Sync Con Hollywood: Connecting the dots for hip-hop in Hollywood

Dec. 6th to 8th, 2019 – Sync Con Hollywood: Music in Film and TV Conference. Hollywood, has embraced diversity and is now in the midst of creating a new golden age for hip-hop in television and film content. Sync Con being the first of its kind has dedicated the conference to connecting and training young music producers, songwriters and aspiring music supervisors on the world of music licensing for TV, commercials, video games and motion pictures.

Its creator, Ade Ariyo, Music Supervisor (Music Blvd Group), wanted to share her experience and the Hollywood Sync Community music executives she has worked with on shows like: Power, Being Mary Jane, Empire and Better Call Saul. She has successfully licensed over 100,000+ music tracks in over 53 countries. She has brought together a coveted list of music sup’s and television executives presenting via a three-day event to an audience that is hungry for all topics sync licensing. Music creators came from all parts of the world with the farthest being from Australia, England, Canada, Chile and various cities within the United States.  

Other mediums like commercials and the gaming industry have played a role in the demand for hip-hop within top games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, where the end credits song/rap is sung by the “in-game” character, Staff Sergeant Griggs (Mark Grigsby). The newest trend is to “release” video game bonus tracks on Spotify playlists. Some companies like Rock Band go even further and put out their own playlists for the game. The key to getting into this new world of “sync” is to study the medium you are seeking to place your music and consistently follow-up.

Keynote speaker, Brian Miller, Music Supervisor of NFL Network, drives home the point of “how important it is to have a large catalogue of music,” and to make certain you know who you are approaching. For example, knowing that NFL Network is 24-hour live story news network, you would not submit the same music as you would to Disney ABC Television Group.  

Eric Kalver, Music Supervisor of Activision Blizzard, who works on games like Destiny, Guitar Hero and Call of Duty, says “even with music being only 5% of creative production of a game, it has become increasingly important in the advertising,” and the overall core sales factor in marketing the game.

The music within the game is treated like a score, where they hire well-known composers, treating the process more like a motion film for release. While advertising is primarily utilizing “buy-outs” of heavy driving songs, of which hip-hop is the most sought-after genre.  

Sync Con showcased featured speakers like Nicole Prutch (TV marketing agency; Lussier), Angela M. Jollivete (Music Supervisor; Greenleaf), Dez Davis (Music Supervisory, Deutsch Ad agency) and many more who led the audience through a variety of workshops, panels, breakout sessions and 1-on-1 mentoring over three days.  

The last day heavily focused on networking between live performances with a most spectacular uplifting rap performance from King Pen whose music was featured on Starz, MTV and Netflix. And various Sync Con Awards were given out to actors, musicians and most notably TV producer/creator of Love & HipHop, Mona Scott-Young (Monami Entertainment: Missy Elliott, Grown-ish, All American etc), who won the Trailblazer of the Year Award.  

This educational hip-hop, R&B and dance genre focused conference will be moving from its originating city of Atlanta to New York, June 6th to 7th, 2020 and back in LA Nov. 6th to 8th, 2020. See Sync-Con.com for more information.  

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