The six reasons I pass on a song

Here is the situation that costs artists the most placements, and it has nothing to do with the song.

You wrote something good. You know it’s good. It’s co-written, and on the intake form the co-writer’s PRO field is blank, because what you have is a text thread that says you paid him $200 for the beat and you’re good.

That song can’t go to a supervisor. Not because anyone doubts the arrangement was fair, but because a clearance team will email two weeks after the placement asking for the co-writer’s IPI number and a signed split sheet — and at that point you are trying to reach somebody you may not have spoken to in months, with a placement already hanging on their reply.

So the reasons a rep passes are almost never about quality. Good songs are not the scarce thing. Below are the six reasons a perfectly good song doesn’t get taken on, in the order they’re worth checking, and five of the six are fixable in an afternoon.

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). Those really are two separate copyrights, not two halves of one: “Sound recordings and musical compositions are considered two separate works for copyright purposes” (U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 56A), so a sync licence needs a yes from each side. 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 reason most licensable songs stall.

The song is one-stop on paper. You own both sides. But when a rep asks for the split sheet, the PRO registration, the sample licence, or the work-for-hire agreement with the producer, the answer is some version of:

• “I never did a split sheet, we were friends.”
• “I don’t know his IPI number.” (IPI is Interested Party Information, and the base number is “a unique identifier allocated automatically by the IPI System to each interested party” (CISAC). Without one, a registration cannot be matched to a person across societies, which is the whole mechanism by which a co-writer gets paid.)
• “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 that can’t go 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.

Paperwork is not what a song needs to be pitched. It is what a song needs to be closed.

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.

Re-playing it yourself does not route around this. “Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, an adaptation of that work,” and where material has been used without permission, “copyright protection will not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully” (U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 14). That second sentence is the one that matters commercially: an uncleared element does not only expose you to the original owner, it removes protection from that part of your own record, which is precisely what a network’s business-affairs team is paid to notice.

Re-playing a melody yourself does not route around clearance.

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 worth being precise about, because the assumption cuts both ways and the answer differs by service. Splice, where a great many producers learned to make records, is explicit that its own licence covers synchronisation: “Splice has no restriction on the use of its Sounds being subject to synchronization uses. Your certified license from Splice covers this use, however, you should check with the third party you are working with to determine their rules for synchronization” (Splice Sounds licensing FAQ).

The clause that matters on a sync desk is the last one. The third party is the network, the studio or the brand, and some of them keep their own rules about library-sourced elements regardless of what your licence permits. Not every library is as permissive as Splice, either, and some do gate synchronisation behind a different tier. So the intake rule is not “no library loops” — it is: name the library, and be able to produce its licence terms in writing.

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 want a full-resolution WAV at 48 kHz, 24-bit — 48 is the sample rate picture runs at, so a 44.1 file means someone has to convert it — and they want headroom, with true peaks kept under about -1 dBTP so nothing clips on the way through a conversion or an encoder.

Loudness is where artists get talked into the wrong target, so it is worth separating two things. The measurement is standardised: LUFS comes from ITU-R BS.1770, which specifies “algorithms to measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level” and is currently at revision BS.1770-5 (ITU). US digital television then has its own recommended practice for holding loudness consistent across a broadcast, ATSC A/85 (ATSC). Neither of those is a delivery target for one song, and that is the confusion — a figure in somebody’s delivery spec exists so the mixer downstream has room to work, not because a standards body set it for your track. The practical version: whatever number a spec asks for, don’t send the streaming-loud master. A file squashed to win on Spotify arrives at the dub stage with nothing left to give, and re-mastering it is the fix. If the song only exists as an MP3, that is the same problem in a different costume.

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 is how the money works. A rep takes a percentage of the upfront sync fee, and only when a placement actually closes. Twenty hours a month spent pitching one song, landing one placement at a working indie budget, does not pay for the twenty hours. It isn’t a judgment about the song; it’s arithmetic. Deeper catalogues are what make it work, and there’s a second reason too: a supervisor who likes one of your tracks will immediately ask what else you have.

So if you’re sitting on one finished song, keep going until you have eight to ten that all pass the one-stop or easy-clear checks. That is a real threshold, not a brush-off.

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

This is the hardest one to hear, because nothing is wrong with the music.

Picture twelve genuinely good records where every song has a feature, every song has a producer credit with an unclear composition percentage, every song name-drops the artist or a brand in the top line, and every song sits at 89 BPM in the same key with the same instrumentation. Each of those is a clearance flag or a usability limit, and together they add up to a great artist project and a poor licensable catalogue. Those are different objects, and a catalogue can be excellent at one and unusable as the other.

A great artist project and a poor licensable catalogue are different objects.

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.” Quality is rarely the deciding factor. When a song genuinely isn’t working, one of the six reasons above is usually present too, and that is the one that decides it.
• “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.” Verilux runs out of Bozeman, Montana, which is not a sync town, and it doesn’t matter. Pitching happens over email and shared links. Location is invisible in an intake email, and it’s invisible in a shortlist.

What to do if you get a pass

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. Run each song through the one-stop self-audit first — it names exactly which pieces are missing on that specific track.
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. A pass on specifics is not a pass forever. Verilux’s roster is small on purpose, and a rep who told you exactly what was missing has told you what would change the answer.

If your song already passes the six checks above, the application form is at /apply. Your submission goes in front of a real person rather than a queue, and that person is me.