The biz's brightest new talents tell their stories. This week it's the turn of Patrick Cloherty, head of UK sync services at Sentric.
How did you break into the industry?
I secured a three month placement with Sentric Music whilst in my final year at the Liverpool Institute For Performing Arts. The company was still relatively small at the time, which is what I wanted in order to gain some real experience, rather than making cups of tea somewhere else. I was kept busy and thrown in at the deep end, which worked out well as during the placement I managed to land one of our tracks onto a William Hill advert. From there, I was offered the chance to join the team full-time after graduating. Several years later, I’m now head of UK sync services.
Tell us a secret about sync…
You have to be prepared for everything to go wrong last minute. Only when I see a placement with my own eyes will I fully accept that it’s happened! There is always something that can go wrong at the final moment to ruin months’ worth of work, be that the CEO of a brand saying they don’t like the drums, or a writer with a 1% share demanding more money… It can often be a firefighting task and it always happens at 2am when you’re on holiday.
What’s the best thing about your job?
Seeing the impact on an artist’s career is definitely up there. Landing a large deal that enables someone to quit their day job and be able to focus on their music career is extremely rewarding. Also, travelling and meeting people is a great part of the job. I speak at and attend various international events, which is key to understanding other sync markets and developing new ideas to bring back to the office.
What annoys you most about the music business?
Publishing being picked up on a single song assignment deal and not actually being registered. It gives writers a negative view of publishing early on and leads to distrust of the industry as a whole further down the line. Additionally, getting too involved in stats, playlists, followers… It can be easy sometimes to forget good old fashioned gut instinct, it’s important we don’t compromise on the emotional element of music.
Where would you like to be in 10 years?
I’m yet to experience working on the other side of sync and being pitched to. It would be interesting to see the process of working with rights-holders rather than being one. It would be nice for someone to buy me a beer for a change – music supervisors can be expensive friends!
PATRICK’S RECOMMENDED TRACK:
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