Episode 88: Understanding Music Supervision With Drew Sherrod

What if the song that makes a trailer unforgettable could also launch an artist’s career? We sit down with music supervisor, consultant and sync creative Drew Sherrod to unpack the craft behind placing music to picture, the business mechanics that keep rights and royalties flowing, and the hard choices that separate a long career from a loud moment. From Nashville mornings to Los Angeles edit bays, Drew traces a path through publishing, his time at BMG, and a pioneering run in trailer music that helped push artists like Moby and Kanye West into new light.

We walk through the nuts and bolts of legacy catalogue strategy: auditing masters and compositions, untangling old deals, reclaiming rights, and turning dormant songs into sync-ready assets. Drew explains why clean splits, fast approvals, and clear metadata win briefs—and how understanding musical function can be a superpower for composers and sound designers. For artists, he makes the case for trusted teams, a coherent identity, and a catalogue that editors can actually cut with under pressure.

The role of the supervisor has changed. With streaming at everyone’s fingertips, temp tracks arrive earlier, tastes are louder, and the job often becomes part-therapist, part-librarian, part-diplomat. We talk candidly about YouTube rips, watermark workarounds, and cue sheet pitfalls, and why none of the tools remove the need for judgment. The thread connecting it all is ethics: knowing when to hold or fold, who to trust, and how to choose art over expedience when it matters most.

If you care about sync licensing, trailerisation, music publishing, and the day-to-day reality of getting songs into film and TV, this conversation is a field guide. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s chasing their first placement, and leave a review with the one question you want us to ask Drew in part two.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Hello everybody, buddy! Welcome to the Music Business Buddy with me, Johnny Amos, podcasting out of Birmingham in England. I am the author of the book, The Music Business for Music Creators. I'm a music creator myself. I'm a consultant, an artist manager, and a senior lecturer in both music business and music creation. Wherever you are and whatever you do, consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of this community. I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over the world in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music. Okay, so in this week's episode, I am joined by Drew Sherrod, right, who is a music creative, uh music supervisor, producer, consultant out of uh Nashville in Tennessee in the USA. Uh he is a cool dude, as you will see shortly. Fascinating guy, really, really fun guy to talk to. Um he's just come out of um uh a term with the historic House of Bryant catalogue. He's also worked at 1010 Music, Carnival Music, uh, BMG, Tree Vibes, Anthem Entertainment. He's worked on the label side, on the publishing side, he was at LipSync Music, he's done all sorts of different things. He was at Open Road Entertainment as well. He'll talk a little bit uh about that. Um he is something of a trailblazing music supervisor and somebody that uh I should imagine uh is probably very hard to get a hold of. So I'm very, very, very fortunate that I managed to get him in on this podcast. Um, you know, he's very sought after, right? And he's a bit of an expert, or more than an expert, when it comes to music supervision. Um guys, just to give you a little bit of uh context here, so if you think about the idea of trailerizing songs, so the idea of taking a song and kind of piping it into a trailer to sell a movie, right? That's not always been a thing. And I'd be as bold as to say that Drew was one of the peop first people that actually started to make that a thing. He gave people like Moby and Drake and various others their kind of first breaks into the music business as a result of kind of using their songs in trailers and stuff. He will talk a little bit about that. Um, he's worked on some big blockbuster movies and he he works as a consultant for various legacy artists and uh writers and producers and all sorts of different things. He's a fascinating guy, so I'm just gonna uh hand over to the interview and enjoy everything that he has to say. Here we go. Drew, welcome to the music business, buddy. It's good to have you here. First and foremost, how are you? Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

I'm doing well, thank you. Uh it's so nice and natural right now. It's that part of winter where you definitely need a coat, but the skies are a slightly different shade of blue, and it's in like visually striking time to walk out of your house. It's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Oh, that's really nice. That's uh yeah, it's almost like uh spring is just kind of you know flirting itself into existence.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Yeah, it's and it's becoming more and more uh reliable these days. It used to be about this time things would be snowy and really cold, but now it's just like really crispy, for better or for worse. That's where we're at.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Ah, interesting. Okay, well, that's okay. We'll take that over, Snow, that's for sure. Um so um, so true. Let's let's begin in the present moment, right? Um uh before we kind of time jump back a little bit. So you you wear a lot of hats, right? You're a consultant, a creative, a music supervisor. Uh you're based in in Nashville. What does a typical sort of day look like to you in your career right now?

