On Tuesday, April 8th 2025, GMS members joined the Association of Independent Music for AIM Sync, the UK’s leading global online sync licensing conference. Various members of the GMS Board featured on panels, including a strong showing from our D&I Committee.
An opening ‘State of the Nation’ panel moderated by Pam Lewis-Rudden (Plutonic Group Syncs) alluded to nascent sync DSP platforms designed to ease the music licensing process for commercial music. Independent supervisor Jumi Akinfenwa sees these platforms’ potential to add “another string to the bow of music searches”, but cautioned anyone against putting all their eggs in one basket.
Later, a panel moderated by Zoë Ellen Bryant (Carbon Logic) examined misunderstandings that music supervisors, sync agents and creative licensing reps have to overcome. As part of the discussion, the importance of constantly re-educating producers was touched on as an important step towards upholding creativity as a music supervisor. Kadambari Chauhan (Redfive Creative) emphasised the importance of collaboration in the role:
“It’s not just about your creativity, it’s about the creativity of the people that you brief out to (record labels, publishers, sync agents etc.) because sync is a collaborative process. Look at the creative process as mining collective minds rather than putting your own personal stamp on a show. You’re one part of different moving pieces that contribute towards a bigger picture. Your passion should be not only for the job, but for the industry as well – and how everybody brings something together. Care about that and not just your particular job description – would be my top piece of advice.”
The day ended with a keynote from Matt Biffa (Air-Edel), who went into interesting depth and entertaining details about the creative process behind some of his favourite projects. This included stories of working with Jarvis Cocker for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, building character playlists for One Day, and phoning rightsholders to forewarn them about the graphic briefs he sent through for Sex Education. Matt concluded by reflecting that “success for me was always just looking forward to work on a Monday.”
Congratulations to Frederic Schindler (Too Young Ltd. & Catalog) for winning AIM Music Supervisor of the Year and to Just Isn’t Music & Ninja Tune for achieving Independent Sync of the Year. Special recognition was also given to Anjunabeats. GMS member Leo Niemi also gave a compelling market overview on Finland, discussing the different practices in the Finnish sync industry, production music rules, AV and publishing.
Thank you to the Association of Independent Music for inviting us to partner with them on this event and to all GMS members who attended and took part.
Written by David Simkins (he/him), GMS D&I Committee
Pictured: Jumi Akinfenwa and Kadambari Chauhan
