in the mind of the audience who wants to know what will happen next but are left to enjoy the lyrics giving insight on what may happen or may not happen and lastly we also seeing the lead character Rue speak about listening to a song when prompted to talk about her specific memory that had an impact on her at the last summer. These and many more notable moments can be proven to be one of the reasons why there can be an interesting spike in streaming numbers on music licensed in the TV series.
It’s quite easy to write about music being licensed and fees paid but context is still Queen. Remarkable moments never seem to easily get forgotten. Moments like Davido’s performance of Assurance in “Coming 2 America” to “Never Enough” in the The Greatest Showman, “Bella Ciao” in Money Heist to Celine Dion “My Heart Will Go on” in Titanic to Can’t Help Falling In Love cover in Crazy Rich Asian to Loren Allred and many other interesting case studies remain evergreen.
