From Management To Sync: How Music Industry Multi-Hyphenate Joel Gouveia Uses DISCO To Manage Every Facet Of His Work

The first thing to know about Joel Gouveia is that he’s something of a music-industry Renaissance man. The Toronto-based artist manager is also a sync rep and the co-founder of Sincerely Management, Fivepin Music, and Sellout.fm.

As a music industry veteran who has worked at record labels, booking agencies, music supervision houses, publishing companies, and festivals, Joel also regularly shares his insights on his Substack, The Artist Economy, which looks at the way music, money, and technology interacts.

Joel recently sat down with DISCO to talk about why, as a music supervisor, the file-sharing platform offers an added layer of credibility, the continuity in using DISCO from both sides of the platform (in the sync space as well as in artist management), and more.

"DISCO just feels like the golden standard," he tells DISCO. "It's just cleaner and easier. And as soon as I see that DISCO link, there's a little bit more credibility to it."

“DISCO just feels like the right thing."

Joel was first introduced to DISCO in 2018 when he was interning at a publishing and reissue label called Pacemaker, which managed a catalog of about 3,000 1970s Canadian psych rock songs. "The files were pretty poorly organized," he recalls of that time. There was sloppy metadata... It was all these unconnected moving parts of a thing."

Today, Joel not only relies on DISCO as an organizational tool, he has actually name-checked DISCO as "the absolute industry standard for supervisors" in his Substack.

"It immediately communicates two things: the organization itself, and the fact that they are a reliable party for sync,” Joel says of receiving DISCO links to his supervisor inbox. “They know what they're doing because they know that DISCO is the thing. As soon as I see that somebody is in that headspace, I feel more comfortable and more inclined to license the song. You immediately have this weight off your shoulders — like, they've been here before. There's just this credibility attached to it."

Joel adds that other file-sharing services are less user-friendly and often contain too many steps on the path to clearing a track.

"DISCO just feels like the right thing,” he says. “When someone has a DISCO link, I'm like, ‘Okay, they've done this before. The thoroughness of seeing the metadata is such a beautiful thing as a music supervisor. Because the biggest headache for supervisors is when you're trying to clear a song and then it ends up messy. As soon as someone has all that metadata in one place, you just know it's going to be easier to clear. That's just proof in the pudding: This person is organized, they have all their stuff together."

Maintain Catalog Access Even If You’re Going Off The Grid

Joel can point to a specific before-and-after instance where having his full catalog on DISCO made a huge difference when in consideration for a sync placement.

Prior to organizing his sync catalog on DISCO, one of the artists Joel manages, Frank Mighty, was on a camping trip and largely off the grid. At that moment, a last-minute sync opportunity showed up, giving Joel and Frank a 24-hour window to pitch a song that wasn't even released yet. Because the final bounce was still on Frank’s Cloud storage, and Frank was busy getting back to nature, Joel couldn't pitch the track in time.

"That was really the breaking point," Joel says. "I was like, hey, we really need to get organized because things move so quickly."

Just two weeks later, a similar scenario played out. Frank was on another camping trip, and Joel got a last-minute sync brief. This time, Joel had migrated all of his catalog to DISCO. “We had everything organized, and we ended up pitching the song. It didn't end up getting selected, but it made it to like the final round in production to the point where they were asking for all the splits,” Joel says. It was the perfect contrast. We got so close because we had an organized DISCO catalog.”

“When it's in my library, I can search a lyrical theme, I can search a vibe, I can search sound-alike acts"

If a 24-hour turnaround time to pitch a song for sync sounds tight, imagine how stressful finding the right track is when you only have two or three hours. That can happen in the advertising world (as opposed to film or TV), according to Joel. But DISCO’s AI-assisted search tools can help music supervisors find the right track in their catalog(s) much more quickly, as has been the case with Joel.

"When I'm working on a project and I need something cleared in two or three hours — which happens a lot in the ad space — it is now a database filled with files and songs that were previously pitched,” he says. “If it's in my email inbox, it might be hard to find. But when it's in my catalog, I can search a lyrical theme, I can search a vibe, I can search sound-alike acts.

“I love a sounds-like feature,” Joel continues. “Because a brief is almost always, like, ‘Hey, we like this track, but we can't afford it.’"

Staying In Sync With Artists Using DISCO

As an artist manager, Joel knows how musicians are constantly immersed in the creative process. With his artists also using DISCO, he and they can access a shared and organized home for their tracks, which includes demos.

"All of my artists have a login to DISCO,” Joel says. “They'll just throw in demos and be like, ‘This is what I cooked up today.’ It's just a great way to stay organized instead of being sent a link that expires or that I end up losing. DISCO is a great way to have everything in one place."

Joel also name-checks DISCO’s analytics, which gives him a clear idea of who is engaging with his catalog. "It was definitely insightful to see the different contacts, whether it was from an agency or a supervisor on a production, of who was paying attention. You kind of understood the relationship better. It helps you understand who’s actually trying to get your catalog placed."

Joel adds, "We could spend a couple hours putting a pitch together for someone and they'll barely skim through it. Then there are other people that will listen to it a few times. DISCO analytics segments your list naturally."

Are you an artist or artist manager, and want to give DISCO a try? Start your free trial today.