Managing Legacy Catalogues For Income

SPEAKER_00 3:54

What I do, doing what I do in Nashville is very different than it ever was in Los Angeles. Uh like the Los Angeles day is very much, you know, get up, go to whatever kind of office you go to, you know, and and there's a good good amount of time you're gonna spend in traffic. So that's pretty much you start the day in the car. Whereas here, um, I mean, I definitely served some years in an office, and it was a little bit more like that. Uh, but for me nowadays, it's more like, you know, get up and like the second you're awake, you check the emails and everything because you don't know, you know, you could have been working on who knows what the night before. And sometimes when you wake up, you're dazed. So you get in the habit, you just check your email. But anyway, here in Nashville, like gigs are a little bit less abundant than they are in Los Angeles, New York, London. Um gigs for me, like proper job jobs. So I guess, you know, depending on who my consultant sees are at the time, uh, I just jump on the computer and start going at it. Like, I'd say probably it's gonna depend on what I ended the the day before doing. But like right now, right now, I've got this cool thing going where I'm working with a bunch of like legacy families and legacy artists. And um, how do I explain it? Like a lot of people inherit publishing catalogs and um their families don't always know what to do with them in order to monetize or keep their lives afloat, so to speak. And so I'll go in there and I'll, you know, first I got to look at the assets, and then I figure out uh, okay, so are any of these signed with a big publishing company? You know, are any of these open? Which ones are masters, which ones are copyrights? And then um just go through the process of showing them how to use those assets um to make money and to either, you know, if you want to sort of rebuild that career and let the world back in on it, that's one thing. And if you want to sort of keep quiet and just let it do its thing, that's another thing. Uh, but you know, everything from getting your masters back from the label to getting your copyrights back from a publisher or you know, surging into the world of sync and figuring out what those assets are good for in the sync world, because everything in sync, I think, I think every song has a place as long as it's a good one. Uh, but that doesn't mean it's ever going to find that place. And that really what it comes down to, like helping people find those places where they can make money with their assets. Uh, and if it's, like I said, if it's a legacy thing, um, that's how we do it. If it's an artist, that's a very different process. Or if it's a writer, being here in Nashville, it's a little bit like being in Los Angeles and everyone's an actor, but everyone here in Nashville is a songwriter. It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

That's interesting. Yeah, I've got a little bit of experience myself of that kind of uh legacy catalogue management, and it can be very, very difficult, especially if things haven't been getting collected properly.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Uh oh god, yeah. That's so true, and it really piles up too. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

It's it's it's it can be quite difficult to correct if the collect hasn't been done right. You know, it changes the value, it it's all sorts of different uh facets to it.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

But it's a real process, and it also depends on where you're getting the money from, you know, if it's overseas, if it's local.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

They're getting better at helping the writers find the money that they have created, that they have earned. Um, it's not a perfect system yet, but they're it's definitely getting better and better, I think.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Yeah, yeah. That's that's uh that's I I like it that you said that because I I I always look to find uh you know a positive in something. And it is, isn't it? I mean, I know there's a fair way to go, but it is. Things are things are getting better. Um let's let's time jump back a little a little, Drew. Um, so you you started out as an artist and then transitioned into to being uh a music publisher. Okay, what what what was that transition like for you?

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Well, I think it it's it would be a stretch to call me at that time a publisher. I think it's easier to say that I I came into the business by way of publishing. Uh to say that I was a publisher, I think would embarrass a lot of the great minds that championed me.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Okay.

Royalties, Collections, And Admin Gaps

SPEAKER_00 8:42

So I I just, you know, there's a lot of us creatives is as much circumstance as it is a gift.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

That's a good way of putting it.

