What Does a Music Supervisor Do? | How to Build a TV/Film Career (2023)

Amanda Krieg Thomas (Ratched, American Horror Story, Pose)

A Music Supervisor basically works across every musically related element on a film or a television show. It looks different project by project and depending on the relationship with the Showrunner or production team, it can include anything from listening to music and pitching song ideas for scenes, to working closely with the Editors on how to cut those songs to scenes. It can include hiring Composers or working with them on the score. It can include hiring Music Producers and Songwriters and Arrangers, Orchestrators, all that type of stuff. It can involve listening to song and episode or film mixes, helping guide how loud or soft things should be.

If there are any on-camera performances, it involves working closely with the Director and production team to get those going. You’re talking to Props. You’re talking to Sound. You’re talking to Costume to make sure anything performed on camera is all buttoned up and getting any information back to the post-production team and Editors to put into picture.

Then it’s a lot of administrative work. Clearing (in other words, obtaining the rights to use) the songs everybody loves. More often than not a song can be owned by multiple people or companies, so you have to make sure all the ownership percentages add up to 100% and all paperwork is buttoned up–and there is a lot of paperwork! Music cue sheets with the score and songs in the show. Confirmation letters. Sometimes licenses and issuing payments.

It’s taking a project from the beginning to the final sound delivery and making sure anything related to music goes off as smoothly as possible.

Frankie Pine (Big Sky, The Flight Attendant, The Newsroom)

Music Supervisors come up with the musical direction of a film, television project, or any other kind of media outlet.

Usually, once you’re working with the Producers or a Director, you come up with a musical direction. Like on The Flight Attendant, we decided that most of the songs were going to be very female-driven to exude our lead character’s personality. We then started sending songs that fit that mold. It’s all based on scene; it’s based on the vibe, the feel, and the style that fits a particular scene of each episode.

Zach Cowie (Master of None, Judas and the Black Messiah, Little America)

It’s very different depending on the project. Some stuff is pretty hands-off and some is very hands-on. Your kind of day really depends on where the various projects are at. I’ll have slow days, then I’ll have a day where two movies I’m on are about to mix and I have to do spotting on a show, which is watching an episode with everybody and identifying places that need music and coming up with ideas. There are slow days, then there are eighteen-hour days.

Managing the workload and knowing when you can’t take something else on, that’s a big lesson I’ve learned. Master of None is so involved musically that I only did a couple other things the whole year we were working on that show because I really did work on it every day. On the other side, I’m working on two movies and a runway show right now.

You are hired to give your input on the musical choices made in score–in which Composer you hire to do original music for a show or movie–and you have some input in working with the Director and Producers in guiding Composers to what sound you want.

But your biggest job is to source, which is to find and license preexisting music for film and TV. On a show like Master of None, we’re almost entirely sourced and have very few composed cues so I just come up with tons of ideas for these scenes. Then I work with my Co-Supervisor on the show–her name’s Kerri Drootin–and the two of us (mainly her) work to license the music so we can use it.

That’s sort of the biggest thing for younger people to put on their radar: it’s not the dream job people think it is. Thinking of the music is amazing and so fun but there’s a lot of compromise involved and a lot of people who need to sign off on this stuff. The actual licensing of the music is very difficult and that’s the stuff I suggest to younger people to start getting their head around soon.

A recording is broken down into the master side and the publishing side and you have to do deals with the record labels for the master side and the publishing side for the publishing rights. It’s not easy.

Amanda Krieg Thomas (Ratched, American Horror Story, Pose)

I don’t think college is necessary for the gig, but if you’re in college and you’re like, “What do I take classes in?” I’d say, if your school offers anything related to music business, that’s helpful to take. Even broad music business classes will cover the basics of sync licensing. And of course, classes related to music licensing and publishing if they’re offered.

