The six reasons I pass on a song

Somebody sent me a beautiful song last week. Voice like a bruise. Chorus that opens up like a window. Production light enough that a supervisor could put it under a montage of anything and it would work.

I passed.

Not because it wasn’t good enough. Because on the intake form, the artist checked “yes” next to “co-written.” The co-writer’s PRO field was blank. The email chain attached said “I paid him $200 for the beat, we’re good.” That was the whole documentation.

I couldn’t pitch that song. Not to a supervisor whose clearance team was going to email me two weeks after the placement asking for the co-writer’s IPI and a signed split sheet, both of which the artist didn’t have and would have to go back and get from somebody they hadn’t spoken to in six months.

This post is the honest list of the six reasons I pass. In the eighteen months I’ve been running a small non-exclusive roster, I’ve passed on more than 90% of the artists who applied. Almost none of the passes were “the song isn’t good enough.” The good songs come in constantly. It’s everything around the song that decides.

1. The song isn’t one-stop

One-stop means one entity — one person, one company, one team — can sign a license for both the master (the recording) and the composition (the underlying song). No third-party publisher who has to be looped in. No unpaid producer with a claim on the master. No label saying “we control the recording, talk to us.”

The reason supervisors and reps care so much about this word is timing. When a placement opportunity comes in, the window from “yes, we want to license it” to “signed and delivered” is often 48 hours, sometimes less. Every additional signature required inside that window multiplies the probability that the deal falls apart. A one-stop song can be licensed in a single email between two parties. A song with three co-writing publishers and a label share on the master needs coordination across five inboxes and every one of them has to say yes before the deadline. The math is bleak.

A song can be a great song and not be one-stop. It’s not a quality problem, it’s a clearance problem. There’s a full breakdown of what the phrase means in One-stop and easy-clear; the short version is: if a supervisor can’t call one entity to license the whole song, the song doesn’t get shortlisted.

2. The paperwork isn’t there

This is the pass I make the most.

The song is one-stop on paper. The artist owns both sides. But when I ask for the split sheet, or the PRO registration, or the sample license, or the work-for-hire agreement with the producer, the answer is:

• “I never did a split sheet, we were friends.”
• “I haven’t gotten around to registering the song yet.”
• “The sample is like two seconds, it’s fine.”
• “The producer said he was good with a flat fee, I don’t have anything in writing.”

Any one of those turns a licensable song into a song I can’t put on a supervisor’s desk. Not because the paperwork is required to pitch — it’s required to close. If a supervisor licenses the song and their clearance department asks for the split sheet six weeks later, and there isn’t one, the license unwinds. I’ve seen it happen once. The word gets back to the supervisor. The supervisor doesn’t take another song from that rep for a year.

The full desk-level version of what a valid split sheet contains is in Split sheets, from a sync rep’s desk. The rule I apply is: if the paperwork isn’t clean at intake, I don’t pitch. Not because I don’t trust the artist, but because I’d rather pass on a real song than blow a supervisor relationship on a paperwork problem I could have caught in the first week.

3. The song has an undeclared sample

An undeclared sample is the specific version of “the paperwork isn’t there” that scares me the most, because it’s the version where the artist genuinely believes the song is clear when it isn’t.

If your song contains any pre-existing recording — an interpolation of a melody, a vocal chop, a drum break, a two-second horn stab, a re-sung interpolation you played yourself but from someone else’s copyrighted melody — you have a sample or an interpolation, and both need to be declared, licensed, or replaced before the song can be pitched.

The tests I use on intake:

• Did any part of this song come from a source you didn’t play, sing, or program from scratch? If yes, it’s a sample.
• Did you re-sing or re-play a recognizable melody, lyric, or hook from an existing song? If yes, it’s an interpolation. Different mechanism, same clearance problem.
• Is any element in the song a “royalty-free” or “sample-library” loop where the sample library’s license doesn’t cover synchronization? If yes, you have a licensing gap even if the sample came from a paid subscription.

The “royalty-free” version of this is especially common right now, because a lot of artists learned production through subscription sample services. Most of those services’ terms of use limit synchronization or require an upgrade for it. If a song has a Splice loop or a similar library element in it, I need to see the library’s sync terms in writing before I can pitch it, and often the answer is that the sync rights aren’t there without a per-track upgrade.

The friendly version of this pass is: “Send me the song again in a version that either replaces or licenses the sampled element, and I’ll take another look.” Most artists never do. They release the song anyway, hoping it stays under the radar, and then the sync rep who does eventually place it has to deal with the fallout.

4. The mix or master isn’t broadcast-ready

This one is less about the song and more about what happens when a supervisor drops your file into a rough cut and hears it against dialogue, foley, and other cues that were mixed for network delivery.

The technical bar I’m listening for is roughly this: the song holds up when a picture editor turns it down by 12 dB, plays it under someone talking, and doesn’t disappear into mush; the top end doesn’t feel harsh or brittle when the picture cuts to a wide loud scene; the vocal sits in a place that lets dialogue live over the top of it; the low end is controlled enough that a broadcast compressor won’t pump on the kick.