From Appalachia To Music Row

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Yeah. When I was a kid, um I grew up. Well, I don't want to go too far back, but I think it's fair to say I grew up under a rock in the middle of Appalachia. There wasn't a lot going on around where I lived. Um, but luckily I had family in the business in Nashville. And um that sort of corraled my attention and my older brother's attention to the music world. Um, and then a little bit later when we moved to Knoxville, which is a a really great music town. It's a rock and roll town. Um, and lucky for lucky for my brother and I both, it wrapped its rock and roll arms around us and sort of introduced us to the right people and corralled us on our way toward Nashville, basically. When I got to Nashville, uh my older brother had beat me there. He was already publishing, and I think you could call him a publisher now. Um, but because he was already kicking and screaming, uh, he sort of showed me the ropes in the quickest, most easy, straightforward way. Uh and so I started working in the tape room of everywhere I ever worked. You start out in the tape room back when tape was a thing, and um eventually walked up Music Row toward the new BMG building, and uh BMG eventually transferred me to the Los Angeles office, BMG Publishing. Uh and that was the original BMG publishing, very different than the BMG now. And um Yeah, I think a lot of people get confused by that, you know. Yeah, very different. Um, they're both, you know, great publishers in their own times. Um, but and they're both Bertelsmen, you know, but it's just oh god, if you really dissect that company, you find you there's a lot to learn um in a good way. Uh so yeah, I ended up in Los Angeles in the Beverly Hills office of BMG uh in 90, I want to say 98, 99. And um if you know the pattern of sales that BMG went through, that was pretty close to the first big sell. And uh, you know, like most people, uh that cell brought on a lot of change. And instead of going to another publishing place, I ended up going to a music supervision job. And it was for trailers. Um and movie trailers at the time weren't um they they weren't the exposed media resources they are now. Uh they were very different back then. Actually, the the trailers weren't all that different, but I remember my first, I think it was my first trailer was maybe Blackhawk Down, uh, with a guy named Adrian as the editor, and God, he was a genius, still is a genius. Um and I think that was we used a Moby track, and I I mean I like to think it helped Moby get on his way towards you know a big career.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Um I would say so at that time, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Not too far after that was like Jarhead, and Jarhead helped. We you know, we put Jesus Walks by Kanye West in there, and I think that sort of sprung him from strictly producer to producer artist at the time.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Um we did a lot of work. Um, I was lucky to the place that I worked was called Open Road, and it was kind of a medium-sized trailer house, but it was growing. And I think you find in the music part of the movie trailer world that the the ratio of editors to supervisors and producers to editors uh that determines a lot for how many movies and projects you actually get in on. Um, and at the time they had a lot of editors and a couple of producers and only one supervisor. So um I think I think it's fair to say I have a pretty high number of projects I've worked on um circumstantially. It's not I didn't go out and make that happen. It's just the way things were, um, there were a lot fewer trailer houses back then, and I think I was maybe one of what three supervisors, maybe no more than five. I can think of three. And um because of that, we just did a lot of work and we I think hatched a lot of what's happening these days, you know. Um, of course, originally the things that you start uh they end up running over you when you're old. But it was really cool to be a part of a lot of uh you know, the launching phase of a lot of trends that are really kicking ass now, which I love.

BMG Years And Move To Los Angeles

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Wow, that's very interesting. So it's kind of some of the things that you did, like the practices, the protocols, the clearances, that kind of operation, um, then kind of got emulated by a lot more um production companies moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah. And I you know, you I think it's it's important to note that back then um we were strictly creative. Like our jobs was were to accommodate the creative process, whether it was the editor or the producer or the client at the studio. Um and it was left up to the clearance people at the various studios to do the back-end work. So um, you know, the first, I'd say, I don't know, five years of my supervision life was nothing but creative. Uh, just finding the right songs and learning how to keep track of everything was was tough because um iTunes did exist, but it was very finding its way. Um, so everything was on CD. Uh luckily I missed most of the tape days, which was tough. I definitely was in on the tape days in Nashville, but by the time I was a supervisor, things were digital. Um, and that made things a lot easier.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Wow. Okay, yeah. So digital, but like early digital. So um, okay, wow. Uh I think there'd be a lot of music supervisors that would be supremely jealous uh that you kind of got to do the the creative stuff without having to worry so much about the clearance aspects. Yeah. It's true. That's it's like two different jobs, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Oh well, I yeah. I mean, it's yeah, it's very different. It's just the difference between designing the cars and selling them, you know?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Yeah. So during that era, were you kind of uh were you kind of getting bombarded with CDs and stuff all the time from some record companies?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah, you know, you see those, you see pictures of old British guys and old, you know, those libraries in London where it's just like books are everywhere, like everywhere. Like you're sitting on a stack of books and your your desk is a bunch of books. Like that's how it was with CDs. It was really a lot. Wow. And your mail, like every day the mail would come in and it would be like, oh God, you know, like two trips down to the lobby, you know, with one of those huge mail buckets coming back up, and it was just all CDs. And every now and then you'd get like, oh, cool, uh, an iPod, you know, or like these random things people would put their catalogs on in order to like charm you. Like you'd get, oh, cool, a free this, or you know, a free something. Oh, okay. You put you you put your songs on a on a really expensive iPod, and now I get to keep that, and that's so weird. Like a lot of things you couldn't do now.

