The State of Indie Sync
A convo with Superior Music Publishing's Mara Schwartz Kuge
Much of the biggest news surrounding the music business in the past few years has been the seemingly insatiable appetite for music rights, with legendary artists scoring eight- and nine-figure deals for their life’s work. These eye-popping numbers have led to an overall impression that music IP is now largely in the hands of finance bros at JP Morgan, Blackrock and Oakgroup, to name a few.
But for every banker referring to songs as an “asset class,” there are still scores of small publishers and administrators run by true music heads, including Mara Schwartz Kuge, a SoCal native and “new wave fiend” whose Superior Music Publishing keeps the checks coming in for a diverse roster of songwriters whose era-specific sounds help many of today’s TV hits maintain an authentic musical palette.
We spoke to Mara about her unique niche in the music supervision landscape and her personal journey through 20 years of music publishing.
The Cadence: Your roster is an impressive list of mostly 80s, 90s and 00s performers and songwriters. But the most recognizable name on your site isn’t a person at all. It’s THX.ltd. What’s that all about?
Mara Schwarz Kuge: That’s the “deep note.” The THX sound that people recognize from the beginning of movies. It’s technically an audio identifier, but it’s a sound recording that is owned by an entity that gets paid when it is used. It’s kinda having a moment — having been sampled on 100 Gec’s new album as well as in a promo for The Masked Singer.
With all of the selling of catalogs (and catalogs of catalogs) in recent years, a lot of artists are pretty far removed from their IP at this point. But because you manage IP without owning it, I’d imagine your clients choose you specifically.
I think you guys are probably familiar with the 35-year reversion law. If you signed a deal in perpetuity before 1987, you can now file the paperwork to get your rights back in the United States.
I'm working with artists who were with Warners or Sony or something, and they get their rights back and the last thing they wanna do is turn it over to another major label They wanna own the rights. They're not big enough to do a $400 million deal for their writer's share with Hipgnosis or whoever, and they're not sure what to do.
Superior is a good home for a lot of these writers because I'm a new wave fiend. And there's the Stranger Things effect where you've got people who wanna license eighties music for their programs.
The music immediately teleports you into that time and that place.
A really good example is a show coming up called Cruel Summer, which despite the title, it's not an eighties show. It takes place during Y2K and they were using music from 1998 to 2000. That’s so specific, but because I'm representing a lot of artists from back in that day, I was able to get seven syncs.
At this point, for the people who are making these decisions — the music supervisors and the creators of a lot of these new shows — that 1998 music is probably what they were listening to in high school.
Most of the supervisors now are Gen X and early Millennials. If I get one from Los Angeles that knows KROQ, I am so happy because I have so many songs from that era.
Do people know to come to you for that expertise or do you have to actively pitch?
I'm actively pitching all the time. I pitch thousands of songs for every song that ends up getting placed.
When I started in sync in 2003, I could basically tell you who the supervisor was on any show. Now, there was an article in Variety about how there were 599 scripted shows airing last year. That doesn’t include documentaries, game shows or reality shows. Nobody can keep up with that.
Is that an expectation from artists and managers?
I think now in 2023, most people's expectations are more reasonable when it comes to what sync can do.
10 years ago, everyone was saying, “sync is the new radio.” Managers would have expectations of, “The new album is coming out! We need a big sync that week to kick it off!” But now that Spotify has kind of taken over as the new radio, we're not getting as much pressure for that.
That pressure for syncs created a lot of downward pressure on rates. Is that still an issue?
I think we've finally stopped the race to the bottom. I think we've kind of settled on what fees are.
Speaking of expectations, music rights have become a very popular “asset class” for investors — even since interest rates have risen. Do you think these could have the effect of raising fees as pressure for returns increases?
I would rather they went up dramatically (laughs). But I mean, they're spending a lot of money. And in a lot of cases, they're buying the writer's share of income, which is 50% of just one revenue stream — performing rights. They're buying very small shares for these large amounts of money. So they are gonna have to get that back somehow.
So maybe it’s the hedge funds that need to worry the most about AI music.
I'm not as pessimistic as a lot of people. I feel like we're gonna end up where there's a place where Humans are doing human music and AI is doing a little bit of background music.
The big debate going on in music publishing is if AI creates a song, who owns the rights to the song? Should it be the computer programmer who created the AI or the operator who used the AI or the training data that informed the AI.
As if things weren’t complicated enough.
I don't think I'm gonna get into AI as a music publisher. I think I'll have enough business just with humans.
TAKEAWAYS
Salient statements from this week’s music news.
1. 50% of Vinyl Buyers in the US Don’t Own a Record Player
The data is proving what we pessimistically speculated 18 months ago.
Takeaway: Three core behaviors set these ‘superfans’ apart from others. First, they engage in social signaling (i.e., they want people around them to know about their passion for a particular genre or artist); Secondly, they view music as an expression of their identity; Thirdly, they engage in a community centered around music.
2. Spotify’s Daniel Ek Praises AI’s Potential to Boost Music Creation – and the Company’s Bottom Line
While acknowledging some of the risks, the CEO says AI tools for artists are "great culturally" and could "benefit Spotify" by growing engagement and revenue.
Takeaway: Ek’s entrepreneurial confidence that AI can be an industry boon in certain instances stands in contrast to a steady campaign of condemnation for generative machine-learning tools coming from Universal Music Group, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and others.
3. US Senators Target Ticketmaster with Unlock Ticketing Markets Act
Major democratic senators are targeting monopolistic practices.
Takeaway: The bill trains its sights on “excessively long multi-year exclusive contracts that lock out competitors, decrease incentives to innovate new services, and increase costs for fans,” with plans to give regulators at the FTC more powers to prevent those deals.
