Roxy Shah - Sync the World
Roxy Shah is a music supervisor at Record Play. She works on big campaigns for the likes of Google and Adidas - and she works with artists from all over the world at all stages of their career.
Roxy has some good, practical advice for people who make music and for people who want to work in the industry. She also has stories of deals that have literally changed the lives of people making music in their bedrooms in some of the more unexpected places.
AI Transcription
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
music, artists, people, ai, sync, written, listen, necessarily, song, making, film, campaign, places, work, principles, heard, brand, sound, emails, roxy
SPEAKERS
Andrew Dubber, Roxy Shah
Andrew Dubber
Hi, I’m Dubber. I’m the director of Music Tech Fest. And this is the MTF podcast. Roxy Shah started out in the music business in London, moved to Barcelona began working in retail curation. And finally in sync and licencing. She’s a music supervisor, she finds and places music in advertising campaigns, films, television, working with clients like Google and Adidas, and not just with the big pop artists from the big global capitals of popular music, but from literally all over the world. And with people at all stages of their career. If you’re someone who makes music, or someone who wants to work in that industry, Roxy has got some good, practical advice for you. And some stories of deals that have literally changed the lives of people making music in their bedrooms. In some of the more unexpected places around the world. We discuss hip hop and Azerbaijan, ai produced music tracks, and also what she’s doing at Expo north, the creative industries festival in Inverness, where we spent some time recently and where this interview was recorded. Roxy works for an agency called record play or record play. We’re not 100% Sure.
Roxy Shah
Well, nobody really knows the answer, including our CEO, I would say it’s verbs record play, right? Okay. And we are a music agency, we have offices in Barcelona and London. And primarily, we do music supervision. So working with brands, and providing music, music content for them, okay, music
Andrew Dubber
supervision is one of those terms that everybody has heard, and nobody’s quite sure what they do what what is the actual day to day.
Roxy Shah
So we listen to a lot of music we have our clients come to us with a campaign or a brief that they’re working on, maybe they have a reference track or something in mind, we will then provide searches based on the budget the terms, so that includes the territories that the campaign will be shown in the length of time. And these things are really important because it can really affect the budget, and therefore the type of artists we can use, whether we use a very small artist or a bigger artist, and we send searches of tracks over to the client, we may have to do three or four searches. And then hopefully they come back with something they like. And from there, we start the licencing process. So we contact the artists, we contact their label and publisher, make sure everything’s approved within the budget and with the terms. And then hopefully, everything goes smoothly and the song gets picked with the campaign and and then
Andrew Dubber
you see on your TV screens. So listening to lots of music and sending lots of email as
Roxy Shah
Yeah, just as glamorous as it sounds
Andrew Dubber
fantastic. So where does this start for you? How did you get into doing this?
Roxy Shah
Um, it was a bit of an accident, really, I do actually remember watching a lot of films when I was a teenager. And all my favourite bands would be in on the soundtrack. And I used to think who whose job is that to pick to pick the songs. And then I always knew I wanted to work in music, but ended up working, interning, firstly at Sony Music. And then out of university, I worked for EMI publishing, then I did booking then I did music, PR and I took a break from musical together. And then I’m based in Barcelona, and was looking to get back into music. And a friend of mine was working at this music agency. And when I met the team, and they’re all it’s a tiny scene, but all real music heads and so, so smart about the industry and how it works. And so, about three years ago, I joined the team. Fantastic, what
Andrew Dubber
did you study at university and have that help?
Roxy Shah
I actually studied philosophy. So nothing to do with music. I would argue
Andrew Dubber
that but actually that has everything to do.
Roxy Shah
It has something to do with everything I suppose. But I already knew I knew from when I was in my early teens, I wanted to work in music in the industry. And I was so gung ho about it that I thought I don’t necessarily want to do a music management degree or anything like that, because I know that I’ll manage to work in music. Anyway, I done a couple of internships before going to university as a teenager, one for Sony Music and one for a small independent label in the States. So and everyone kind of said, you know, do do what you want to study. And I would really advise that to anyone who thinks that they have to study something to do with music specific specifically, I mean, it’s not vocational, it’s not like doing medicine or law. And actually like you say you can apply things from philosophy or or a range of subjects to any industry it’s about the way that you think it’s about the way that you make strategies and you process information. So I do think that side of it I kind of can extract from my philosophy degree into music. We always making playlists as a teenager on get mix mix CDs, I think everybody’s birthday they received a mix, CD, a snake, the inlay cards and everything I was obsessed with, with those kind of things, watching MTV I was really into American music, then I think that was what we were more exposed to. But it was that era when they had a lot of behind behind the scenes TV shows, like making the band. And that’s how I first kind of started doing music management and record labels. Now, I would say I’m much more focused on smaller regional music. Well, also UK music as well. But yeah, it all kind of started from there.
