Sound Search #3: Patricia Carrera Marín, ASM | Control Freaks Music

Patricia Carrera Marín is a veteran music supervisor who runs Control Freaks Music and serves as President of ASM, the Asociación de Supervisión Musical de Habla Hispana, the guild for Spanish-speaking music supervisors and the people working alongside them.

We talked to Patricia about how the way she searches for music has changed, the realities of doing this work in markets that are still catching up to the profession, and why most rights holders who pitch her never make it past her inbox.

To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about yourself, the work you do at Control Freaks, and what ASM is for anyone not yet familiar?

I'm a music supervisor based in Tenerife, although most of my work is in Mexico, I specialize in films and series, and I do advertising across South America. I've worked on some projects in the United States, and I want to do more in Spain as well. But mainly I work on Mexican productions, most of them for streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Disney. I also work on festival and arthouse projects, smaller in terms of budget and scale, but a different kind of content.

I serve as President of ASM, the Spanish-speaking music supervision association. We bring together more than 60 professionals across 11 countries. We represent music supervisors but also the other professionals working with music in audiovisual media: music editors, music coordinators, licensing agents. We're working to improve our industry and to make our work visible. We're part of the audiovisual industry, but we're not formally recognized in the way music supervisors are in places like the United States. We're not there yet, so we're pushing the profession forward, building educational programs to professionalize our members, and trying to close the gap between the audiovisual and music industries.

Walk us through a recent project. What was the creative direction, how did you start searching for music, and where did you eventually find what worked?

I recently worked on a series I loved, “Nadie Nos Vio Partir” ( "No One Saw Us Leave”). It was a lot of work, but from an era I feel really comfortable with, the 50s and 60s. I get called for a lot of period pieces, and this was one of them. It was also shot in different countries, so I had to research what was happening musically, politically, and socially in each place at the time. One of them was South Africa, right in the middle of apartheid, so I dug into what was allowed and what wasn't, what the traditional expressions of South African people were. It was really interesting. I also had to research Italy, France, Mexico, and Israel. It gave me a really nice overview of the history of these countries, not only musically but politically and culturally.

As for where I found the music we used, it was the result of really good contacts all around who had music or connected me with the right people. We used a combination of authentic period music pieces and public domain songs, with some modern yet vintage-like songs that were just perfect. That way we told a real story from way back, since it’s based on a book relating the experiences of the author, with the fresh look of the creators and the author herself.  

It was released last year and turned out to be a success on Netflix, sitting at #1 globally for a while, which for us was a big moment. Professionally, it was a challenge, and very rewarding.

How has the way music supervisors actually search for music changed over the last five years?

Dramatically. We're hyper-connected now, and we have much better tools to identify and search for music. Five years ago, AI was just at the beginning of the process. Now we have amazing tools, not only tagging, which is really important, but similarity search, which is fundamental. It has changed the game, because it doesn't only find similarity in tagging. It finds similarity in instrumentation, rhythm, and style.

We also have other tools to organize our catalogs, and metadata is more important than ever. Tools like Shazam matter a lot too. I'm listening to music all the time, and when I'm out in the world and I hear something, the most immediate thing is, what is this? Now everything is registered and you can find it. So there are many ways for me to find music. I get invited to concerts and festivals, and that's where I find a lot of musicians. But how do you take that music home and have it on your radar when you actually need it? It needs to be properly tagged so I can locate the rights holders. That's the whole thing about finding music. I can listen to great music, but if I can't find who represents it, game over. I'm not going to remember every song from every artist I meet at concerts. Having those tools for artists and catalogs, for me, they're amazing.

AIMS, actually, was the first AI tool that ever contacted me. They asked, “Do you want to try it out?” I said, “What’s this? Yes, I want to try it out.” I think I started using AIMS in 2021 or 2022, and it revolutionized my whole experience of searching. It really has been amazing.

The richness of Latin music is striking. Banda, cumbia, the many subgenres of reggaeton. Under one “Latin” umbrella you've got an enormous range of distinct musical traditions. What does that richness mean for how this music gets tagged, organized, and searched?

