In the last installment of this blog I talked about whether the CD was dead or still alive. Even though it might be on life support, my decision to release a new DownTown Mystic CD was a no-brainer for me…and I’m so glad I did!

This past year has been special in many ways. The release of the DownTown Mystic CD took on a life of its own at Americana Radio, spending 40 consecutive weeks on the AMA Radio Charts!! That was something really special for me and it never would have happened if I had gone with the current thought that the CD was dead.

If that wasn’t enough proof for releasing the cd, then going to #1 on the Roots Music Report’s Alt/Rock Song Chart and #3 on the RMR Alt/Rock Album Chart in the same week surely was!! As they say, “The proof is in the pudding” (what does that mean?) and, at least for me, the results of releasing a CD more than proved it’s still alive and kicking.

While I might have answered my own question Re: the CD, the real reason I’m writing this blog installment is to talk about Synch Licensing and how important it is today for Artists. If the radio airplay for DownTown Mystic was successful, it pales in comparison to the Sync Licensing of the music for TV and such.

I don’t think an artist can rely on any one thing these days, but it’s becoming more and more obvious that Sync Licensing should be at the top of their todo list. The best thing I ever did was to hookup the music of DownTown Mystic with Jingle Punks for getting the music placed on TV. I didn’t know it at the time, but Jingle Punks was becoming a hip NYC boutique music licensing company that would become one of the leaders in supplying music for Cable and Network TV shows.

Most of the sync deals are non-exclusive, which allowed me to hook up with similar companies like Jingle Punks. But it was Jingle Punks that really took off. The thing I really like about them is that everyone that works there seems to be a musician. Jingle Jared Gutstadt (CEO and Co-Founder) has assembled a group of very talented creative people.

Also, becoming an Exclusive Jingle Punks Artist has proven to be quite beneficial for Downtown Mystic. Jingle Punks placed Way To Know on The Voice at least a half dozen times, including one of the Live Finals shows. That was the #1 show in the US at the time and I’ve got to believe that millions of people have heard it, even if only subliminally. There might be some truth there because when Sha-La Music released Way To Know  as a digital single in 2013, it garnered worldwide radio play on over 10,000 stations prior to the release of the DownTown Mystic album. Coincidence??

Besides having DownTown Mystic with Jingle Punks, I also caught on with another rising star in the Sync field — Eddie Caldwell of Music of The Sea in Chicago. My outside work as a Writer/Producer paid off when Eddie placed my track Fly Like The Wind with Alexandra Patsavas of Chop Shop Music, for the 80s-based show The Carrie Diaries. Patsavas, arguably the #1 Music Supervisor in LA, would end up selecting 3 of my songs for the show.

Ok, so things have been going very well for the music of DownTown Mystic with sync licensing but it might never have happened at all if I didn’t learn a costly lesson. The main thing every artist should remember to do when recording is always do an instrumental mix. After you do a final mix on a song, do 1 more by muting all the vocals and running an instrumental mix. It’s the instrumental mix that the sync companies will use for TV shows.

As I said, I learned this the hard way when I didn’t do any instrumental mixes on a project I was doing. Sync Licensing was just starting to happen and I was not aware of it yet. Ouch! By the next year I knew what it was and I was kicking myself for not doing the instrumental mixes when I had the chance. All that work and money spent in recording and mixing, and I couldn’t take advantage of it!

But I learned my lesson the hard way and the following year I was back in the studio recording a new project and this time I made sure we clicked a few buttons when it came time to do the mixes. From there on, the DownTown Mystic Brand began to grow via radio and syncs. The latest sync for DownTown Mystic is a very cool one.

Thanks to Jingle Punks, DownTown Mystic has 2 tracks, Lost & Found and No Exceptions featured in a web video promoting Dr. Pepper and 8-time Female Wrestling Champ/Country Singer, Mickie James. The video features James as being “1 of a kind,” like Dr. Pepper, which is a perfect setting for DownTown Mystic’s brand of  vintage yet modern music—a unique “1 of a kind” sound that sync licensing is helping to take DownTown Mystic to the next level.