Why Lyrics Matter To Music Supervisors and Sync Searches

Music supervisors place a lot of emphasis on song lyrics when selecting the right track to license. Here’s a peek into why.

If you’re an artist and songwriter, talking about why lyrics matter might be self-evident. Lyrics are poetry. They communicate feelings and help determine a song’s message. But why are lyrics important to music supervisors? What does this facet of the industry think about lyrics, and why is it so important to transcribe lyrics so that a music supervisor can find them?

Let’s get into it below.

Why do lyrics matter to music supervisors?

Currently, 75% of sync briefs include a reference to lyrics. A song’s lyrics can play a big role in a music supervisor’s decision to select for placement in an ad, TV show, video game, or film spot. Lyrics elevate a song’s emotional, narrative, and thematic stakes and, in turn, can emphasize the emotions of the on-screen action.

Music supervisors don’t just select songs they think sound cool — they pick songs that communicate the right emotional and narrative message. To that end, a song’s lyrics can be the deciding factor as to whether it gets licensed.

Lyrics tell a story and enhance the emotional stakes

A song’s lyrics are a vital source of storytelling support — they can echo or enhance the action taking place on screen, build upon the tone of a scene, and bolster the audience’s emotional investment. Lyrics can also hint at what’s coming and provide a bit of subtext. Is there something a character can’t or won’t say? Lyrics can help fill in those blanks.

Meanwhile, the right lyrics should ideally amplify the project’s broader themes, time period, social discourse, or cultural moment. In the most ideal scenario, a particularly resonant sync will drive a classic song’s popularity and generate an entirely new generation of fans. For example, consider Kate Bush’s iconic “Running Up That Hill” on season 4 of Stranger Things. Bush’s song was already a cult hit after originally being released in 1985. But its Stranger Things sync gave it a global streams increase by over 8,700% and US streams by nearly 10,000%. It also hit number one in multiple countries, including the UK, and became Bush’s first US Top 10 hit.

How do music supervisors find song lyrics?

Most tracks will (or should) include their lyrics transcription in the metadata. But actually writing lyrics into metadata can be madly time-consuming. For most publishers, labels, and sync agents, lyric transcription is a manual, error-prone task that can take hours. Typically, music supervisors will reach out to a song’s rights holder, who in turn may have to reach out to the artist, a back-and-forth, time-consuming process. Complex or unclear vocals only add to the challenge. Other times, music teams will rely on third-party tools for lyric transcription, which only slows down workflows and creates friction.

Let DISCO’s Lyric Transcription help

The more information that travels on your files, aka metadata, — Title, Artist, Contact Information, Artwork, Lyrics, etc. — the more searchable your tracks will be in DISCO.

We have recently rolled out a brand-new Lyric Transcription feature. With Lyric Transcription, you can populate lyrics in the metadata of your tracks on DISCO with one click. This makes it easier to search by keywords contained in the lyrics of your songs, which can improve the overall discoverability of your content. What’s more, if you’re on DISCO, you don’t have to move tracks anywhere else to have them transcribed.

Lyric Transcription is available with unlimited access on the Artist Plan. Plus, Pro, and Enterprise Plans include access to 20 lyric track transcriptions as a trial. For Pro and Enterprise users with the Discovery Suite, Lyric Transcription is available up to their Discovery Suite track quota.

Want more lyric transcription tracks and curious about Discovery Suite? The Discovery Suite is the smartest way to work on DISCO — built for DISCO power users and trusted by the industry. This advanced set of features helps you organize your DISCO Catalog at scale, pitch with polish, and uncover more opportunities across the DISCO community. Available as an add-on to your base plan, the Discovery Suite integrates seamlessly into your existing DISCO workspace. It includes: Catalogs, Auto-Tagging, Similarity Search, Instant Instrumentals and the new Lyric Transcription feature.

Find out more about DISCO’s Lyric Transcription here.