It's a huge challenge. Each country has its own regional genres and subgenres. You might think a cumbia is a cumbia, but cumbia from Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico are all distinctively regional. That's very complicated. I haven't found correct auto-tagging yet for the different Latin genres. It's something we have to do manually.

In ASM, one of the things we're championing is that we need to defend our regional identities through the correct usage of music in audiovisual media. It's very common to see movies portray Colombia with Peruvian music, for example. Part of our objective is precision in how we portray our identities. Tagging has been a challenge. There's one company I know of that's developing an auto-tagging tool specifically for Latin music, Synclat . They're bringing in people from very important Latin catalogs and asking them to tag and train the AI to be more precise. I don't know how long it's going to take, because there's so much variety, but there are efforts.

What's a real challenge in the sync industry right now that doesn't get enough attention?

Right now, everyone wants to talk about AI. It's a sexy topic. But there aren't enough workshops on how to analyze the AI tools that exist, what their reach is, and what the ethical use of them is. We need to delve not only into what's ethical and legal, which is fundamental, but into actually understanding the tools, knowing through practice what's ethical and what's not. That's important.

Then there's another aspect, which has to do with the recognition of our craft as part of the audiovisual mechanism. All the co-production schemes and tax incentives in certain territories. I'm now living in the Canary Islands, which has the highest tax incentive for filming and co-productions in the world. We have a lot of productions here, and everyone wants to come in. But the official economic schemes don't include music supervision, music edition coordination or licensing services. They only include the composer's services. As music supervisors, we're administering between 8 and 15% of the budget of a project. That's a lot, and we're not officially considered. We need to get that conversation out there.

There's another issue, which is the planning and budgeting of music from the very beginning of a project, from the treatment stage. I go to a lot of film festivals and conferences. In the last six months, I've had meetings with almost 45 projects, and they don't know how to budget or plan their music. They come to these festivals asking for producers and investments, and they don't know how much money they need to ask for music. Those projects are going to be delayed later on. They're probably going to sit on a shelf until they get the money for licenses. It's been eye-opening. Even when I look at official institutions in Europe and what they ask for in budgeting to give the incentives, they don't even ask for a complete, detailed and real budget for music. These are things that need to be in the conversation.

How does the way sync works in Latin America compare to North America, and what are the differences?

In North America, they've been doing this for much longer. Along with the development of the audiovisual industry, which happened first in the United States, all the mechanisms around sync and music supervision have become more developed and more complex. Technically, but also as a business. So it's a cascade effect. Everything comes down first to Mexico, then to Central and South America, and also to Europe. The audiovisual industry in Europe has developed in its own way too, but it's still really developing in terms of sync and music supervision.

We need to learn more about workflows. How to work with the rest of the production team and with all the other professionals involved in music decisions. And technically, how music gets handled: people involved in sound on set, sound editing, sound design. There are all these areas we need to be involved in. Most projects in Latin America don't grasp why the music supervisor needs to be on every stage.

There's also a technical way of solving problems that they've figured out better than we have. They use different tools, they organize the work differently. Streaming platforms have been really important in leveling up our standard of work. If you want to work on productions for Netflix, Amazon, or any of the big streaming platforms, they give you a guide, almost like an instruction book, on how to do music supervision and licensing. They show you what tools to use, what technology will help you work. That's the main issue we need to address: workflows and tools to do our job better.

There are around 3,000 music supervisors worldwide. That's not a big number. Why is there a shortage?

Not many people know we exist. For the music industry, we're like unicorns. Everyone wants to see us, and now everyone's talking about music supervision. But eight years ago, five years ago, this wasn't an issue. Nobody talked about us, they didn't invite us to festivals. There were some festivals inviting music supervisors back then, but it wasn't the boom it is now. In audiovisual media, we're pretty much the plankton. And that plays a role: if production companies don't know they need us, they won't hire us. It's a vicious circle of not knowing we're there to solve these problems, of not budgeting for it, of not having the money to pay for licenses, let alone hire someone to do this work professionally.