Pioneering Trailer Music And Breakout Syncs

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Wow. That must have guilt tripped you though, thinking, oh God, I've got to listen to all of this now because someone's like, you know, it did at first.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

It did at first, like you, and I'm I I think, you know, if you've ever been to any of the things I speak at, I I try to always stay until everybody's songs have been heard and everybody's questions are answered and you know, and and the crickets are chirping. Uh, and it's it's kind of the same way with listening to people's music, you know. I I feel like if they're gonna go to the trouble of finding out who I am and give a you know, care about what I do, then uh I'd I owe it to them to give them a crack.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Yeah, yeah. That's um it's it's such a fascinating discipline, the you know, music supervision. Um I mean, in fact, discipline might even be the wrong word, art form, right? The idea of kind of listening to something and going, right, that story that they're trying to tell there, especially with a trailer, right, where it's just so short, you know, you're lucky if you've got two and a half minutes, and then you go, bang, uh, we are gonna help you to tell this story, with or without, whether that ends up there, just for this job right now, um, and like, and you're really good at it, you know. Um and so um it if if you could kind of uh surely there must be times, you know, where you're watching other things just as a consumer, as a fan, watching a film, watching a trailer for a film, and going, hmm, what'd they choose that for?

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Like oh man, yeah. Well, a lot of times when you're witnessing that kind of thing, um you feel usually you know who did it because everybody's got their little thing that they do. Um but I always tried to avoid that because I feel like I was kind of drinking my own snake oil. You know, like if you're if you're if you're selling, uh sometimes it's an illusion, and sometimes it's you know, this really nutritious breakfast, and then other times it's you know, you just never know. Every every movie and every project has its own way of getting to a demographic or a group of demographics. And you know, when you get into the swing of doing that every day, uh it it you almost feel like it's the opposite, where like if you if you see too many of them that are already done, it might get in the way of how to come up with what's next.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Yeah, yeah, that's that's it. Do you do you sometimes find, Drew, that like certain film directors just have that kind of that that nuance of what they want, knowing what they want, and just kind of they have that skill, if you like it.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Yeah, yeah. Well, uh I think it's a lot to do with teams and groups. Um very few people come in and have everything figured out, and then it works. I I will say that most people come in and they think they have everything else figured out, and they find out that either they don't, or even if they do, it's just too much to do your, you know, like you can't make that many decisions well in a in a given period of time. And also when you're involved with getting anything to the number of people that you have to get those things to in order to make enough money to compensate, uh you just can't you just can't do it all. Like you have to have an army, you know. And if you don't delegate those decisions and stuff like that, you I mean, I've seen people try. Boy, they go down in flames. It's tough. It's tough.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

That's a good uh a good observation. Okay.

Creative First Era Vs Clearances

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Yeah, and it's it's a kind of a game of telephone, but I will say people like Judd and people like uh Sandler, and there's certain people that uh they're good at finding uh teams who understand what they like enough to you know to operate on their behalf. I think that might be the trick. You know, I think that it's like who do you trust and um and who and well loyalty is everything. That's the other thing. Uh it's all kings and queens and posse, you know, like you it yeah, if you it who do you answer to? That really comes down to everything. You know, if do you answer to the director or the producer or some ubiquitous, no faced thing called the client, or you know, or it it it the person you answer to isn't always the person who signs your check. And uh if you if you're on the underside of that, you just gotta know who's the the real creative boss, and if you're on the top side of that, you gotta Find out who who it is that you can trust to do your to do your work.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Yeah, that's uh that makes that makes a lot of sense. Um what kind of qualities do you do you look for in you know music creators that are looking to license their music into sync opportunities? Like do you expect them to kind of be able to know the language, the terminology, the business?

