Ep 4 continues on from Ep 3, discussing the re-record of Powderfinger’s iconic song by Australian indie singer Megan Washington. Plus we get all dressed up for a fabulous agency Christmas party.
Please contact us if you need help with music searches or licensing songs for advertising campaigns, or just want to chat about music and advertising. We would love to hear from you! About anything really.
See below for the full transcript:
Bruce:
Good day. I’m Bruce again.
Clare:
And I’m Clare. And we are from Music Mill, a music supervision company in Australia.
Bruce:
And we’re in Melbourne. And look at us.
Clare:
Look at us.
Bruce:
We’re going to a Christmas party. Merry Christmas everybody.
Clare:
Merry Christmas.
Bruce:
One of our favourite advertising agencies has invited us to their dress up Christmas party. Black tie with a touch of circus, that’s us.
Clare:
Yep. And it should be fun.
Bruce:
All dressed up.
Clare:
Looking forward to that.
Bruce:
Yeah, it should be great.
Clare:
So what music licensing are we going to talk about today?
Bruce:
Today. Well, it’s time for part two of talking about Powder Finger, but this time I said we’d talk about the music rerecord.
Clare:
Okay.
Bruce:
Megan Washington.
Clare:
That’s right.
Bruce:
She was really good wasn’t she?
Clare:
She’s got such a lovely voice. Yes. Well, this time they wanted to get a different sound, a more emotional sound.
Bruce:
Soulful.
Clare:
Soulful. That’s it.
Bruce:
Yeah. And we had to negotiate the music licensing deal, of course. But it was complicated because not only did she sing the song, but she appeared in the ad. So there were these two parallel licensing negotiations going on. One of them between the advertising agency and her management to work out how much she was going to get paid for that. And one between us and Universal Music to negotiate the sync license. And they had one pot of money and we had to figure out how to divide it up.
Clare:
And it all went pretty amicably.
Bruce:
Yeah, it worked out very well. We got there in the end, partly thanks to Donna Fitzhenry at Universal Music, who did a good job of coordinating things was good.
Clare:
Yes.
Bruce:
But then you get another complication because of course, as in most of these music rerecords, Powder Finger as the writers wanted to listen to the finished product.
Clare:
That’s not uncommon. Writers usually want to or quite often want to have the final say in how their music is going to be rerecorded.
Bruce:
Well, of course, because they want to protect the integrity of their song. And some of them are very protective. And this is an iconic song.
Clare:
Yes.
Bruce:
So there was a lot of back and forth, a lot of comment. But again, lots of goodwill. Everybody loved the concept and everybody loves the music track. And in the end it was fabulous.
Clare:
It was.
Bruce:
So we’re off to the party.
Clare:
We’re off to the big tent. So if you like it, share it.
Bruce:
And if you need any help with licensing songs for advertising, let us know. See you later.
Clare:
See you later.
bruce at musicmill.com.au
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-tweedie-music-song-mill
Website: www.musicmill.com.au
Credit: the opening and closing sequences feature “Strong Hands” from Ben Catley:
The song: https://soundcloud.com/bencatley/strong-hands
About Ben: open.spotify.com/artist/66OGdUyXn2WSipn6ZYq7id
Disclaimer re copyright and fair use: https://www.musicmill.com.au/fair-use/
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