If you go to a school like I did with zero classes on music business or music supervision, any practical film classes will be helpful. I never took any and I moved here being like, “I don’t know how to make a movie.” I think that understanding the basics of how films or TV shows get made will be absolutely helpful to your vocabulary. Same with music. Any basic music production classes will be super helpful with the vocabulary that people use. I’d also suggest any classes related to communication or negotiation. We do a lot of dealmaking at various levels, and I regularly think about taking classes on negotiation myself.

I studied theater and was a Stage Manager, and of everything I studied in college, I’ve found that those skills come into play the most regularly. I don’t think someone who’s not already studying theater needs to go and take stage management classes, but the skills I learned in that go back to what I was saying earlier about being detail-oriented, being super organized, and that’s where I learned a lot of my communication skills. I really developed those over the years, and the first place I got those was doing stage management in college.

At that time, I didn’t know this was what I wanted to do. They also really come in handy for coordinating on-camera performances. There are of course specifics to the recording and the process of filming music that I learned over the years on the job, however, I worked on the musical The Prom last year, and found that skill set of stage management directly translated to what I was doing on that project.

Frankie Pine (Big Sky, The Flight Attendant, The Newsroom)

In hiring, at least for me, it doesn’t really matter what kind of degree you have as long as you’ve put your time into college and you’ve got yourself a degree. If you’ve focused on business, music, or some kind of communication aspect, that would be nice. But I’ve found that the better you are with people, the easier it is for you to manage this job.

I usually look at where my Directors or where my Producers hail from. Like, where were they born? I have a sociology degree, so for me, I want to know about people because where you grew up is kind of like your musical space. It’s what you like to live and breathe. I find that it’s always helpful to get inside the head of who you’re working with.

Amanda Krieg Thomas (Ratched, American Horror Story, Pose)

Depending on the length of the series (half-hour or hour) and other factors, a typical episodic fee for a major television series can range anywhere from $3K to $5K, with outliers on either end. With the number of episodes in a season getting shorter and shorter….independent Music Supervisors have to take on a lot to make a living.

While there are always exceptions, being paid per episode is typical in television. Fees for films vary even more widely, with indies paying a couple thousand (or less) and fees for big-budget studio films sometimes getting into the six figures if it’s a music-heavy project, like a musical. It also varies depending on experience, but probably not as much as one would expect.

Amanda Krieg Thomas (Ratched, American Horror Story, Pose)

The way a lot of people become Music Supervisors is by working under a Music Supervisor, whether that’s independent or in a film studio or production company. It’s very much an apprenticeship-type job. What you hope the trajectory is is that when you work with someone long enough and that trust is built up, they start sharing their credits with you and start passing projects along to you that they don’t have the bandwidth for, and then you’re building credits as a Music Supervisor on your own. Eventually, you start being known and hired on your own. That’s how a career often evolves.

I also know people who have never worked for a Music Supervisor. In those situations, it goes back to networking and putting yourself out there. A very good friend was working for a Showrunner and he was just telling anybody who would listen that he loved music and wanted to be a Music Supervisor. Then his peers started making movies and were like, “You’re the music guy, right?” and started calling him. Then they made their next movie with a bit more money, and then they made a TV show, and then this person grew their career that way. It was very networking-based.

Networking and relationships are really the way to do it. With the one caveat being that you always want to be careful: if you get hired as a Music Supervisor without knowing anything about music clearance, you could be putting yourself in a bad situation. Not properly clearing a song could lead to the production getting cease and desist letters, getting sued, possibly having to change music after a film is done, which is very costly–any number of problems. It can blow up in your face. If you’re someone who’s a quick learner and you find at least one person who’s willing to answer those kinds of legal and clearance questions, that’s definitely what you need. You don’t necessarily have to work under somebody, but it is one of the ways to do it.

In addition to that, there’s a wealth of different jobs in the film and TV music licensing world. When people think of Music Supervisors, they think of record labels or maybe Publishers. Within those record labels and Publishers, they all have distinct departments that pitch music. And there are companies that are mid-size or small that just pitch music for film and TV. I know a lot of people who want to be a Music Supervisor who got their foot in the door with one of these companies and then ended up really liking it.

