The deadline for registrations to the 2010 BPI Sync Licensing mission passed last week, and I’m pleased to say despite the testing commercial times we live in (or maybe precisely because of?), we have had a record number of applications and are taking over 40 companies to the City of Angels this coming April. The delegate list contains a large number of ‘first-timers’, plus some returnees. Hopefully, whatever category our delegates fit into, all will find it a useful and hopefully profitable experience.
Last year’s mission produced a good number of successful outcomes with music being placed in a variety of TV shows and commercials. Perhaps the highest profile placing was made by veteran ‘missioner’ Dougie Souness on behalf of his excellent ‘No Half Measures’ set of companies. With some extra help from Heather Kreamer of m-Ocean (a music placement company in LA that itself contributes to the mission programme), Dougie’s band The Law saw their music used in the George Clooney film ‘The Men Who Stare At Goats’ - an interesting if bizarre tale of a US Special Forces unit in Iraq and a research project, which involved intense and prolonged staring at goats as a means of giving them a heart-attack, and its adaptation to the process of combating the insurgency….I kid you not - no pun intended!
Whatever, Dougie walked away with a nice cheque, so, hopefully whatever the story line of upcoming films, TV shows, ads, computer games etc, our delegates have the music to further emote the narrative.
This year’s mission programme will involve a host of US music supervisors who work on a range of shows and movies including Fox (Glee); NBC (Heroes, Lost, House); CBS Television (CSI-everywhere!); Nic Harcourt (former Music Director @ KCRW radio, a station that has broken more than a few UK artists in the US such as Coldplay, Dido, Franz Ferdinand and many more); Jeff Rona the composer who has helped score films by Ridley Scott, Robert Altman, Steven Soderbergh amongst others; and other companies to numerous to mention. I currently in the process of also lining up a ‘celebrity’ interview involving a Brit, long time resident in LA, who has more than a few stories to tell from the music business over 3 decades or more. As is always the case in these exercises in Hollywood, there is a lot of ‘my people talking to your people’ etc etc at the moment, but hopefully we’ll get there in the end. If it comes off it will be a nice way to round off the mission presentation programme.
An interesting addition to this year’s mission is a cover-mounted CD we are producing with Music Week to go in the issue the week before the mission. As well as getting some UK coverage of our endeavours, we can take that edition of Music Week to LA to distribute to US presenters to the mission and hopefully at the following week’s big MUSEXPO event. Unfortunately, we can only fit 20 tracks onto the one CD, so only half our mission companies can get on it….but I’m pleased to say that within 24 hours of making the offer to our delegates, we had a full CD and even a short waiting list.
I’m working on more new ideas to add into the mix to help benefit those companies coming out to LA, so hopefully everybody comes back with more than a suntan. If you haven’t thought of coming on one of these ‘adventures’ before, then - although it’s too late for this one - we do also run other trade missions to Japan (in August) to help labels get a foot-hold in the largest music market outside of the US, and closer to home a mini-mission covering the Scandinavian markets (early June), meeting labels, distributors and digital companies there. Contact
debi.blackgrove@bpi.co.uk for further details.