music_supervision_scoring v1.0.0

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name: music_supervision_scoring description: Supervise music for film, ads, and online video: spot the picture, search for the right existing track, clear sync and master rights, run library, cover, and commission routes in parallel, beat temp love, budget with MFN tracked, and deliver a complete cue sheet. Triggers on 'music supervision', 'find music for this scene', 'clear this song', 'sync license', 'cue sheet', 'temp track', 'license vs commission a score', or 'music budget for a film or ad'.

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Music Supervision and Scoring Decisions

Purpose

Run the music job on a production from first spot to final cue sheet: decide where music belongs, find tracks that fit the scene and the budget, clear every right in writing before picture locks, and file the paperwork that gets writers and publishers paid. The supervisor owns two halves at once, the creative half that picks the music and the legal half that makes it usable. A great pick that does not clear is not a pick, it is a reshoot of the sound.

Use this skill for existing music, library music, covers, and the decision to commission an original score. For generating music with AI tools, use ai-music-production. For mixing dialogue and music, use audio-mixing. For clearing archive footage, use archive-footage-licensing.

Workflow

1. Spot the picture and build the music map

• Hold a spotting session with the director, editor, producer, and composer if one is engaged. Play the cut and decide, scene by scene, where music starts, where it stops, and what job it does there.

• Split every music moment into one of three buckets on the spot: needle drop (an existing song the supervisor sources), score (music the composer creates), or source (music the characters can hear in the scene, a radio, a bar band, a phone ringtone). Source choices get spotted early because an on camera performance can force casting, playback, and clearance at once.

• Write the music map, one row per cue: cue number, scene, in and out timecodes, duration, bucket, function in plain words (carries a montage, hides a location change, sells a joke, keeps dread alive under dialogue), and a temp status flag. The map is the search brief, the budget base, and the cue sheet draft in one document.

• Set the total music budget and a per cue ceiling before searching. Note which cues are allowed to be expensive (main title, climax, trailer) and which must be cheap or library. A budget set after the team falls for a song is not a budget.

2. Brief each cue so a search can succeed

• Write a one paragraph brief per needle drop cue: story function, era and place, energy curve across the cue (starts low, peaks at the door slam), vocal or instrumental, lyric subjects that help and lyric subjects that are banned, tempo feel, and two or three reference tracks labelled as references, never as targets to copy.

• Add the hard filters to every brief: maximum fee the cue can carry, deadline for clearance, territories and media the production actually needs, and whether a clean version, an instrumental, and stems are required. A track with no instrumental fails a dialogue heavy cue no matter how good the vocal version sounds.

• Search in this order: tracks already in the production library or prior season blanket, one stop independent catalogs where one party controls both sides, production music libraries, then commercial catalog. Famous last is a budget rule, not a taste rule.

3. Search wide, shortlist tight, test against picture

• Pull at least five candidates per important cue and two per minor cue. Log every candidate in the search log with title, artist, writer and publisher if known, master owner if known, one stop yes or no, and the link auditioned. Candidates that are never logged cannot be cleared later from memory.

• Cut the list to two finalists plus one backup per cue, then test all three against picture at the real in and out points, under the real dialogue. Judge on function first: does the scene read better, does dialogue survive, does the energy curve match the cut. A track that only works from its chorus often fails at the exact 12 seconds the scene needs.

• Lock no edit to a single uncleared track. Keep the backup cut in the timeline until the license for the first choice is signed, so a refusal costs an afternoon, not a recut.

4. Clear both sides, in writing, before lock

• Run clearance per references/clearance-and-licensing.md. Every existing recording needs two licenses: a sync license from the publisher or songwriter for the composition, and a master use license from the label or master owner for that specific recording. Both must clear. One side alone clears nothing usable.

• Send a complete clearance request on first contact: project title and synopsis, scene description with diegetic or non diegetic noted, exact duration of use, use type and prominence, media, term, territory, paid advertising yes or no, production budget and the fee offered or the budget range, and the response deadline. Incomplete requests get slow or useless answers.

• Track every request in the clearance log: track, each rights holder and share, contact, date sent, quote, MFN status, status, and the signed license file location. Treat no response as a no for scheduling purposes. Silence is never permission, and a documented non response is not a cleared right.

• Watch the splits. A song with several writers can have several publishers, and every share must agree. One refusal kills that recording for the production, so start the backup the day any holder stalls, declines, or quotes far above the cue ceiling.

• Handle the escape routes without panic when a track fails: re record a cover (sync only, plus the cost of a new recording), pick a one stop independent track with the same function, pull a library track under an existing blanket, or hand the cue to the composer. Decide by deadline and total cost, not by attachment.

5. Run the library, cover, and commission routes in parallel

• Compare routes per cue with references/clearance-and-licensing.md, never by headline fee alone. Library needle drop is per track per use. A blanket covers library use across productions for a set period. A production agreement covers multiple tracks in one production or series. A cover needs the sync license plus session costs. A commission needs one composer agreement and no third party song clearances for that cue.

• Commission an original score or song when any of these hold: the same musical identity must recur and develop across many cues, no existing track fits the scene function at the ceiling price, clearance risk on the key cues is high and the deadline is fixed, the production needs broad rights in perpetuity across all media without renegotiation per cue, or a signature song for the project is itself a marketing asset.

• License existing music when the specific recording carries meaning no new work can match (era, artist identity, a lyric the scene plays against), when only a few cues need songs, or when the schedule has no room for composition, mockups, revisions, and recording.

