As you may or may not be aware, streaming services don’t pay a whole lot of money to artists—which is why I decided to dip my toe in the wild waters of sync licensing. I mean, why not? Look what a well-placed tune on Stranger Things did for Kate Bush’s career.
In the name of due-diligence, I Googled “sync licensing” and clicked on the first link that popped up: Music Gateway, a company that purports to allow artists to distribute, publish and promote their music for free. Ever the cheapskate, I jumped at the deal. It turns out, however, that their free services are fairly limited and serve largely as an opportunity for heavy up-selling. (Shocking, right?)
As far as the free licensing plan goes, Music Gateway allows users to upload up to five songs that they can then submit to content creators who need music. Any revenue the songs might generate is then split evenly between Music Gateway and the artist.
Part of the onboarding process for each track involves selecting options from a number of dropdown menus that contribute to a song’s “discoverability rating.” Some are genre-related. Others have to do with what I’d describe as the vibe or feel of a song. One catch, however, is that the more nuanced categories like moods, key words, instruments, and influences are only available to paying customers. As a result, artists on the free plan are always less “discoverable” than artists who pony up the $22 to $37 a month for paid plans.
Also worth noting is that your tracks need to be registered with a Performance Rights Organization like BMI or ASCAP before you can submit them. My guess is that this is the case regardless of the platform you’re using to submit tracks for sync licensing, as the ISWC number that the PRO assigns to your song serves as a kind of digital fingerprint that allows a third party to distinguish between your song titled “Party Down” and someone else’s. If you’re not a member of BMI or ASCAP or another PRO, you should definitely join.
Once you’ve uploaded your songs to Music Gateway, you’ll receive “Briefs,” which are short descriptions of the kinds of tracks people are looking for. Some are fairly specific: “Upbeat Pop with Lyrics About Food,” for example, or “Upbeat with Lyrics About Lying.” Others are less so, like “Synth Pop” or “Positive Pop.”
Users receive briefs based on the data attached to the music they submit; if you submit a song with a genre tag like “Rock,” you’ll only get briefs from creators looking to add rock music to their projects. The tracks I uploaded were all tagged “Rock” and “Alternative,” and in the week or so since I submitted them, I’ve only received two briefs: one for “Upbeat Emotive Indie” and one for “Female Indie Rock.”
Apparently, I checked one of the wrong boxes. Either that or the gender box comes at an additional charge. Either way, I’m not seeing many briefs for the tunes I submitted. On one hand, it might just be that no one is looking for rock. On the other, I can’t help but wonder if I’d be seeing more briefs if I sprang for one of the paid plans.
At this point, it’s still too soon to offer a personal verdict on Gateway Music. As with most services geared toward musicians, there’s a lot of rhetoric that preys, for lack of a better word, on hopes and dreams: You, too, could be the next big thing if you just spring for the next level of membership! That said, at least they offer a free level, which entails very little, if any, risk. If you’re at all curious about sync licensing, it might not be a bad place to get started.