So You Want To Be A Music Supervisor…
By Amanda Krieg Thomas / Yay Team
Over the past several years, music supervision has become a very sexy career. There is more content than ever and for the most part it’s better than it ever has been, particularly in television. And many of these great television shows also feature great music. Watch shows like Fargo, Legion, Russian Doll, Ramy, Euphoria and you will see songs deployed in a range of innovative ways – unexpected, stylized, subversive, emotional, inspiring, illuminating – each tactic essential to the storytelling. Soundtrack reviews and interviews with music supervisors are regularly found in major publications, Spotify playlists abound, the Guild of Music Supervisors Awards have been held for 10 years, and music supervisors can even win Emmys!
This of course means many things for the craft, but one of them is (unsurprisingly) a surge in people of all ages being interested in a job as a music supervisor. From college kids to those in their thirties and forties seeking to change careers, I receive a handful of messages every month asking to “pick my brain†on the topic.
I feel incredibly privileged to get to do this job and, especially in the current moment, have been coming to terms with the fact that I need to do a better job of paying it forward. With it being a bit slower due to COVID, I wanted to take the opportunity to share some common advice on ways to become a music supervisor and a few of the steps on my own journey.
A few things before you begin down this road, particularly in a freelance music supervisor role versus one “in house†at a film studio, production company, ad agency and so forth.