Every guide to sync pitching starts at the moment a brief lands in your inbox, which quietly skips the question most writers are actually stuck on: how does a brief ever land in your inbox in the first place?
I should say up front that I build Pitchkit, and Pitchkit does not solve this problem. It matches briefs you already have against your catalog; it does not supply them. So nothing below funnels toward my product being the answer. The routes are the answer, and they are more knowable than the industry makes them look.
Briefs start with music supervisors and their coordinators, working for a production, an agency, a trailer house or a game studio. A supervisor with a scene to fill does not post it publicly and wait. They work outward through channels in roughly this order of trust:
Notice the design: the brief gets less exclusive at every step. By the time a brief is public, you are competing with everyone. The long-term project is moving up that ladder; the short-term project is working the public layer well enough to fund the climb.
| Route | What it costs | What reaches you | Realistic for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brief platforms (Songtradr, Music Gateway and similar) | Free tiers to modest subscriptions, or a placement cut | Public briefs, wide competition, real projects mixed with thin ones | Everyone; the open door |
| Music libraries | Usually a revenue share; some exclusive, some not | Not briefs directly: your catalog sits where supervisors search, and libraries forward requests to writers they trust | Writers with volume and consistent quality |
| Sync agents and reps | A meaningful cut, typically taken only on placements | Private briefs from their supervisor relationships | Writers with a defined lane and an organized, cleared catalog |
| Publishers | A publishing share | Pitch sheets and direct requests, plus the room where decisions happen | Writers with cuts, momentum or a champion |
| Direct supervisor relationships | Years, not dollars | The best briefs, sometimes as a one-line text | Anyone patient; usually starts from one small placement done well |
Platforms deserve a clear-eyed approach, because this corner of the industry contains both real opportunity and an entire economy of selling hope to musicians.
Every route up the ladder selects for the same boringly practical things:
Pitchkit picks up at the moment this article ends: a brief has arrived, the window is open, and the question is which of your songs actually answer it. Paste the brief and it ranks your whole catalog by fit, from the audio itself: tempo, key, energy, mood, lyrics, artist references. Your picks land in a clean pitch folder, named and ready to send.
It does not find briefs, host your catalog, or share links with supervisors. One job: the right songs, fast, while the window is open.
Related reading: how to find sync placements, how to read a sync brief, and how sync placements actually pay.
A sync brief is a written request for music for a specific placement: a scene, an ad, a trailer, a game. It describes mood, tempo, references, lyric constraints, clearance requirements and a deadline. Briefs are written by music supervisors and their teams, then distributed through the channels they trust: their own contacts, publishers and sync agents they work with, libraries they pull from, and sometimes brief platforms.
That distribution chain is the whole game. Briefs flow toward people who have previously made a supervisor's job easier, which is why getting briefs is less about finding a secret list and more about entering one of the chains.
Start where the door is open: brief platforms and library submissions. Platforms like Songtradr or Music Gateway publish real briefs you can answer today, and music libraries accept catalog submissions on a rolling basis. The hit rate is low because the competition is wide, but the practice is real: you learn to read briefs, answer fast, and deliver clean files.
Run that lane while building the narrower ones: a sync agency application once your catalog shows a consistent lane, and supervisor relationships built by being easy to work with on small placements. Most working writers keep two or three routes running at once.
Judge them by what the money buys. A platform fee that buys access to real, current briefs with named projects can be worth it as a learning lane. A fee that buys a review of your song, a listing in a searchable library with no active pitching, or vague industry feedback is usually not, and anything promising guaranteed placements is selling something that does not exist.
Before paying, ask: are the briefs real and recent, does the service take a cut only when something places, and can they name placements they have actually landed? Exclusive deals deserve extra caution, because an exclusive with a service that places nothing takes those songs off the table everywhere else.
No, but they change what reaches you. Publishers and sync agents live inside the distribution chain: supervisors send them briefs directly, and their writers see requests that never become public. Independent writers mostly see the public layer, platforms and libraries, plus whatever relationships they build themselves.
The honest trade: an agent or publisher takes a share and expects a catalog that is organized, cleared and consistent. Which is also exactly what makes you pitchable on your own, so the preparation is the same either way. Build the catalog infrastructure first; it serves every route.
No. Pitchkit does not source briefs, and it is honest about that: it assumes briefs already reach you through the routes described here, and it solves the step after arrival, which of your songs actually answer this brief. You paste the brief text and it ranks your entire catalog by fit: tempo, key, energy, mood, genre, lyrics and artist references.
The two problems compound: more briefs are only worth something if you answer them well and fast, and answering fast is a catalog retrieval problem. The free version indexes your first 100 songs with every feature working; $49 once removes the cap.
The free version is the whole Mac app with the catalog capped at 100 songs: brief matching, artist references, lyric transcription and pitch folders all included. No account, no card, no expiry. $49 once removes the cap.
Download free: 100 songs →