Unmuted

When I first started out trying to break into music production and composing for TV, basically taking any audio job I could get my hands on, the thing that actually paid the bills and got me moving was music editing. I had a really good run with it. Two series of Phoenix Rise on the BBC, and off the back of that, a steady stream of smaller jobs for a year or two. It was the thing that took me from "trying to do this" to "doing this full time." Looking back, it was probably th

There's a version of this article you've probably read a dozen times. Home recording got cheap, a teenager made a Grammy-winning album in a bedroom, the big studios are either dying or clinging on by offering "vintage gear" and "expert engineers" as a kind of last-resort selling point. It's a tidy story. It's also not quite true, and 25 years of being in and out of studios, first as a teenager sweeping floors and watching sessions, more recently sitting in on a string quartet

Why a Composer's Visual Identity Sells the Sync. A composer's note on building visual identity for artist projects, including the ones that exist only for sync. Side project doesn't mean side effort. The picture has to land before the song does. The supervisor opens DISCO at 2pm. Twelve playlists in the queue. Three briefs on the desk. She's scrolling, not listening yet. Artwork, name, one-line bio. That's the door. Most

The creative industries love to talk about collaboration, passion, and opportunity. But behind the polished campaigns, viral adverts, and cinematic brand films is an uncomfortable reality: many creatives are being systematically undervalued by the very production companies that rely on them. For freelancers working in music, design, videography, photography, editing, sync, and content creation, the lack of standardised rates and expectations has created an environment where e

As a sync agent, there’s nothing better than discovering an artist organically. Recently, I came across an artist online and immediately headed to Spotify to check them out. Within seconds of hearing the first track, I was hooked. The music had personality, emotion, and a clear artistic identity, exactly the kind of thing that catches my attention for sync. A week later, we were already on a call together. This time, I wasn’t listening as a fan, I was listening as a sync agen

Tuesday brief, Friday lock. Three days to clear, license, and deliver across territories. The supervisors we trust are picking from whatever the publishers can clear in that window, because the math doesn't work any other way. That isn't a taste problem. That's a calendar problem. And it's reshaping who gets in the room before anyone gets to hear the song. Thoughts?

Cannes gave the year's top audio prize to a campaign whose own case study boasted "$0 spent on music rights." Then Sony arrived. São Paulo. June 2025. Africa Creative DDB picked up the Audio & Radio Grand Prix for Budweiser's One Second Ads. Plus a Gold. Sixty-eight million TikTok impressions. Beyoncé. Kendrick Lamar. Foo Fighters. One second of each. No clearance. The Cannes case study said the quiet part out loud. The campaign used "the minimum fans need to recognize a song

On Daniel Wall's Behind The Wall podcast, Diplo said it out loud: "I don't even need a voice anymore. I can get the best voice from AI. I don't need anybody to sing the song anymore." On X, he told creatives to "adapt or just like give up and become an Uber driver." It's sad more than anything. Sad to watch someone with a platform that big sell out the entire act of music-making in a single press cycle. I make music every day. I'm staying. Humans make art because we have to.