I tell people that if one of the things you love and that draws you to music supervision is the artists or songwriters, you might want to think about working for a label or a publisher. In those positions, you’re working much more closely, regularly, and directly with artists who are interested in getting music into film and TV. Even if you decide that you don’t want to stay in publishing, you can get a foot in the door that way.

It’s a very small community. Some of my dearest friends over the past 15 years work at labels and Publishers and do clearance. They’re not just Music Supervisors. We’re all talking constantly. We’re all very close. In times where there’s not a pandemic, we’re socializing regularly.

Frankie Pine (Big Sky, The Flight Attendant, The Newsroom)

One of the great places to start is sending out resumes. But UCLA and USC have great programs. They have classes that you can take for music supervision.

There’s also the Guild of Music Supervisors—they have a volunteer program. The Guild of Music Supervisors host a lot of events, and if you volunteer, you’re automatically around Music Supervisors. You can chat them up. You can let them know that you’re interested in interning, interested in being an Assistant, interested in just shadowing a Music Supervisor for a day.

We’re pretty friendly people. Get into the mix. We all talk to each other … I have so many people that come to me and they’ll say, “Hey, do you have any Interns that are ready to become Assistants? Because I’m looking,” and vice versa. I’ll do the same thing whenever I’m looking. So if you can, go and volunteer at any of the guild events. It’s a great place to meet and greet and be around Music Supervisors. It’s a great way to get your foot in the door.

Zach Cowie (Master of None, Judas and the Black Messiah, Little America)

Everybody can listen to music and develop some sort of taste but the thing that’s going to get you the job is an understanding of the licensing and business side.

If I could do it all over again, I’d intern at a Publisher’s for a while. If you want to get into supervision, that’s one of the strongest first moves you can make: spending time at a Publisher’s and understanding the back end of this and how it works.

Just study the shit out of all music. I was talking to another Writer earlier today and he used the analogy of picking music as being like painting: the more music you know of, the more colors you have to work with. Because this job really isn’t about your favorite music, it’s about serving the scene in the best way possible.

Your job then becomes to find the good version of that song. In researching music you’ve got to be able to separate the good from the bad and you gather a range of knowledge. We throw genre out the window. I wouldn’t be able to do this job if I didn’t spend twenty years researching music.

Study music. I’m thirty-six so when I was learning about music in high school it was impossible. I’d go to the library and check out Mojo magazines and read as much as I could find. As a kid, I really struggled to find other people who were into the same stuff as me so I didn’t have a community. It’s so easy now to find a community and find out what you’re interested in.

The history of how things sound right now is traceable and learnable and that should be your number one thing: to learn the greats. I think it’s great that kids are listening to really weird records but you should also have every Beatles record memorized. You can’t let go of the roots of this stuff.

If something has been determined to be great, even if you don’t love it you should know about it because it’ll inform everything after it. The danger of not knowing your history is being redundant and when I’m talking to a younger person who’s trying to get into music, the first thing I’ll look for is the depth [of their knowledge].

On that same note, [have] an appreciation for film and tv. Again, I’m not a big TV person but the way people are making TV right now, you might as well just study movies.

It’s important to have your mind blown a bunch by other people who have done this job and I’m always looking at that and reviewing scenes that have inspired me to make sure the stuff I’m trying to do can sit next to them but that it’s adding something else–so I can make sure I’m not ripping something off. I’m a freak about history.

If you want to work anywhere in music, go through the Time magazine Top 100 Films and watch them all. Those are some of the best ways to use your time until you end up in the place you want to be.

Amanda Krieg Thomas (Ratched, American Horror Story, Pose)

A lot of people assume it’s having good taste in music, and it’s really not. I think communication skills are really critical. You have to know how to have respectful, clear conversations with the people you’re working with.