• Write the commission so the rights are settled on paper: work made for hire or assignment or license, publishing split, fee structure and what it includes (writing, production, players, mix, stems, revisions), delivery format and stems list, credit, soundtrack and promo use, and who owns the master. Paying an invoice alone settles none of this.

6. Defuse temp tracks before they defuse the budget

• Label every temp track in the timeline and the music map as TEMP with its clearance status. No temp track is final music until both licenses are signed.

• Brief the team on temp love at the first spotting session: after weeks of hearing one placeholder, any replacement feels wrong at first, including a better one. Name the trap early, while it is still cheap. The classic case taught in supervision courses is 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968), temped with classical works, where the commissioned score by Alex North was dropped and the temp music stayed in the finished film.

• Give every temp cue a decision date well before picture lock and a priced exit: the license quote if it clears, the cover cost, or the named replacement. A temp cue with no decision date becomes the most expensive cue by default.

• When handing temp to a composer, hand over function, not imitation: what the temp does for pacing, mood, and story, where it should change, and which elements are banned from copying. Asking a composer to clone a famous temp invites a weak copy and, at the close end, legal risk.

• Replace temp in batches and rewatch the full piece, not scene by scene in isolation. Attachment fades faster when the team hears the new music carry a whole sequence.

7. Budget with the whole cost, MFN included

• Build the music budget from the music map, per references/cue-sheet-and-budgets.md: sync fee and master fee per licensed cue, library fees or blanket share, cover session costs, composer fee plus production costs, supervisor and clearance costs, and a contingency line. Keep quoted, approved, and paid as separate columns.

• Track most favored nations clauses explicitly. An MFN term ties one side to the other: if the master side is paid more, the sync side rises to match, and some MFN terms run across songs in the same production. Log MFN status on every quote in the clearance log and re total the budget whenever any MFN linked fee moves. Untracked MFN is the standard way a music budget doubles late.

• Use step deals on low budget work where the route allows it: a limited initial scope (festival only, one territory, a short term) with pre agreed fees for wider release later. Write the later steps into the first license. A cheap quote that silently excludes the release the production is actually aiming for is not cheap.

• Hold a hard rule through the mix: no cue ships in the final master without a signed license or a library record covering that exact use. If a cue is still open at lock, swap in the cleared backup and note the swap on the cue sheet.

8. Deliver the cue sheet and the rights file

• Build the cue sheet from the final locked picture, not from the search log. Follow the field list and usage types in references/cue-sheet-and-budgets.md: production and episode identification, air or release date, show duration, and one row per cue with title, composer, publisher, performing rights society, duration, and usage.

• Use the usage type that matches what the audience experiences: background instrumental or vocal for underscore and off camera source, visual instrumental or vocal for on camera performance, featured for music that is the focus of the scene, main theme and end theme for titles. Featured and background are not interchangeable on a cue sheet, they pay differently.

• Reconcile the cue sheet against the final timeline second by second: every audible cue listed, no listed cue missing, durations matching the locked cut within a second. Then file it with the relevant performing rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC in the United States) or deliver it to the broadcaster or distributor exactly as their delivery spec requires.

• Assemble the rights file: signed sync and master licenses, library license records, composer agreement, clearance log, and the final cue sheet, in one project folder. A soundtrack album, a trailer, or a paid ad cut is a new use and needs its own clearance check against what the licenses actually grant. A license for the picture does not by itself clear the album.

9. Validate the plan before lock

• Write the music plan as JSON in the shape bin/music_plan_check.py documents and run it: python3 bin/music_plan_check.py plan.json. Add --cue-sheet cue-sheet.csv once a cue sheet draft exists.

• Fix every error before picture lock. The checker flags licensed cues missing either side, MFN quotes with no fee recorded, temp cues with no decision date or no backup, cues over their ceiling with no approval note, and cue sheet rows with missing writer, publisher, society, duration, or usage fields.

• Read references/worked-cases.md for three full runs at different scales: a short film, a 30 second ad, and an online series episode, each with its route choices and budget arithmetic shown from stated assumptions.

Output Contract

A completed run delivers:

1. A music map: one row per cue with timecodes, duration, bucket (needle drop, score, or source), function, and temp status.
2. A search log and, per important cue, two finalists plus one backup tested against picture, with one stop status noted per track.
3. A clearance log covering both sides of every licensed cue, with quotes, MFN status, deadlines, and the signed license location for cleared cues. No uncleared cue in the final master.
4. A music budget built from the map, with sync, master, library, cover, composer, supervision, and contingency lines, and MFN exposure totalled.
5. A final cue sheet matching the locked picture, ready to file with the performing rights organizations or to deliver to the broadcaster or distributor.
6. plan.json passing bin/music_plan_check.py with no errors, with the cue sheet check run once the sheet exists.

Operating Rules

1. Both sides or no use. A recording with only a sync license or only a master license cleared does not go in the film.
2. Written beats verbal. A friendly yes on a call is a lead, not a license. The signed license or the library record is the clearance.
3. No response means unavailable for planning. Never treat silence as permission and never let a deadline depend on it.
4. Budget before love. Set the total and the per cue ceilings at spotting, and search famous last.
5. Every temp cue carries a decision date and a priced exit from the day it enters the timeline.
6. Track MFN on the quote, not from memory. Any fee change on an MFN linked side re totals the budget the same day.
7. The cue sheet is built from the locked picture and reconciled against it. A cue sheet built from intentions pays the wrong people.
8. New use, new check. Trailers, ads, soundtrack albums, and social cutdowns are checked against the license scope before release, never assumed covered.
9. This skill is a workflow, not legal advice. On high value productions, disputed ownership, or any use a rights holder contests, an entertainment lawyer reviews the licenses before release.