CD Floods, Early Digital, And Pitching

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Not always. It depends. Well, look, anytime I teach a class, the first thing I say is everything depends. Uh and I I warn every student that um you're gonna get annoyed with me a lot because I'm almost always gonna start every answer with, well, it depends. And I think figuring it all out is a matter of figuring out what it depends on. Um so in answer to that question, it depends on if you're trying to be an artist. Like, are you are you putting this music out in order to support a bigger effort on your own of yourself? Like, do people know your name when they hear your music? Um, or are you more of a composer and it's all sort of targeted? Um and then there's also sort of like the chemist, scientist, you know, music makers who uh they usually do pretty well because they they learn about the tool, the tools of the music, like what like this the functionality of certain sounds and things, you know. And when the when you get that figured out, you know, you can get pretty specific with what you're aiming toward with a certain song or cue or sound effect or sound design. Um, when you're able to really target the functionality, it's a lot easier to get where you're headed, I guess, because you know where you're headed. But if you're more of an artist, then it kind of goes back to what I was saying before. You want to have at least a couple of people that you're working with, you know, and because you know, then it's a bigger job, it's a bigger effort, it's a bigger process.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah, it's a much wider operation. Yeah. Um, good advice. Um, aside from uh this is a big question. Sorry, Drew. No problem. Um aside from the sort of technological changes, what cultural shifts have you noticed uh the most during your career in the music industry so far?

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Well, the the first and foremost, the job has changed a lot. You know, like the ad the actual doing of the job has evolved and it's devolved. And I think that's you know, I guess if everything works in cycles, then you have to have both of the evolving and the devolving. Um I don't think there are a lot of supervisors now that are doing that are carrying the creative load as much. You know, I think it's you know anybody with Spotify and iTunes, they're gonna be a lot more confident going into uh, you know, the process of manipulating the watchers' emotions with music and sound. Um they're gonna be a lot more, I yeah, I have to say confident. I'm not gonna say they're gonna be better at it, but they're sure gonna think that they are. Uh and you got to be careful what you do as a supervisor if you want to keep your job. You know, you you gotta be honest, but you know, there I think there might be a little bit more therapist involved in supervising now than there used to be, uh, and a whole lot more librarian than there used to be. Uh and I think for a long time there, you could be a little bit of a rock star. And I don't mean that always in the good way. Like sometimes you had to be a little crazy and wacky to keep your director or your producer interested in you, you know, like the it was a very social thing back then. It's social now, but it's different.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Um is it safer now, do you think, Drew, because of metadata and filters and are there less shocks?

Taste, Trends, And Not Copying Others

SPEAKER_00 26:24

I don't think so. No, it's not safer. Uh like I say, it's just different. Um, you know, one of the one of the last big uh explosions, I'll say, uh, before I started to be a more independent supervisor, one of the big things that was starting to become a real problem was people would take audio from YouTube and and kind of sew that into their projects. And, you know, if you can't identify exactly what it is, it's hard to get it cleared. It's hard to, it's hard to put it on a cue sheet. So yeah, you know, I would be getting uh, you know, everybody's got their way of doing cue sheets, but you you at the time we were just get the timeline of the project, and you could see it would just say YouTube, and you'd be like, oh shucks. This is not gonna, this is not gonna fly. Um, and then you have to confront people that you know put could push a button and you'd shoot out the the roof of the facility into the street, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Yeah, that's a that's a tricky one.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Um like I guess in in answer to your question, it's not safer. I think the there are versions of the same thing now. Um, but tracking is better. Uh, but there's always tricks, you know. I I know people who if they think something is what watermarked or whatever, they'll just you know, they'll go into the voiceover booth and record it analog and put it back in. You know, there's ways around everything.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

So it'll always be dangerous in that sort of insidious way. Uh but it it's all, you know, you're all things get better, and yeah, I think it's still a little bit Wild West. Uh and I hope it stays that way, not because I don't want people to get paid, but you know, at some point uh you you you you lose the the magic of blood, sweat, and tears, you know, like if you don't have a little bit of that arm wrestling match uh between the people who will do anything to get their ideas heard or seen versus the people who will do anything to exploit those people, you know, I think that's usually where the danger either comes in or goes out the door.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Well, it's it's it's the music industry, right? We need mavericks.

Teams, Trust, And Real Decision Power

SPEAKER_00 29:10

We need it's it it's entertainment now, I think. I I don't want to correct anybody. I I would love for it to be the music industry, but I think now uh it has become very uh the liquid has become a gel. I think uh there's little to no separation between the different types of media because you know they all lean so hard on each other. Uh the the important difference is uh how well each of each type of media stands up on its own without the others helps help. Um yeah, it's it's it's a it's a very big question to ponder, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Yeah, yeah. That's an interesting question you raised there, actually, that's for sure. Um Drew, one final question for you. Um if you were to if you were to spend an hour uh with the 18-year-old Drew, and you got to sit down and have a have a coffee or you know, a cup of tea or beer, maybe, um, and just give some advice, uh, what what would you tell him?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