Andrew Dubber
What do you mean by smaller regional music?
Roxy Shah
Well, at record play, we also have a company within that called music map, where we focus on artists from territories that don’t necessarily get much coverage or are associated with a music scene. I mean, I think I’m gonna get this wrong, there’s 190 something countries in the world maybe. And we’ve written about 180 of them. I mean, we’ve got artists from places as small as like, Cayman Islands, and Vatican City and things like that. And it’s just so interesting, because you don’t necessarily have to be from London, or LA, or New York or Paris to be making music. Creativity happens everywhere. And it’s so different. But they’re also similar things to the things that people make music about, are their emotions, but love and pain. And, and to me, it’s really interesting to hear. I mean, now with the internet, it’s amazing because things aren’t. So localised music is global now, so you have people in Japan making reggaeton music, or you can have people in, I don’t know, New Zealand making grime. You know, it’s great, because it stops things being so exclusive, I think. Right?
Andrew Dubber
Right. But do you look for the sound of the place when you’re looking for the people from the place or you just after some representation from them?
Roxy Shah
Yeah, after some representation, because it’s difficult to know, with, with, with territories that don’t necessarily have a sonic identity as like, you know, rock’n’roll from America or grime from the UK, for example. And maybe countries don’t even have that. So just anybody that’s creating from those places, and then they might not necessarily be that a sound that is associated with it, but their stories. And the narrative is based on that it’s based on growing up in, in Beirut, in Lebanon, like it might not sound like what you think of when you think of Middle Eastern music, but they grew up there. And that’s their experience. And that’s what they are inspired by. Right.
Andrew Dubber
Right. So it sounds like a kind of an optimistic message for people who are in smaller places, or far flung regions or whatever, that there is potentially a platform for their music. Is that getting better? Do you think?
Roxy Shah
I think so I think more and more people are interested in a story with their music, like I say, a narrative. Because before, I think you’re just fed what you heard on the radio, but now with the Internet, and you can read things. So it’s quite warming to read things, or listen to artists from places that you haven’t heard before, or they’ve struggled and they didn’t even have a studio to record in, and they’ve recorded it on their phone, and someone’s heard it. And you know, this people I think, are more open and interested in a story with their music sometimes.
Andrew Dubber
I guess one of the most valuable things in the music industry would be the attention of somebody like you, if you’re a musician trying to get your music heard or played or synced or whatever. How does how does that happen? How does somebody get your attention in a way that that sticks?
Roxy Shah
We were so opens people just emailing us and and letting us know about what they’re doing. And I think if you’ve done a bit of research into the company and who they work with, for example, we work with Adidas and Google. So the the type of music that we tend to sync is you can imagine what it’s like it’s urban, electronic, upbeat, uplifting. So if you’re writing kind of thrash metal, of course, I’ll listen to it. But maybe you’ll be suited at another agency. So I think it’s really important to do your research and find out who you’re writing to, and what kind of clients or shows that they’re working with. But we listen to everything that we get. And
Andrew Dubber
I sorry, really? Yeah. Yeah, because that seems surprising.
Roxy Shah
Yeah, we get less we get I mean, it’s not I don’t get an outrageous amount of emails. To be fair. If that was the case, then maybe it would have been
Andrew Dubber
the these things. Is that not the case?
Roxy Shah
No, I mean, the mailing lists I get from from publishers, I know who they are, so I know what I’m listening for. And then the composers or songwriters, artists that find me, there’s not too many. There’s definitely a few emails a day, but that is totally listenable. But you know what it helps if they’ve written an email with a bit of information. If they say I’m a songwriter, he writes atmospheric harp music. I’ll have a listen but I’ll Unfortunately, this isn’t what we really work with, I’m going to keep it on file, because one day it might come up. But then I don’t have to listen to the 20 songs that they’ve sent. Right. So, I mean,
Andrew Dubber
there is a good package to see, I mean, is that three songs in a bio? Or is it?