You are the liaison between two groups of people who don’t totally understand the other side. On one side you have labels, Publishers, and artists who have their own agenda. On the other side, you have Directors, Producers, production companies, and studios who also have their own agenda and priorities.

So I think people who are really successful know how to speak to both parties and know how to share good news, share bad news, and along with that, they know how to be a creative problem solver. Sometimes you can’t get a song a Director really wants, so then what do you do? How do you handle that situation? Knowing how to do that is sometimes more important than the actual music you might be sending.

Being resourceful is also important. Knowing how and where to do research. Whether that’s creative research like looking for song ideas for a specific spot and needing to think outside of the box, or you’re trying to find out who owns a particular song your Director loves, research skills are really important.

Organization is also key, especially when you’re coming in the door and just starting off. A lot of the support positions for Music Supervisors are heavily administrative and require excellent organization skills and the ability to be incredibly detail-oriented. You’re tracking a lot of information. You’re tracking audio files. You’re tracking clearances, which are a big deal because if you’re missing a small percentage of a song, all hell breaks loose, basically.

Does the paperwork add up to 100%? Did someone cross out–or add–important language to the contract? Is there a scene requiring music shooting next week? Did they add a character quoting song lyrics in the latest script revision? Especially for those just starting off, you really need to have organization on lock.

Frankie Pine (Big Sky, The Flight Attendant, The Newsroom)

A Music Supervisor needs to be organized more than anything else. You have to have the ability to keep track of where you are at all times: what music you submitted, where you’re at in the process of each episode, where you’re at in the film process, where you’re at in the clearance process, where you’re at in all aspects of the musical journey of a particular project. That’s probably the most important aspect: being organized.

There’s definitely an aspect where you have to have a knowledge of music, and obviously, a love of music. One of the things I always say to the people I have working for me is: I want you to bring something to the table that I wouldn’t bring to the table. For me, I’m obviously older than some younger person that’s going to come and work for me, so my knowledge is of the decades of older music that I’ve experienced.

There are things that I might not be so familiar with, like what’s happening that’s new. I want somebody that’s going to bring something new and interesting to me. Maybe it’s Latin, maybe it’s hip-hop, maybe it’s trap music, or maybe it’s a brand new thing that’s happening right now that may just be off my radar. So, I think it’s just about bringing something new to the table. And obviously, it’s gonna depend on the Music Supervisor that you’re interviewing with.

Zach Cowie (Master of None, Judas and the Black Messiah, Little America)

I think what has helped me a lot is I can be pretty flexible. Something you need to recognize when you do this job is it’s not about your favorite music. That’s the thing to learn; your mixtape is not going to show up on the show you work on. It’s a compromise of so many factors and opinions and on a show like this, you’re speaking to a really big audience so you have to bend.

I DJ a lot and every once in a while I get stuck doing something I don’t want to DJ, like a premiere party instead of the clubs I’m used to, that’s a ton of random people and if I were to do songs I liked, no one would have fun because they wouldn’t know a song I’m playing. You get into a groove and you have to do one for them, two for you, and you keep the door open.

That’s a real key to the cues of this show–on the music side there are these sort of landmarks in it, then we can start to stretch. Even if you go through the season it gets significantly deeper towards the end than at the beginning and all that comes from taking myself out of it and thinking about what’s best for the show.

There are some movies that I’m on where it’s just me but I’m talking to other people every day. Some stuff I do in front of my computer and some I have to be in an editing room. It’s really case-by-case and I think that comes from being in a career that’s so new; there’s no real defined way of doing things. I think my flexibility helps with that. I’m prepared to give as much as needed.

A big event for me is on Sunday when I’m putting the schedule together for my week; since it is so new it is very self-managed. I think those are skills that are both really important: being self-motivated and managed. It’s worth mentioning there a lot of people trying to do this job right now so if you start to slip they can replace you really quickly, so you have to be self-motivated and self-managed.