I’m not asking for a mastering engineer’s credit list. I’m asking whether the file I’d send is one the supervisor can drop into their session and not have to apologize for. A song that needs a remix to be pitched is a song I’ll pass on — not because it’s bad, but because the timeline of “the supervisor loves it, please send stems by Friday” doesn’t include time to remix.

Delivery format matters here too. Broadcast placements usually want a full-resolution WAV at 44.1 or 48 kHz, 24-bit, with proper -14 to -18 LUFS integrated loudness and true-peak headroom under -1 dBTP. If a song is only delivered as an MP3, or the WAV is smashed to -6 LUFS integrated for streaming loudness, that’s fixable but it’s a fix that has to happen before the song is ready to pitch.

5. The catalog is too shallow to represent

A single song, no matter how good, is a hard business proposition for a rep to represent.

The reason is simple math. A rep pitching a supervisor is offering to solve a problem for them: “here are songs that fit your briefs.” A one-song catalog can solve at most one supervisor’s problem per placement cycle, and there’s no compounding — if the supervisor doesn’t need that specific mood this month, the relationship pauses. A ten-to-twenty-song catalog gives me something to send to five different briefs, in five different moods, across the same season. That’s where relationships get built.

The reason it’s a business proposition and not a creative one: I take a percentage of the upfront sync fee only, and only when a placement actually closes. If I put twenty hours a month into pitching a single song, and it lands one placement at a working indie budget, my percentage doesn’t cover the twenty hours. It’s not a moral judgment; it’s a P&L. Deeper catalogs make the math work.

The pass I write in this case is friendly and specific: “Come back when you have eight-to-ten sync-ready songs that all pass the one-stop and easy-clear checks.” Most artists who apply with one song write me back six months later with ten. That’s who I’m looking for.

6. The catalog isn’t sync-ready even if it’s a great catalog

This is the pass I feel worst writing.

Sometimes an artist applies with twelve songs, all of which are legitimately great records — the kind of thing I’d stream on my own time. But every song has a feature. Every song has a producer credit with unclear composition percentage. Every song has an artist-name mention or a brand reference in the top line that will get flagged by any supervisor’s clearance department. Every song is at 89 BPM and in the same key with the same instrumentation. The catalog is a great artist project and a bad licensable catalog.

Sync-ready doesn’t mean “commercially palatable.” It means:

• Clean of specific references. Songs that name a brand, a city, a person, or an event by name are hard to place unless the placement is that brand, city, person, or event. Supervisors call them “on-the-nose” and mostly avoid them.
• Available in an instrumental version. More placements in TV and ads use instrumental cuts than vocal cuts. If your catalog only exists as full vocal tracks, half your addressable placements are off the table. The reasoning behind this is in the strategy work I wrote on instrumental versions — every song a rep represents should have a mixed instrumental of the same version available.
• Structured for edit points. A song with a clear intro, a clear pre-chorus lift, a clear post-chorus, and a clear final drop is a song a picture editor can work with. A song that’s structurally continuous — no clean edit points — is hard to place because the editor can’t cut to picture.
• Variety across the catalog. Sync buyers work briefs across a mood spectrum in the same week: tender, tense, driving, hopeful, melancholy, playful. A catalog that only lives in one mood is a catalog that only fits one brief.

None of that is a comment on the artist’s craft. Some of the best artists I’ve worked with had catalogs that weren’t sync-ready and had to build a second parallel catalog specifically for licensing. That’s a real path, and a rep can help point at what the sync-ready material would look like — but the “help point at” part has to happen before representation, not during.

What’s not on this list

Notice what’s not here:

• “The song isn’t good enough.” I very rarely pass because a song is bad. If a song is bad, it’s usually accompanied by one of the six reasons above and I pass on the six-reason grounds.
• “You’re not famous enough.” Sync doesn’t care about follower counts. Some of the highest-earning sync artists have four-digit Instagram counts. The song and the paperwork are the whole story.
• “You’re not in the right city.” I’m in Belgrade, Montana. Half my roster is somewhere I’ve never been. Location is invisible in an intake email.

What to do if I’ve passed on you

Assume, first, that the pass wasn’t personal. Sync reps who pass with a real reason are giving you a free A&R note. The reason itself is the map.

Then:

1. If the pass was about paperwork, fix the paperwork on the songs you already have. Write the split sheets. Register the works. Get the sample licenses. This takes an afternoon per song and it’s the highest-leverage sync work you’ll ever do.
2. If the pass was about the catalog, keep writing sync-ready material with the constraints in section 6 in mind. Instrumentals, clean references, edit points, mood variety.
3. If the pass was about the mix, revisit the tracks with someone who understands broadcast delivery. Often it’s not a full remix — it’s a mastering pass at proper broadcast headroom and loudness. That’s what separates a demo catalog from a licensable one.
4. Come back. I intentionally don’t say “never reapply.” Verilux’s roster is small on purpose, and slots open when they open. The artists who came back six months after a first pass, with the specific things fixed, are disproportionately the artists I ended up representing.

If your song already passes the six checks above, the application form is at /apply. Your submission goes in front of a real person, not a queue. The person is me. I read every one.