Roxy Shah
Yeah, and not even too much of a bio, like a little bit of background? And maybe something, something about why you think it would go with the clients we work with? And I mean, working with it das, we often get emails of people saying, you know, my first pair of trainers or a pair of Adidas trainers or a huge match the United fan, I just bought the new kit. And you know, that helps as well, because it is like working with artists who are fans of the brand and could be an asset to the brand. So that helps, yeah, and then maybe three songs that you think could work in a potential campaign. And maybe you might even reference a particular campaign. Oh, I saw the latest PBS running campaign. It reminded me of this song that I’d written. And something like that would be really helpful as a supervisor.
Andrew Dubber
Right. Right. Interesting. I’m kind of curious, what do parents do? And how did that affect where you ended up? Is there any influence that’s run through there?
Roxy Shah
No. Do you know what growing up I only remember hearing Prince and George Michael in the house, but my parents have nothing to do with music. And my dad works with children that have been through the foster care system, and my mom is a teacher, for children with special educational needs. And but I do always remember, there was always music playing. But when I got a bit older, and everybody was talking about that, everyone was referencing their parents listening to the Beatles, and rolling stones. I remember being really annoyed that I didn’t listen to them growing up. I had only paid prints. But now now I’m, I’m the biggest Prince than ever, and I get it. And but yeah, there was always music playing in the house. And when I said I wanted to work in music, they were very supportive of it. I do think sometimes I think it’s a hobby. Like, it’s great that you do music, but why do you become a lawyer? But I think it’s one of those industries that it does seem a bit of a dream to some people, they can’t quite Imagine that. My job is to listen to music, but we work
Andrew Dubber
hard. Well, there’s more to it than that, I guess. Because the lifestyle that goes along with the music industry, it’s not just the sitting down listening to music and sending a message. There’s parties, there’s fabulous people to meet. Yes, there is a glamorous aspect to it is that is a isn’t real and be as part of the appeal.
Roxy Shah
And no part of the appeal. That’s definitely not why I got into it. But I mean, it can be fun to have an eye out and go see a band and you know, people buy you drinks, that’s great. But no, for me, I just love getting to listen to music. And I still can be sent something by a label or by somebody just randomly or a friend was me something and it doesn’t even have to be emotional. It could be a piece of like drum and bass or something. But when something’s really good, it makes me want to tell everyone I want to text everyone, I just had this song that’s so good. I want to tweet about it. Whenever I blog about it, like music really still gets me excited a good song or a good album or interesting artists can make, it’s all I want to talk about. So that’s the draw. For me. The rare glamorous outings are not the poll,
Andrew Dubber
right? So the the fact that somebody music gets used in a commercial or a TV show or in film or whatever, it’s not just a check. It’s also a spike in interest that people suddenly find out about the more they hear the music for the first time. So in a kind of a way that you sort of almost a star maker, and that sense, does it feel like a responsibility,
Roxy Shah
it’s depends, because we work with a producer that we work with called Tareq, who is incredible. And we whenever we are kind of stuck for something, we’ll reach out to him and he can create something perfect, but he doesn’t necessarily want the kind of doesn’t want to be in the blogs or doesn’t want to be written about, he’s just happy making music. That’s what makes him happy. So it’s, there’s no, we don’t need to push to kind of get a PR press press release around him. You know, you do have other artists that have gone on to become successful. But it’s, I mean, it’s not down to us, we’re not the Star Makers, we’ve just happened to be on the right track at the right time. And it’s up to the artists to then and a follow up on that and sign with the right publisher or label or PR or whoever it is. I mean of course there’s responsibility of we we definitely make sure we work with artists that our ethos is aligned with that we have the same principles and values as and same with brands. We wouldn’t work with brands that we don’t agree with but I don’t feel the responsibility too much of making stars. We just want to use a good song in a cool commercial and have people say it’s a cool song or people notice it.
Andrew Dubber
What is their ethos.
