Submit music for sync

The sync industry is wide open for independent artists in 2026 — but only if you submit through the right channels. Here's the honest map of where to send your music, what each route costs you, and what brands are actually licensing. Before you pitch anything, make sure your works are registered with a performing rights organisation such as PRS for Music or ASCAP, so the back end pays out — our guide to sync royalties explains why that matters.

Before you submit: the rights check

You can only submit music for sync if you control:

• The master recording — you recorded it, or own the master via your label deal.
• The publishing rights — you wrote it, or have written splits agreed with every co-writer.
• No uncleared samples, no covers, no AI-generated audio built from copyrighted training data.

If any of those is uncertain, fix it before submitting anywhere. Tracks with unclear rights get pulled the moment a brand tries to use them, and that kills trust for your future catalogue.

The four submission routes

1. Sync agents and publishers

A sync agent pitches your catalogue to music supervisors and creative directors. They take 20–50% of any placement fee. Pros: real industry relationships, premium placements. Cons: most won't sign artists without a track record, and pitches happen on their timeline.

2. Sync libraries

Stock-style libraries (Musicbed, Artlist, Premium Beat) license your tracks to thousands of customers on subscription. Pros: passive volume. Cons: typically non-exclusive at low rates (or exclusive with low upfront fees), and the same tracks appear in hundreds of ads.

3. Direct pitching to supervisors

Cold-outreach to music supervisors with tightly-curated playlists. Pros: zero cut, full control. Cons: low response rate, slow, and requires significant industry research per pitch.

4. Self-serve marketplaces (Melody)

Upload your catalogue, set your pricing, and brands license tracks on demand. Pros: instant earnings, transparent splits, no gatekeeping. Cons: you compete on metadata quality and discoverability — strong tagging matters.

What brands are actually licensing in 2026

• Vocal-led indie with cultural lyrical specificity — outperforms generic library tracks.
• Lo-fi alternatives to viral TikTok sounds — brands need legal cover for trending aesthetics.
• Vertical-specific moods — fashion needs sleek and minimal, tech needs forward-motion, automotive needs cinematic.
• Short-form-ready edits — 15s, 30s and loop-friendly arrangements.
• Instrumentals of vocal tracks — for voiceover-heavy ad creative.

How to submit your music to Melody

Melody is a self-serve marketplace built for independent artists and labels. Submission is free. You upload tracks, set your own pricing (from $1, default $5), tag the music for discoverability, and brands license your catalogue directly. You keep 75% of every sync. No agent cut, no recoupment, no exclusivity required.

Original music only — covers, samples and AI-generated tracks built on copyrighted material aren't accepted.

Metadata and tagging: the difference between visible and invisible

On any self-serve marketplace, brands find tracks through search and filters, not by browsing a catalogue top to bottom. A track with vague or missing tags — genre, mood, tempo, instrumentation, vocal presence — simply doesn't surface for the briefs it would actually suit. This is the single biggest lever independent artists control once a track is uploaded.

Be specific rather than aspirational: tag a track as "melancholic indie folk, female vocal, 78bpm" rather than just "indie." Include instrumental and acoustic versions where you have them, since voiceover-heavy ad creative often needs a bed with no vocal competing for attention. Accurate tagging costs a few extra minutes per upload and materially changes how often a track gets found.

A realistic submission workflow

• Confirm rights first. Pull together your co-writer agreements and label or distribution terms before you submit anywhere — this is the step that gets skipped and causes problems later.
• Prepare instrumental and short-form edits. A 15-second and 30-second cut of your strongest tracks widens the briefs you can fill without extra work per licence.
• Upload to a marketplace for ongoing passive reach. This runs in parallel to anything else you're doing and needs no exclusivity.
• Build a track record before approaching agents. A handful of real placements, even small ones, makes a far stronger pitch to a sync agent than an unreleased catalogue with no history.
• Keep metadata current. Revisit tags as you release new music or notice which tracks are converting — discoverability is not a one-time setup.

Common mistakes artists make when submitting for sync

• Submitting your entire back catalogue indiscriminately. A small, well-tagged, high-quality set of tracks outperforms a large dump of unlabelled files.
• Ignoring instrumental versions. A huge share of sync use is voiceover or dialogue-led, and a vocal track with no instrumental option is unusable for that brief.
• Ambiguous ownership. Splits that were agreed verbally with a co-writer but never documented in writing will stall or void a licence the moment a brand's legal team asks for proof.
• Chasing one big placement instead of volume. The realistic earning pattern in sync is a portfolio of smaller licences accumulating over time, not a single life-changing deal.
• Treating submission as a one-off task. Catalogues that keep growing and get re-tagged periodically keep surfacing in new searches; catalogues that are uploaded once and forgotten stop converting.

Frequently asked questions

About the Author

Samuel Olsson is the Head of Growth at Melody and the Managing Director of Kurve, an award-winning growth marketing agency. With over a decade of experience building scalable growth engines for tech companies, Samuel is now focused on solving the biggest problem in music: connecting the 90% of unheard artists with the brands that need their sound.

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