Copyright The Hollywood Reporter
If you are among those who watched Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy and are still humming the song “It Isn’t Perfect But It Might Be” by English singer-songwriter Olivia Dean, or if you looked up Take That’s 2008 hit “Greatest Day” after seeing Sean Baker’s Anora, or if you are still haunted by Aurora’s “Through the Eyes of A Child” after watching Adolescence, “blame” Universal Music Group U.K.’s Globe sync and brand business. If you now ask “who!?,” the Globe team probably won’t be surprised. After all, it often wields its magic behind the scenes. With traditional entertainment, games, TikTok, GenAI, and more competing for fans’ attention, audiences seem more saturated than ever before. And that means that the music industry needs to find creative ways to break artists on a global scale. Sync, or synchronization, deals place music into TV shows, films, video games, advertising, and other content, or make artists brand ambassadors, among other things. The Globe team wants to “create a world of opportunities for U.K. artists to find an audience, tell their story, and build connections,” the business says about itself. Globe president Marc Robinson and co-managing directors Jennifer Hills and Sarah Desmond have more than 50 years of combined experience in connecting music artists with entertainment, brand, or other partners to put them where culture is shaped and conversations are created. Now, the Globe is expanding into the U.S., with an eye on paving the way for more U.K. artists to go global. With its first-ever hires planned in New York and Los Angeles, the new U.S.-based team members will report into the U.K. and be responsible for identifying sync opportunities for U.K. artists – both original and catalogue opportunities. The upcoming hires, for which interviews are in the works, will be for the roles of sync agents for film & TV and advertising, with further hires planned for next year. The moves come amid strong demand for U.K. repertoire. Case in point: the U.K. sync market recorded 11 percent growth in 2024, reaffirming the U.K.’s position as a music powerhouse on the world stage. “It’s a hugely exciting time for Globe. Our expanded presence in the U.S. will only create more opportunities to connect our world-leading artists with award-winning members of the TV, film and ad industries,” Robinson tells THR. “Bringing all these forms of storytelling closer together creates more emotive and powerful entertainment – benefiting audiences, the creative community, and our artists. We’re investing creatively and commercially to push the boundaries and relationships between music and film to create opportunities for all involved.” In the U.S., the Globe team has been the most aggressive, “and we’re going to be even more aggressive now, because in sync it amounts to between 60 and 65 percent of the market, followed by Japan,” Robinson explains. “We all have multiple sync moments in our lives when we discover music through film and TV. Every generation has had them. Whether it’s The Graduate in the ’70s or the ’80s with The Breakfast Club, we’ve all had sync moments in our lives. And for U.K. artists, we’re going through a bit of a moment right now.” Sync deals increasingly play an important role in helping U.K. artists, such as Dean and Norway’s Aurora, break internationally. They also help return established stars, such as Sophie Ellis-Bextor, to the cultural zeitgeist. Just think about how her 2001 hit “Murder on the Dancefloor” saw a major resurgence in popularity thanks to its use in the 2023 Emerald Fennell film Saltburn‘s climactic scene featuring a dancing Barry Keoghan. Not only did the singer end up performing at the BAFTA Film Awards ceremony, she also used renewed enthusiasm about her to get signed by UMG U.K.’s Decca Records and recently released her eighth studio album, Perimenopop, opening up her fanbase from her established audience to a new generation. Plus, she is now embarking on her first-ever U.S. tour. Meanwhile, Aurora saw streaming activity for her music rise by around 750 percent after her song featured in Adolescence. And Dean, a long-time fan of the Bridget Jones franchise, turned out to be a perfect match for the new movie. Her original song was the leading song on the soundtrack, released in February, becoming the most most-streamed song from the soundtrack with 53 million streams on Spotify as of October. That exposed the star to returning lovers of the film franchisee but also new fans who discovered the franchise for the first time. When Dean’s album The Art of Loving was released, she reached the most Spotify streams of any British artist in the world. More recently, she became the first British female solo artist ever to have four songs in the top 10. “We know it’s harder than it’s ever been for artists to break on the global stage,” Hills tells THR. “With hundreds of thousands of new songs released daily, it can be hard for artists to find their audience and build a fanbase. Globe exists to help U.K. artists find more ways to