Roxy Shah
ethos is definitely to support emerging artists and emerging talent, that’s something that my first day at work, I was told, you know, we always try to do that. And we never want to kind of undercut them, we want we, we’ve got musicians as part of our team that are in bands. So we know what paycheck from a sink, placement can mean to a small band. So we want them to have that, that that money that can pay for their recording studio and things like that. We also, our ethos is also to work with brands that, you know, we we have the same principles morals with so we wouldn’t necessarily work with a fast food chain, for example, right? If If our ideas didn’t align necessarily, and that’s something that that really drew me to the company, because, you know, not a lot of companies have that ethos and, and music can be quite ruthless. And so you have to take those that you wouldn’t necessarily, but I think having your principles is really important, especially in music. There’s a lot of people who make music who think that their music could be great in a soundtrack or single
Andrew Dubber
or whatever. But no idea where to start. Obviously send it to people seems to be a smart thing to do. But things like pricing, I mean, how do you know what to ask for? Is there are there industry standards, I was at work.
Roxy Shah
I mean, you could have a look at music libraries even and see what their price points are for. For if you’re unsigned, for example, it would probably be something around the same amount as a as a high end music library. And so you can see, oh, they charged this amount of money for tell me ballpark, where are we talking? It really depends. There’s no specific. I mean, we can get something for one minute, or actually, I can’t give you a ballpark cuz it really differs, it differs from brand to brand, it differs from campaign to campaign within within one brand. So I mean, we work on everything from something that would be a budget of 500 euros or dollars or pounds up into things are massive six figure seven figure campaigns. So
Andrew Dubber
have you seen that make a real difference for people?
Roxy Shah
Yes, yeah, we have. I mean, we’ve had. And also, once we’ve worked with someone, we try to build a relationship with them. So we’ve we’ve, across our team, we’ve all kind of discovered up and coming producers, one of whom was a guy in New Zealand, who was just making beats in his bedroom. He couldn’t believe it. I can’t remember, I think someone found him on SoundCloud. And he couldn’t believe it when we wrote it all it was he interested in using a track? I think he was like, No, no, it is possible, like prove it. That sounds like a lottery winner. Yeah. But, I mean, again, it wasn’t a huge paycheck, it was, well, I would be happy with it. But it wasn’t massive, it would be something that a major label artist could potentially turn down. But this was huge, huge amount that would change his life. So those kind of things are really important. Fantastic.
Andrew Dubber
And so what sort of project see you sort of excited about getting involved with this? I mean, are they all the same to you as an ad, a film or TV show or game or whatever, or you say, you know what, I really love to work in this kind of medium. I think
Roxy Shah
it’s all interesting, it’s nice to kind of work on different things. Just to break it up a bit. I mean, predominantly, we do advertising, but we also do video games as well. And so it’s nice to have a change change up. And they’re all different. I mean, music sync for TV in sync for film and sync for advertising. It’s a totally different kettle of fish, you know, in an ad that you need to grab someone very quickly. In a film, maybe you have a longer time to build. And maybe the lyrics are more important, right? As an adult, it’s not a beat. So it’s nice to change up and do different things.
Andrew Dubber
And are you just looking for things that sound like the stuff you already do? Or have you had the the instance where something falls on your desk and go well, I’ve we’ve not heard like this before? Yeah, but I can see this working in these contexts.
Roxy Shah
Definitely. And I think if something is original, and different than we definitely keep it on file if it doesn’t necessarily fit a particular brief that we’re working on. And we actually tried to kind of forecast the year to come what will be happening in terms of musical trends so that we are ahead of the curve. And so it’s super interesting we get especially with music map, we get to send things or we come across things that are so different anything we’ve heard. I mean, there was something from I think like Azerbaijan the other day that was like at like Azerbaijan like Wu-Tang, basically it was so different. And although it might not work, but anything we’re working on now is something that will kind of remember and it will stay with us and if something comes up but we can use something different. It will be on our radar. A 15
Andrew Dubber
year old You listening to this now? What advice would you give to say, to be where you are now?
