Episode 70: How Music Supervision is Broken (And How It’s Being Fixed)

What happens when award-winning music supervisor Frederic Schindler takes on the challenge of modernising a broken licensing system? The result is Catalog - a groundbreaking platform that's transforming how music gets paired with visual media.Frederic Schindler has seen it all in his two-decade journey through music supervision. From his early days promoting French culture abroad to winning the Association of Independent Music's 2025 Music Supervisor of the Year Award, he's crafted soundtracks for iconic brands like Chanel, Hermès, and Prada while supervising acclaimed films including Jim Jarmusch produced "Uncle Howard." The disconnect between today's content explosion and outdated licensing processes created a perfect storm. With brands now producing hundreds of assets annually instead of just a handful, the painstaking manual work of clearing commercial music became unsustainable for smaller projects. The result? A massive shift toward generic library music, which now generates twice the revenue of all record labels combined.Schindler's solution brings together approximately 50 leading independent labels and publishers - including Beggars Group, Ninja Tune, and Domino - on a streamlined platform that maintains artistic integrity while eliminating friction. "We have so much outstanding music not created for visual media," Schindler explains, "that with the right curator who identifies that piece and puts it in the right context, we don't really need music specially created for visual media."The platform unlocks forgotten gems - album tracks and singles that didn't achieve commercial success but possess extraordinary artistic quality. For emerging artists, these sync opportunities can make the difference between continuing their career or abandoning it. For established artists, it breathes new life into overlooked catalogue material.Ready to discover how music supervision is evolving? Listen now to this illuminating conversation about the past, present and future of pairing sound with vision.https://www.instagram.com/catalog.ac/Reach out to me ! Support the showWebsiteswww.jonnyamos.comhttps://themusicbusinessbuddy.buzzsprout.comInstagramhttps://www.instagram.com/themusicbusinessbuddypodcast/https://www.instagram.com/jonny_amos/[email protected]