There's another issue, which has to do with educational institutions. Until recently, there wasn't a course dedicated to music supervision. Lately we have two or three universities offering music supervision courses, and sometimes the teachers have little or no experience in actual productions. So, since there's very little formal education directly from the people who actually do the work, you have to learn by practicing; get the fundamentals from schools and courses and then get out there and work. We need to develop educational programs designed and somehow operated by people with experience.

Then there's the fact that for a long time, people in this field were very protective. Music supervisors were afraid of competition, afraid of sharing their knowledge and contacts. We're in a new era now. ASM was actually born out of a chat. A couple of friends and I, Samantha Parvin and Gimena Bárcenas, we felt so alone in this. Why is nobody sharing information, or how to do it? So we started a chat, and at some point we were 80 people in it. We thought, should we do an association to share this knowledge? Yes, let's do it. That's how it started, out of people like me asking, where is this information, why are gatekeepers not sharing contacts? I don't believe in competition, I believe in collaboration. There are 3,000 of us. What competition?

Latin music is having a clear global moment commercially. Is sync demand keeping up, or is it still mostly a streaming and charts story?

Sync demand is keeping up too. The content being developed now is global, it's for global markets. That implies using music from different countries and regions to make it appealing to everyone. There's been a lot of usage. I've been contacted by supervisors from many countries asking, can you recommend a catalog that gives me Cuban music? Or music from Colombia, or Mexico? It's a trend. My friend Patrycja Bukowska, the music supervisor from Poland, is trying to include one track from a Latin country in each of her projects, when she can. Everybody wants at least one disco scene, one bar scene, where people are listening to Latin music.

It's a trend, and I find it interesting and challenging for the music industry in our countries. The music industry needs to step up its administrative and legal abilities, so we can actually use the music. Legal certainty is what we're looking for the most. They need to sharpen their legal, administrative, and technical skills, and approach us with more confidence.

When rights holders pitch music to a music supervisor, what do they consistently get wrong?

Most of the time, they think they have the legal certainty when they don't. “This song I made with my super good friend, but I can license it.” No, that's not how it works. “He told me I could license it.” No, that's not it either. “I'm the owner of the master.” Okay, so the producer, the performer, the musicians, they all signed agreements? “No.” Then you don't own anything until you have a paper that says it's yours. That's a really important thing.

The other issue is they approach me without giving me the information I need to understand they're reliable and that they have the rights, and to find them later on. When I receive music, I don't listen to it on the spot. I receive so many emails every day that I don't have time to open them all and listen, let alone catalog them.

Musicians need to think about being a reliable source of music and information. How? By having all your ducks in a row, legally and administratively, and by telling me you have your ducks in a row in the email. “This is the ISWC. This is the ISRC. These are the composers. We signed an agreement. I'm the representative, I own the master.” And then describe your music as best you can. Tell me what kind of music you're sending, because I'm going to use my email as a database to find music later. So when I'm looking for “happy, upbeat, female vocal love song”, I can find it. Those are the two main mistakes: they don't know how to be ready legally, and they don't know how to express it and become part of my database.

Five years from now, where do you want Spanish-speaking music supervision to sit within the global industry?

I'd like to see more professionals working on more productions, and not necessarily for the big platforms. Most of the productions don't go to streaming platforms, they go to cinemas, the festival circuit, and smaller platforms. Most of the content being made out there isn't going to the big players, and they also need music supervisors, licensing agents, music editors, music coordinators.

So I see a big tree, full of branches of professionals working on projects of all dimensions. And we're sitting at the table along with the rest of the professionals working on the production process, making the decisions, and being considered as a fundamental part of it. Recognized by governments, by other institutions, by associations, by the people giving the funds, the people deciding what gets produced and funded.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sound Search is AIMS' interview series with music professionals on how technology is changing the way we discover and work with music.
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