How to Pitch Music for Sync Licensing: The Practical Guide

Pitching music for sync licensing sounds complicated, but the mechanics are straightforward: a music supervisor or library sends out a brief describing what they need, and you send back the songs from your catalog that best fit that description. The quality of your pitches — how well your songs match the brief — determines your placement rate.

This guide covers the full workflow: from getting access to briefs, to reading them correctly, to building a pitch folder and sending it. It also covers the tools that make each step faster.

Step 1: Get Access to Briefs

You can't pitch sync if you don't receive briefs. The main ways songwriters get access:

• Music libraries — Non-exclusive libraries like Musicbed, Artlist, Pond5, and Marmoset accept submissions and send briefs to their roster. Good for volume, lower per-placement fees.
• Sync agents — Work with a sync agent who pitches your catalog on your behalf. Better per-placement fees, harder to get into.
• Direct relationships — Build relationships with music supervisors directly. Highest upside, takes years.
• Licensing platforms — MusoSoup, Groover, and others facilitate brief-based pitching for independent artists.
• Publisher briefs — If you're signed to a publisher, they forward briefs from their supervisor network.

Start with non-exclusive libraries and build from there. Exclusivity trades upside for volume — understand what you're signing before you commit.

Step 2: Read the Brief Correctly

Most briefs are misread or underparsed, which leads to off-target pitches and wasted relationships. Here's what to extract from every brief:

Step 3: Search Your Catalog

This is where most songwriters lose the most time and leave the most placements on the table. If you're pitching from memory or browsing folders manually, you're not seeing your full catalog — you're seeing whatever's top of mind.

The practical approach depends on your catalog size:

• Under 50 songs: A tagged spreadsheet (BPM, energy, mood, lyric theme) is enough. Filter manually.
• 50-200 songs: A catalog platform like Disco with consistent tagging. Manual filtering still works but gets slow.
• 200+ songs: You need brief matching software. Searching manually through 300+ songs under a 24-hour deadline means you're pitching your most memorable songs, not your most relevant ones.

Step 4: Build a Pitch Folder

A pitch folder is a set of audio files — typically 3-5 songs — properly named and ready to upload or share. Standard naming: Artist Name - Song Title.mp3. Some supervisors want WAVs; check the brief's technical requirements.

• Pick 3-5 songs maximum — more is not better. Quality of fit matters, not quantity.
• Name files consistently: Artist - Title.wav or Artist - Title.mp3
• Include stems or instrumentals if the brief asks for them
• If using Disco, share a link rather than files where possible — it's more professional and trackable

Step 5: Send the Pitch

Keep your submission message short. The music does the work. A one-to-two sentence note that references the brief ("Pitching for the summer campaign brief — these four tracks match the 100-120 BPM, upbeat, outdoor adventure brief") is all you need. No paragraph of context about yourself.

The Music Pitching Tools That Make This Faster

The two tools that reduce pitch turnaround time the most for working songwriters:

• Disco — for outbound catalog sharing and supervisor discovery. Upload once, share everywhere.
• Pitchkit — for inbound brief matching. Paste any brief, get your best-matching songs ranked instantly, create a pitch folder in one click. Mac app, $49 one-time.

Together they cover the full cycle: being found by supervisors (Disco) and responding fast when briefs come in (Pitchkit).