The new chapter of “ALGO CAMBIÓ…”, the SGAE Foundation podcast with JENESAISPOP, is dedicated to “synchronizations.” The so-called “synchro department” of record companies is none other than the one in charge of approving the use of songs in a film, in a series or in a television advertisement. Some milestones regarding how productive and successful the alliance of the musical world with the audiovisual world can be are the soundtrack of ‘Euphoria’, that of a Kate Bush song in ‘Stranger Things’, or more anciently, the good results for ‘The Bodyguard’, ‘Pretty Woman’, ‘My Girl’ or ‘Pulp Fiction’.
In the first part of this episode, Claudio M. de Prado explains to us the difference, within what is known as “soundtrack”, between “score” and pop songs. Some of these may be original songs – those that are up for the Oscar or the Goya for Best Original Song – or those that are from the archive. And that’s where the aforementioned synchro department comes into play. To clarify a little, we have two guests: supervisor Omar Tenani, creative audio director of Yembe!, and well known in the industry for his work for Canal+, Amazon, Paramount, among others, and also as a composer; and Juan Bermúdez, senior licensing manager at Warner.
Omar Tenani defines a “music supervisor” as “a wolf lord between the music and audiovisual industries” and explains how a song is licensed, stopping at the creative part, which he considers “sexiest.” There is also a job of “understanding the producer, the author, the synchro department or the label.” Among Tenani’s achievements is having placed ‘A Garden’ in the television program ‘Fama! A Bailar’, which you will remember gave Delaporte a good boost in his beginnings. Omar reveals to us that “in Movistar there was a lot of debate: music was half of a program that was strategic” for the network.
As to whether it was a temptation to try to replicate that, he tells us: “When something is done so that people will hate it, they don’t hate it. The key to that idea was finding the best possible option from a real artist, not a jingle composer. I defended that he was a real artist, and it was part of the communication, that it was the axis of the marketing itself. “If I had tried to find something that would rock it, it wouldn’t have worked.” In addition, he tells us some anecdotes about artists who want to see the editing of a series to decide if their theme appears in it, when filming has not yet started; or also what he likes most about his job: “helping tell the story through music, helping the music elevate the story, take it to another place.” In fact, he does not choose the music he likes the most for scenes, but rather “the best for the story being told.”
For his part, Juan Bermúdez tells us about some artists that are impossible to license, like Talking Heads. «Many times, there are songs that are not available for use in sync. Talking Heads, for publicity, does not give in. There are very few artists like that left, but they are their principles. Synchronization is something very easy to understand: it is putting a song in a new audiovisual. But it contains something deeper, which is an author deciding if he wants to do this or not. What’s that? The moral right.
Bermúdez tells us about how songs whose rights have not been obtained have been imitated in advertisements, and how they had to be reported, because there were even emails requesting their use. Also about how a profession that has been developing for almost 20 years has evolved, although throughout history, it has not always been called “synchro” nor has it been so fun: “it is a profession that no one wanted to do before. “They threw it to the lions, it was ‘talk to my lawyers.'” To finish, after quoting Rolling Stones, Charli
