MBW Views is a series of op-eds from eminent music industry people… with something to say. The following MBW op/ed comes from Frederic Schindler, a music supervisor and the founder of the music supervision company Too Young Ltd. and the licensing platform Catalog. He was named the 2025 Music Supervisor of the Year by the Association of Independent Music.
In the world of visual media and beyond, ‘free’ is the most expensive thing there is. And its close cousin,‘ easy’, is a dangerous accomplice.
In simple terms, sync licensing is the process of finding, getting permission, and paying to pair a piece of music with visual media. It’s the song that swells during the final scene of a film, the track that drives a global advertising campaign, and the beat that powers a viral TikTok video or videogame action. It is the soundtrack to our feeds, screens, and culture.
For years, I’ve been vocal about the broken sync system and the urgent need for this sector to be digitized – the gatekeeping, the endless email chains and archaic manual processes, the perfect pairing opportunities that die even before they are born.
It’s a system so inefficient that it has created its billion-dollar solution: the frictionless, instantly gratifying world of stock music, sound-alikes, and bespoke studios that mimic references closely enough to be effective, but just far enough to avoid legal consequences.
On the surface, it’s a triumph of convenience. For a nominal fee, you get a track. No lawyers, no delays, no fuss. It feels free. It feels easy.
But what is the true cost of this convenience?
The first cost is financial, and it is staggering. The stock music industry is now a $1.3 billion behemoth and is expected to grow to a $2.8 billion beast by 2030. To put that in perspective, the entire global record label business generated just $650 million from sync last year.
Yes, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, Beyoncé, John Coltrane and all the outstanding past and present history of recorded music combined made less revenue than music opportunistically created for visual media.
A market built on generic, anonymous tracks actually doubles the sync revenue of the artists and labels we love. This is not just a market inefficiency; it is a colossal transfer of wealth away from our musical culture and into the hands of platforms that sell sonic wallpaper.
But the damage runs deeper than lost revenue. The proliferation of subscription-based, “royalty-free” platforms has introduced a pernicious model that preys on artists and producers. It’s the “all-you-can-eat” buffet model, applied to sync.
Just as streaming platforms conditioned a generation to perceive individual songs as having near-zero monetary value, these sync platforms do the same for productions. They turn music into a bulk commodity by offering unlimited “syncs” for a flat monthly fee.
These platforms often operate on a work-for-hire basis, demanding artists alienate their rights for a one-time payment. Consent becomes a transaction, and the artist is reduced from a rights-holder to a gig worker on a sound assembly line, churning out content based on briefs and “sync market trends”.
Every time a production defaults to the ‘easy’ option, it is a vote to entrench this exploitative model and defund the artists we claim to admire.
The second cost is cultural. Sync is, or should be, an engine of discovery. It’s the perfect song in a pivotal scene that sends you down a rabbit hole, introducing you to your next favourite artist or musical scene. The track in an ad defines a moment and captures the zeitgeist.
Think of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill in Stranger Things. This single placement didn’t just define a character’s struggle but resurrected a 37-year-old masterpiece for an entirely new generation, topping charts worldwide.
That is the power we are losing. That’s the opportunity we are missing. But how often does that happen now? Consider the sheer volume of media we consume daily: the background to a 15-second social media ad, the intro to a podcast, the hold music on a customer service line, the teaser of that new series on Netflix.
Each slot could be soundtracked with art, but is overwhelmingly filled with functionality. This cultural real estate is some of the most valuable in the world, yet we are increasingly filling it with the musical equivalent of grey paint.
We are replacing moments of potential discovery with forgettable, algorithmically-optimised soulless sound-alikes. This slow, creeping erosion of quality is creating a blander, less resonant visual media landscape for us all.
Finally, the third and highest cost is the future. As we stand on the precipice of an unregulated generative AI revolution, the path of least resistance becomes even more seductive. Why bother with stock music when AI can generate something passable in seconds?
But this thinking is a trap. It mistakes mimicry for artistry and convenience for value. By accepting ‘ok’ over ‘great’, we are training ourselves, our clients, and our audiences to devalue the very human spark of creativity that makes a piece of music outstanding.
And memorable music touches us, deeply. This becomes personal for me when I think of my two-year-old daughter. I wonder if she will have her anthems of rebellion, love, and belonging – the kind of artist-driven music that defined youth culture for the last century. Or will her generation’s soundtrack be a seamless, functional, but forgettable stream of background audio?
“As we stand on the precipice of an unregulated generative AI revolution, the path of least resistance becomes even more seductive.”
The traditional sync system is broken, but the solution cannot be to abandon the value of artistry altogether.
The solution is to fix the friction. It’s to build systems that make licensing real, culturally vital music as seamless as its generic alternative. It’s about using technology not to replace human talent and curation, but to empower it.
We have a choice. We can continue down the hill of “free and easy” and pay the hidden price in lost revenue, diminished culture, and a devalued creative future.
Or we can build a better system – one that recognises that the right song will never be just a commodity. It’s a story, an identity, and an experience. It’s a talented artist’s creation that resonates intimately with us. And that is something worth paying for and defending.Music Business Worldwide