Amanda Krieg Thomas (Ratched, American Horror Story, Pose)

Everybody I know has come at it from a different point of view. I know people who have been music lovers their whole life and that’s kind of what got them in the door—and they knew somebody who was looking for help with music. For better or worse, getting in the door at a lot of entertainment careers involves knowing people.

If you can get internships, that’s a really good starting point. Any internship in music, preferably something administrative, is always something people look for on a resume. If that’s not possible, anything in entertainment would suffice. One of the very common ways to get a foot in the door in the entertainment industry as a whole was to get a job at an agency. I think that’s also a helpful qualification for getting a foot in the door in music supervision.

A lot of the support positions in the field are administrative, so a lot of times Supervisors are looking less for people who know how to use ProTools, and looking more for people who know Excel or Google Sheets really well. Any job that gives you those types of skills—administrative, organization, spreadsheets, filing, how to write a cohesive and coherent professional email—any of those jobs will come in really handy in music supervision and help you get a foot in the door.

Of course, that’s assuming someone wants to take that route of working in an Assistant type role for a Music Supervisor and working their way up. It can be tricky. There isn’t really a ladder. How you make the jump is you just start getting Directors or studios to hire you as a Music Supervisor, and then you’re a Music Supervisor.

With that in mind, one other skill or qualification would really be networking. So you need to know people that have leads, and the more people you meet, the more people that know you’re looking for a gig as a Music Supervisor, the more likely you are to be hired.

Back to what we talked about earlier about touching every aspect of music on a production–many filmmakers don’t really realize that is part of the gig. Most of the first jobs I got were from people making films who were like, “You’re a music person. You know how to clear songs. Can you help us?” and that was all people knew about the job. A lot of people still think that’s the job. But the more you do it, the more you understand that it’s so much more.

Another qualification is that some legal knowledge as it pertains to copyright, IP clearances, or music publishing is helpful. My first job was working for a Music Lawyer at a film studio. That very basic understanding was a helpful foundation going into other jobs. It’s not critical to have a law degree or even to be a Paralegal, but some understanding of that would be helpful on a resume.

Frankie Pine (Big Sky, The Flight Attendant, The Newsroom)

They absolutely have to have internships–internship with a Publisher, internship with a label, internship with another Music Supervisor. I feel like if you can get a good six months under your belt with a Music Supervisor, you’ll have a good handle of what the job is.

That doesn’t mean that you can immediately become a Music Supervisor, obviously, but that means that you’ll be a pretty good Assistant to a Music Supervisor. And then you move from there. The next level is being a Coordinator to a Music Supervisor, and then, after Coordinator is basically becoming a Music Supervisor yourself.

Zach Cowie (Master of None, Judas and the Black Messiah, Little America)

It’s worth noting that I got kind of super lucky and just fell into this. I worked at record labels for about ten years straight. Out of high school, I was working at record stores and I started at labels by the time I was nineteen. So, in doing that, I was able to learn a lot about music and also the business side.

Since I was a teenager I’ve been a DJ, so that added to the amount of music I was exposed to. I’ve always been a huge film freak and weirdly not a TV person so I just got a really lucky break.

I always wanted to do this job but never knew how to get into it. And it was [through] DJing a lot and being in front of a lot of people who made this stuff that I slowly started getting asked to work on these things. So I really don’t know the straight-ahead way to get the job and if I had to do it all again the first thing I would do is get a job in publishing and learn that.

I think that you have to be a go-getter. It’s a hard job to maintain a strong career in. If you’re meek and mild, it’s definitely not a job for you. You have to have a strong personality—a big personality. You have to not be afraid and go after the things that you want, because it’s a hustle to get jobs. It’s a hustle to maintain relationships. And you’ve gotta be a people person.

“Since I wasn’t in school for it I didn’t really see people working towards it so I can’t really answer that. I know there are classes for it now; there’s one at UCLA that I would actually love to take. Because it’s so new it’s still being defined and that’s just as exciting as it is scary.”