Review of MusicSupervisorGuide
by David Goldstein
MusicSupervisorGuide (http://www.musicsupervisorguide.com) is really three services in one: First, it is a music supervisor directory listing thousands of music supervisors and advertising agency creatives in charge of licensing music for film, TV, videogame and advertising projects. Two, the service provides a list of hundreds of active film and TV projects that might be looking for music. And third, it provides a number of interesting video tutorials and articles on how to place music in film, TV, advertising and videogames.
Though note that MusicSupervisorGuide is not a music placement service itself. It just provides information about how to get in touch with music buyers directly. So for example, you can find the direct phone number, email address and mailing address of prominent music supervisors like Alexandra Patsavas on that service. You can then also get a list of all of her current film and TV projects that she might be working on, and you also get a list of some of her past projects, which is useful to get a feel for the type of music she might like for her currently active projects.
You can definitely feel that MusicSupervisorGuide is geared toward the hard core, professional music publisher, record label, and artist manager who know how to approach music buyers directly. Indeed, the service boasts major publishers such as Universal and Sony/ATV and record labels from around the world among its clients who use the information in this music supervisor directory to stay on top of hundreds of active film and TV projects. It is also a great tool for recording artists and bands that want to take their fate into their own hands and pitch music directly to music supervisors. After all, a placement on a hit television show like “Grey’s Anatomy”, “The O.C.” or “Gossip Girl” can make or break an artist on an international scale, at least from past experience.
However, it is not a tip sheet, so it doesn’t tell you what type of music a music supervisor needs at any given time. So you have to make the effort to find out yourself, or do a little bit of homework on free websites like TuneFind (http://www.tunefind.com) that list the songs that were previously placed on various TV shows. Nonetheless, MusicSupervisorGuide is one of the largest cross-reference directory were you can find out exactly which music supervisors is working on which project right now. Plus it provides direct contact information, which is not easily found in other directories.
The website itself is very easy to use, and has a great search function that makes it easy to find music supervisors for upcoming Hollywood blockbusters like “The Amazing Spiderman 3” or “Ironman 4” or TV hit shows such as “Suits”, “Games of Throne”, “CSI”, and others.
Subscriptions to MusicSupervisorGuide are available only a few times a year, because it does not want to alienate music supervisors that do not necessarily want their projects and contact details widely spread. Being inundated with thousands of amateur submissions is certainly something most of them would want to avoid. As such, MusicSupervisorGuide tries to stay exclusive by limiting the number of memberships available, and allows subscriptions only two or three times in any given year.
From a price standpoint, the service costs around $700 per year, depending on the subscription package you choose. Not a bad value for the thousands of music supervisors and music buyers featured in the directory, cross-referenced with hundreds of active Hollywood film and TV projects. Probably unsuitable for amateurs who might need a little bit more handholding that Taxi (http://www.taxi.com) provides, but it’s about the same price as Taxi, myHitOnline, Cuesheet (http://www.cuesheet.net) and similar services.