tell their stories, reach new audiences around the world, and achieve cultural and commercial success.” And Desmond emphasizes: “British music has long been the envy of the world – and the immense appetite for British music across film, TV and ads is evidence of that. While we continue to see demand for our world-leading catalogue, we’re also seeing increased opportunity for original music, which particularly benefits emerging British artists looking to grow their audiences. Deepening our presence in the U.S. only allows us to better serve our artists and help them achieve their goals.” The new U.S. presence will build on the team’s past work there. For example, the Globe team, in partnership Abbey Road Studios, recently held a major showcase in L.A. on Oct. 17 at Candela La Brea, which was dubbed the “Abbey Road Tavern” for the event. It attracted representatives from the likes of Disney, Warner Bros. and Netflix, and featured intimate performances from four hot and rising U.K. stars, Dean, FLO, Holly Humberstone, and Sekou, plus a special Q&A with British music icon Elton John. Key Globe work has also won awards. For example, Self Esteem’s cover of Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful (to Me)” for Dove’s 2023 The Cost of Beauty campaign won gold at the Cannes Lions in 2023 in the Social & Influencer and Health & Wellness categories. But behind the successes lies much planning and work with partners. Sync and brand conversations can get started from either side. “But I always say the phone always rings in sync, but rarely rings in brands,” Desmond tells THR. “There, it’s much more about looking for and sourcing opportunities.” The Globe team starts thinking about opportunities early and constantly. “We work very closely with the labels from the moment, even before, an artist is signed to look at their whole world and how brand partnerships, collaborations, music, film, gaming, all of those elements can be part of that world building for the artist,” Hills tells THR. “Sometimes it is about proactively going to a specific category or a specific genre of film or TV, because it makes sense for the way the artist tells their story, and they are a fit for their music. And other times, we’re getting briefs from partners looking to be involved with music.” Adds Desmond: “We’ve been supporting artists like Lewis Capaldi or Olivia from the early days, doing small partnerships, and continuing that work. There’s a whole strategy around that, and we sit down with the artists and their managers to find out what they’re interested in. And sometimes it takes working with them for years before they break globally.” The whole team emphasizes the importance of finding partnerships that are authentic, pointing out that fans and viewers would quickly smell if an artist and content, or an artist and a brand, were forced together for pure financial considerations. “It’s totally obvious in the end product, if an artist isn’t interested in the partnership,” says Desmond. Instead, it’s about matching values, passion points, and the like in a way that helps artists deepen their relationship with existing fans, reach new audiences, and open up new opportunities for them. “The biggest considerations are the reach that an opportunity can give us, the relevance to the artist and their audience, especially the audience we’re trying to grow, and the resonance and how we can land the messaging to build the career or the legacy of the artist,” explains Hills, emphasizing a focus on “win-win” collaborations. The Globe leadership feels that its experience in all sorts of partnerships and dealmaking helps in that endeavor. “We’re quite a unicorn in the world of music, and certainly at the major labels, because we have sync and brand sat side by side, and production as well,” Hills highlights. “There’s no one else doing it quite like we are.” When music folks integrate songs into film and TV, one key to success is to “trust the filmmaker,” Robinson explains. “In sync, we’re complementing someone else’s canvas. So it’s not the music artist’s music video, it’s not their short film, it’s somebody else’s movie. So you must trust the instinct of that filmmaker, especially those great directors who love and know music.” When a Globe partnership becomes a hit, it expands artists’ reach, fan base, and popularity. But as all across the creative industries, hits are never a given. And sync is neither a cookie-cutter business nor one easily learned. “It’s more magic than science, because when worlds collide in sync, especially when it comes to a piece of music in a film or in a campaign that works and resonates, it creates a halo effect that none of us can foresee, especially in the current world, where everything’s in flux between streamers, cinema and distribution,” concludes Robinson. “For example, we couldn’t have foreseen how huge Adolescence became and how it traveled in such a poignant way. But because Aurora has a really loyal fan base and the song tapped into a lot of what the themes of the show were, that really became a unicorn.”
