PANEL - The State of Sync Presented by Sync Summit
Synchronization continues to be an important source of income and competition has never been more fierce to secure placements. Join us for this discussion with sync music executives on the current condition of the film, tv, advertising, and game sync markets. COVID-19 shifted production schedules, causing many music supervisors to shift their music searches, resulting in music publishers, labels, and sync companies to shift the music they pitched. This panel will discuss the current needs of the sync market, production cycles, potential trends, the music pitch process, licensing rights and terms you need to know, and most importantly how to make money.
Featured Speakers:
Mary Eli Nunez, Creative VP of Sync for US Latin & Latin America at Warner Chappell
Mary (Eli) Nunez has been in the music industry for 18 years. She started her music/entertainment career in Los Angeles, CA as an account executive with BMG Production Music libraries overseeing Latin American accounts ranging from a vast client database that included studios, universities, broadcasters from 2004 – 2006. She eventually moved with her family to Miami, FL in 2007 and began building the sync line of business & brand partnerships with Sony Music Entertainment Latin. She created both top line divisions for nearly 11 years, as their Director of Music Licensing, then moved over to the Regional Iberian/LATAM offices as Vice President of Creative Services & Sync for Sony Music Entertainment. Eventually, she followed her dreams & passion of moving back to the music publishing side in 2018 with Warner Chappell Music Latin as their Creative VP of Sync for US Latin & Latin America.
Throughout her career, Nuñez has been able to establish strategic alliances and partnerships by securing music placements in the areas of commercials, television, films, independent films, trailers, video games and other brand initiatives. Nuñez is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
She oversees an amazing dynamic sync group team in 5 countries throughout Latin America & has revolutionized the Latin music publishing business in the US Latin landscape with creativity & resilience throughout these seismic evolutionary times with Warner Chappell Music publishing. Leading original music for trailers, series & video games and motion pictures has been her specialty + love for advertising with Latin music & all global styles of music.
In her previous 25 year career she worked in the international business / sales markets for the hospitality industries for Latin America, Europe & Japan with
ITT Sheraton Luxury Collection & Chris Blackwell’s Island Outpost hotels to name a few, as a Director of Sales & Marketing. She currently resides in Miami, FL, but has lived in Los Angeles, Houston, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Lisbon.
Jose Mellado, VP of Synch and Brand Partnerships at Kobalt Music
With over 13 years of experience in music publishing, Jose Mellado serves as the VP of Synch and Brand Partnerships for Kobalt Music Publishing in Miami, overseeing the LatAm region. Daily he works closely with film and TV studios, production companies, streaming platforms, ad agencies and music supervisors to further exploit Kobalt compositions for synchronization opportunities. He has made Kobalt music contributions to some of the biggest campaigns, award-winning programs and culture-defining shows throughout his tenure. Jose, additionally, has over a decade of expertise in negotiating synchronization deals and music licensing across all media. Prior to Kobalt, he worked at BMG for seven years within the Synchronization department.
Ajani Griffith, Founder of Ajani Media
Akiel “Ajani” Griffith is a songwriter, director & content creator. He’s worked on projects that includes Inner Circle, Mykal Rose, Skip Marley, Lil Pump and many other of today’s biggest music stars.
Nevertheless, while studying marketing in college he got to work with Latin Grammy-nominated producer Fredy Camelo, most noted for the hit “Dia Tras Dia” performed by Andres Cepeda and has been taught first hand by platinum-selling and Grammy Nominated producer Ill Factor at SAE production courses.
“Those were the days when I was working on breaking into the music industry. I was so determined and full of enthusiasm to make it.,” says Ajani.
After finishing SAE Institute he took on new skills in video production, music supervision, and filmmaking. He most recently was a music supervisor for the Oscar-contending film “The Power of Movement.
“I am a creative and content creator. Musicians need video and other content to stay relevant in today’s digital market. Therefore, I started a company –Ajani Media–which is aimed to fill in that gap for music artists,” Ajani exclaims.
Merging all his skills in marketing and multimedia, Ajani aims to help artists tell their stories in various ways through media. His unique experience of living between Latin America and the United States in the last nineteen years has given him the enthusiasm to look into working with Latin pop music.
“The recent global explosion of Latin Music is something that interests me. Living in Latin America and Miami collectively for almost two decades has given me a great perspective. I only see opportunities to do amazing things,” says Ajani.
Moderator: Mark Frieser, Sync Summit - CEO
Mark is an executive and entrepreneur who’s the founder of three companies in the music and tech spaces. The First, Sync Summit (https://syncsummit.com), founded in 2013, is an educational company that through its events, educational courses, listening sessions and thriving online community helps people creating and licensing music for media to connect, create, collaborate, learn and network with and from leading executives and thought leaders in television, advertising, brands, games, film and interactive media. His second company, Disconic (https://disconic.com) is a sync agency that represents music from major labels and individual artists from across the world, including over 509% of the Japanese market and significant clients in Korea, Latin America, Europe and North America. His new company, Metavate.ai is developing a new solution to ensure better accuracy and updating of metadata across digital media.