I'll I'll give you the the quick answer and then I'll try to give you a better answer.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Uh the quint quick answer is you gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run. That's a Kenny Rogers quote.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Oh, is it Kenny Rogers? Okay. That's brilliant. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Okay, wow.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

That's super.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

Know when to hold them, when to fold them, when to walk away, and when to run. Uh, but the real answer I think is more like I'll take your first answer. Yeah, the first one's pretty big. The first one's pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

It's difficult to top that, isn't it? No, is it but yeah, no, no, dive, dive deeper. Dive deeper.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

What would you well, you know, my career's been uh the result of a lot of incredible people and a lot of really vile people. And I think uh the the best advice I could have given myself was to um to focus on telling those people apart. And uh to to whenever you know something's happening that's not right, uh that's you, I mean, you gotta put your foot out and you gotta stop the train and you gotta do the right thing at the right time. It's really hard sometimes, though. I gotta say, it's it's maybe the hardest thing is, you know, being on the airplane and something's happening that you're not cool with, and you have to go up and tell the pilot to turn everything around and to go all the way back to the airport. And everyone in the airplane's mad at you, but you did the right thing for the right reasons because time, you know, everything looks a certain way in the moment, but it looks very different in retrospect.

What Great Sync Creators Do

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Yeah, stronger advice. I think in the cold light of day, the ability or the wisdom, if you will, to be able to go, should I do something about this or do I risk my own reputation by just keeping quiet? That's that is so difficult.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Um really direct way of looking at it. But I think it also happens in really sneaky ways where you know you get a job offer that's just crazy money, but you're gonna be working with people that might be a little scary. Or, you know, you there's a you know, a movie campaign or a TV show or something like that that wants to use your music, um, you know, but then they want you to change this and change that, and it's a good money, and you're like, oh my God, this there's a whole there's a whole legion of people that are going to benefit if this works. But you know, then you you've gone back and you've changed something that every one of those people had already put their blood, sweat, and tears into. I mean, it comes down to publishing, it can come down to masters. Like there's always, and you can never make everybody happy. And that's not what I'm saying. But I am saying that like when art and commerce butt heads, it's always going to be better to be on the art side than it is gonna be to be on the commerce side. And sometimes that's the difference between you still have a house payment or you've paid your house off. But doing the right thing with the house payment is a lot better.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

Strong advice. Strong advice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:46

I was gonna I go through this list. I made you a little list, and I'm I'm just going down this list and I'm trying to, you know, put that into uh context. I I think I've done a pretty good job, but you'd have to ask around. You never you just don't even know. You can't tell how many people you've affected in an encouraging way versus the people that you've accidentally stepped on and you didn't mean to. Uh it's just you gotta you gotta do the right thing.

How The Supervisor Role Has Shifted

SPEAKER_01 34:13

Yeah, yeah. Gosh, um, Drew, thank you so much for putting the time aside to talk to me on the podcast today. I think there'll be a lot of people that really benefit from your wisdom, from your insight, from all of your experience. Uh, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Wow. Um, everybody, after we did this recording, um, Drew and I carried on talking for quite a while. Um, and there were so many interesting things that he told me about. And I thought, oh man, I really wish I'd asked him this, or I really wish I'd got that in on the episode. Um, because I think the reality is he's done so much in his career, and um knowing where to kind of uh jump into the timeline in order to be able to understand his stories and his successes to their full extent, you know, is quite a weighty, depthy thing, right? So uh I think it would make a lot of sense uh for he and I to have part two of that conversation. It's something I have talked to him about, and uh I think it's something we'll do because there's so much more to him uh than what we just heard. But nevertheless, that episode I found it fascinating to talk to him. Um, you know, absolutely fascinating. Some of the things that he spoke about uh in this episode were a real eye-opener for me, and I hope for you too. You know, uh you know, for anybody that doesn't quite realise this, you know, to talk to music supervisors um, you know, uh to get near them uh is pretty difficult, right? You know, I I can't I I know a couple of pretty high-level um AR guys that cannot get hold of them, right? Because they're just hassled all the time, right? Just because, you know, they um they have uh a big platform for a lot of people in a lot of different projects, right? So uh yeah, they're very difficult to get hold of. And uh and Drew is, you know, uh he speaks uh he's one of the experts at a lot of the big, you know, uh conferences and stuff, and uh, you know, he's he's a good guy, right? Just a genuinely lovely dude, right? Uh I think that very much came across in this episode. Anyway, that's enough from me for today. Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I hope you have a great day, and may the force be with you.