Roxy Shah
Um, I mean, I think I’ve always had quite a good worth at work ethic. And like I said, I started interning when I was a teenager, before University. But as I mentioned earlier, I think having your principles is really important. For any job, I always decided I couldn’t work somewhere where I had to wear like a suit, and that I would never kind of compromise on the things I value. And, and I’ve managed to always work with companies that allow me to kind of retain those principles. And I think it’s really important because I wake up every day excited to go to work. And I think not a lot of people can say that,
Andrew Dubber
and say, does that make the journey harder? I mean, putting that much emphasis on, these are my priorities and principles and ethics, and I’m not gonna budge for anybody does it does it sort of, I mean, I can absolutely sort of endorse that. But but surely, that makes the road hard.
Roxy Shah
Probably, I mean, I’m just stubborn by nature. So I would be happy to turn something down, that didn’t align with my point of view. And just because I’m stubborn, but of course, it will make things more difficult. And if you need to work, you need to work. And that’s, that’s something different. But I’ve always worked hard. And music is all about networking and who know and I’ve always made an effort to be kind to people and help people when they need help in case one day, I need help. And so I’ve always had the is a privilege and luxury of being able to choose the the kind of companies I want to work with. But of course, that isn’t the case, everyone told me how innovation
Andrew Dubber
fits into all of this, there must be new platforms coming up new opportunities for music thing that didn’t exist before. what’s what’s going on. It’s interesting.
Roxy Shah
I mean, in terms of kind of innovation in tech, AI is the biggest thing that’s happening at the moment, in terms of music libraries, it can essentially eradicate them by you know, you can choose a piece of music that you want something to sound like put it into a machine and AI will create something based on the melody or based on the tempo. And so that’s really interesting for us seeing where and how AI can affect music, music sync, because then, you know, it does it for a fraction of the cost, you have to pay an artist but then it takes away the narrative and the story and the emotive reasons behind picking the song so it’s interesting to see if if people will pick up on it, it can work for things like retail and in store and kind of hotel chains I can imagine it working quite well AI creating like a playlist and
Andrew Dubber
we already there is this technology that you’re seeing out there and people love and sort of essentially replacing musicians it exists
Roxy Shah
Yeah, it exists. But I I’m not working with any any companies or brands that do that because as I mentioned, they like the the story behind the artists but 100% exists and it’s still kind of in the beta fast mode, but I definitely foresee that being huge not necessarily in sync that we work in sofa TV film and appetising. Definitely, like I said for for shops that you know, shops have to play a pay a licence for the music that they’re that they’re playing. So if you hear as an hour Katy Perry song shop, but the shop should be paying for that. But if they can get something that sounds just a pop melody in the background, where you’re doing your shopping, you’re not really paying attention to it. Yeah, why not pay a fraction of the cost and get AI to write your song
Andrew Dubber
interesting. I’m sure that would be controversial for a lot of people listening. But but it’s, it’s a really interesting idea. But I’m also curious at how something like AI is affecting your ability to do your job, for instance, locating music, finding things that that sound in a particular way, just in terms of search is that
Roxy Shah
it’s not something that I or my team use at all in that way and not as a search function. Because we like I said, we want to know the story, we come across them in through friends of friends, or through meeting people. So for us, it doesn’t seem like a very well, the way that we’ve discovered artists and and featured artists on music map is very organic. And I think that obviously using AI as like a search function takes away from that. So I mean, we’ve we travelled somewhere and someone meet someone at a party that is a producer from a know Haifa, in Israel, and then we swap details and then we write about it on the platform. So there is a very organic nature to music, math, and I think it I mean, AI can help in so many ways, but it can take away from that authentic nature, I think of music, but that See, I mean, I’m so interested in it, but I’m also curious to see which ways that will help which ways it It won’t work and, and it’s interesting,
Andrew Dubber
and is that what you’re doing here in the north of Scotland.
Roxy Shah
What looking out for CDC about AI
Andrew Dubber
Find artists organically and to connect with
Roxy Shah
definitely will be going to see some artists today. I’ve got a few circled on my list. And yeah, just meeting people. It’s great to always, always meet other supervisors as well and have people working music so
Andrew Dubber
fantastic, Roxy, thanks so much for your time. Thank you. That’s Roxy Shah of record play. And that’s the MTF podcast. If there was anything in there that you think might be helpful to someone, you know, someone particularly who makes music, please do pass it on. And of course, like rate review, share. We actually had a fantastic review for the podcast come in this week. So if that was you, thank you so much. It was really appreciated, and it helps a whole lot. In the meantime, have a great week and we will talk soon. Cheers.
