Sound Search #6: Vicki Garton, BMG

Vicki Garton has been building music search engines for 25 years. She started on the first ever Production Music search engine, M.A.R.S, at Telstar, when the alternative was CDs in a backpack. Then came Play Music at Zomba, a long stint at Universal as Head of International Digital Services for Production Music, and now BMG, where she’s VP of Global Sync Platforms. Across that time, the same pattern in Sync keeps repeating itself: Production Music builds it first, the rest of the industry catches up.

We talked to Victoria about the long arc from tags to audio matching, why Production Music has quietly led the industry on tech, and what BMG’s Sync vision looks like three years from now.

For readers who don’t know you yet, can you introduce yourself and tell us what you do at BMG?

My name is Vicki Garton. I’m VP of Global Sync Platforms at BMG. I’ve worked in music search, predominantly Production Music, for the last 25 years. My day-to-day is with a team developing our search systems and how we deliver our music across different platforms.

How did you get into the Production Music world?

I started in this business on the first ever Production Music search engine, before Spotify was even a thing. It was part of Telstar Music Group, called M.A.R.S: Multimedia, Archive and Retrieval Systems. A guy I worked with had the idea of bringing all the labels onto one platform. It was an aggregated site, which came with its own challenges, but we got all the major labels of the time on it: EMI, Zomba, Extreme. I started out classifying music and helping build the search system, working alongside the sales team to pitch this new model to clients, moving away from CDs in a backpack, and into an online model.

Pretty quickly, I moved to Zomba to work on a new system. They didn’t like the one they had in place, so a JV between Zomba and EMI was born. That was Play Music, quite a big deal in the Production Music space at the time. I worked on that platform for a few years. Then came BMG, first time round, which was acquired by Universal, where I had a long stint at Universal as Head of International Digital Services for Production Music. Two or three search engines later, I left for BMG. That was my journey. All in music search.

Take us back to the first music search you built for BMG Production Music. What did it look like, and what’s changed most in how people search for music since then?

For BMG Production Music, that’s only five years ago for me. When I joined, the search platform was still at an early stage. The structure wasn’t what I’d been used to at Universal. A lot of the architecture was in place, but we didn’t have AIMS yet. We were looking at different offerings for AI and music matching. In those early days, it wasn’t as organized or uniform. Throughout that period, and with the integration of AIMS, it evolved into the Production Music site we have today.

One big change is technical: the platform was built in Angular, and we’ve just rewritten it in React. With that foundation and a more up-to-date tech framework, we can start to add more search features. But the broader shift across music search has been on the audio matching side. Being able to drop in a URL is a game changer compared to when we were relying heavily on tags and data. That’s the biggest change.

A big part of your role is creating a successful music search. How do you define success, and how do you measure it?

What I hear from clients and users is that they want to get in, get what they need quickly, and get out. The fastest route to the best track for their project. That’s always been the goal in music search, but you can’t send everyone on the same journey. Over the years in workshops, I’ve seen editors who want to be in and choose the music themselves. They want to browse, see the albums, and use their creative steer to find music. Then there are users who say, ‘I just want to see what playlists you’ve got for reality TV. I want them in front of me, updated every month, so I don’t have to do any leg work.’ Not everyone’s journey is the same. The goal is to make it fast and easy, but with creative license left in.

Measuring success is harder. I might see how many hits a playlist is getting, but tying that back to the licensing is the challenge. You can’t always connect it directly. A lot of these things go through royalty cycles with the societies, so you don’t see the license until much later. But I can see the different user journeys, make sure we’re catering for each one, and make sure people aren’t getting zero results.

It seems Production Music has been a bit further along than Sync and Commercial Music when it comes to tech infrastructure. Would that be fair to say? And if so, why?

Absolutely fair to say. It’s been that way throughout my career, not just at BMG. The wider business, the Sync side, looks at what Production Music is doing and what they’re building and wants to take on its tools. It happened at Universal too.

There are a couple of reasons. First, Production Music is much more formulaic when you build these systems. It’s royalty cleared and formatted really well. You’ve got your mains, your 60s, your 30s. It lends itself to a platform. It’s like a puzzle, and everything fits together. Doing the same with commercial music is much more challenging. The licensing is layered, with all the different parameters, and that’s much harder to build in and to maintain and govern within a platform.

On the Publishing side especially, the uptake of new technology is slower. Adoption takes longer and it depends on who you’ve got working in technology and in products. You need the right people to drive it. It’s a combination of factors.

If we look ahead, how do you expect Sync to look three years from now?

There’ll be considerable change in three years. A lot of what BMG Sync+ is about at the moment is finding our path there. What we’re doing is enabling our clients to come to one person for what they need: Commercial Music, Production Music, Bespoke Services, and Media Services. Everything is under one roof, and you can get anything you need from us. Three years isn’t that long. We’re off to a flying start, and we’ll have a lot of it in place by then. With technology gains on top, a client should be able to access the whole Sync offering in one place. They shouldn’t have to go elsewhere to get what they need.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received in your career?

I don’t have that one standout piece of advice. There are probably a couple of things. One was on the Production Music side. Earlier in my career, I was trying to get out of Production Music and into the Commercial space. Someone said to me, ‘You’re working in music. You’re surrounded by a wonderful bunch of people who are all aspirational about what they do.’ That’s advice I would give my younger self: don’t underestimate where you are and what you’ve got. Enjoy the ride.

Someone else told me not to underestimate how your skills can transfer. Even though it felt pigeonholed within Production Music, those transferable skills are now coming into play, moving into BMG Sync+ and what I’m bringing to that side of the business from a digital point of view. Don’t underestimate the transferable skills you grow throughout your journey. That was a key one too.

I’m lucky now. I’m working between the two, with some challenges ahead, but it’s fulfilling and I’m surrounded by great people.

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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