Chris Kyme’s Postcard from Hong Kong with a Sydney visitor: Music Mill’s Bruce Tweedie
Chris Kyme (pictured below) continues his CB Asia ‘Postcard from Hong Kong’ series with Bruce Tweedie, Managing Director of top Sydney music supervision company, Music Mill.
I reckon it’s important to get out and about and attend anything going on in the local industry, if anything just to stay engaged and connected and see what’s going on, so I was more than up for an evening on November 45th in the company of Bruce Tweedie, the music meister from Sydney who I’ve been connected with on and off over the years, and always enjoyed absorbing his snippets of wisdom on searching and licensing music for commercials.
When there’s a ghost in your house you call the Ghostbusters, but when it’s ‘There’s a Ghost in My House’ by R.Dean Taylor you want, you call Bruce, or rather Music Mill, the company he’s been involved in for the past 25 years, and in recent times owning and operating with his wife Clare. When it comes to finding just the right track for your ad, nobody knows more than him how to navigate the often tricky world of music ownership and publishing.
Thanks to the ever-industrious and positive connectivity in Hong Kong of superproducer Mikyung Kim, there was a good turnout for this session at The Hive. So I was happy to catch up with the likes of big Chris Thorp (M25), John Koay (Edelman) and director Darren Tan (Moviola) to name a few, and listen to Bruce’s masterclass on the ins and outs of getting the right song.
Bruce took us through the song licensing life cycle, from getting your idea, thinking of your song, searching it, getting a cost estimate for using it right through to final approval. An assault course of ups and downs that sometimes can end up as a road to nowhere depending on who owns what and how they feel about music in ads. Some artists, are a no no from the start, they just don’t want to be associated with advertising campaigns. For others, costing can be an issue, or even what your idea is, whether they like the ad or not. But one of the things Bruce specializes in is then exploring further across the musical universe and digging up tracks you didn’t even know about that often turn out to be hidden gems.
As an absolute music nut, of all genres, I believe in this solution. I know scores of songs that would be perfect for ads. But that’s because I’m constantly exploring new and old. A number of years ago I hosted a workshop at Music Matters in Hong Kong, where music industry folks were in attendance, and the basic gist of my presentation was, I believe that music publishers are sitting on absolute goldmines of great songs that would be perfect for ads, that many clients and agency people would never have heard of before. I cited examples like History Repeating by The Propellerheads, which was featured in a Jaguar cars ad in the UK. There are great songs just sitting there that are mostly unknown. But that doesn’t mean they’re not great songs. My point (to the music owners)at that time was – you need to do better marketing if you want to sell. Give agencies and clients ideas. Suggestions. Match songs to categories. Most people only really know the popular stuff, which is why you get the same tracks (James Brown, I feel Good) ending up getting overused everywhere.
But thankfully, that’s what Music Mill is there for, and Bruce has had a pretty good track record across Asia over the years. But here’s another point, and something I raised myhand about (as if I wouldn’t). Bruce shared some rough costing guidelines to give us a reality check, and as someone who has worked across Asia myself over the years, some of the figures are equal to total production budgets we get to see. So how? I’ve definitely searched, enquired and used certain tracks on ads over the years (one of my favourites was Soul Makossa, the reggae version, by Manu Dibango), where the budget has allowed for purchasing something. But more often than not, you can’t afford to license big tunes out here as the production budgets in Asian markets are not equal to those from other parts of the world (US, Europe, Australia etc). Bruce’s point was, you’ve just got to ask, you never know.
This is where the creativity comes in, and Bruce’s expertise. He’ll dig up tracks you didn’t know existed. One of my favourite uses of a rare track recently (from Europe, not down under) was for Poretti Beer, which featured Prisencolinsinainciusol by Adrian Celentano, a glorious Italian funk track that I remember dancing to back in the early‘70s. I’d love to know who dug that up.
All in all, a good and very informative session. It maybe could have done with a few more larger agency local creative directors in the audience, but given that most of the commercials we get to see nowadays just feature the latest celebrities and music is often just the background noise, maybe the insights would have fallen on deaf ears, who knows. But for me, you never stop learning in this business and you’ve got to have open ears.
A great song can make all the difference when it comes to lifting a piece of film. And if that’s what you’re looking for, contact Bruce.
Visit the Music Mill website here.
Read Chris Kyme’s 2025 Postcards from Hong Kong on CB Asia:
Christopher Lee, an inspiration to young Hong Kong hopefuls
From Tan Khiang to Tea Khiang
In Search of the Sweet Spot
Welcome to Newviola
And the award goes to… some braver clients
A look inside the Beehive
A rocket that landed in Hong Kong
In search of Hong Kong (yet again)
