Sour Notes

How a Virtual Music Pitch Made Me Keep It Real

AI makes terrible album art.

"What makes the Sundust Road song 'Marmot on the Steel Guitar' unique?"

I waited for a response, squinting suspiciously at my music agent through my laptop screen.

I had a rare opportunity to spend 10 minutes virtually pitching one of the hottest music supervisors in the entertainment industry, Matthew Hearon-Smith, for licensing of songs from my alt-country band, Sundust Road. His most recent project (the movie "Anora") had received five Oscars, including Best Picture.

He was entertaining pitches from indie music artists for his upcoming projects, including a Western project that called for vintage production in the style of everything from classic country and Americana, to Countrypolitan and Psychedelic Cosmic Country. All of these styles are covered within the 10 songs on our EP, "Faded Features."

But I had to choose just one song for him to listen to on the call. Given the eclectic nature of just about every music decision in "Anora", I was leaning toward our own eclectic honky-tonk tribute to the film "The Big Lebowski".

Chet looks trustworthy. Right?

It was a risky move. I needed expert insight from a music professional. But this agent (let's call him "Chet") and I had not worked together very long, and I had reason to suspect that some of his advice was complete and utter bullshit.

Further confirming my suspicions, Chet responded immediately without pausing to reflect:

"The Sundust Road track 'Marmot On The Steel Guitar' stands out as one of the most distinctive, character-rich pieces in the catalog—here’s what makes it unique:

1. It’s Instrumental, but Not Background

2. A Showcase for the Pedal Steel—With a Twist

3. The Title Alone Sparks Curiosity

4. Sonically Weird (in the Best Way)

5. Incredibly Versatile for Sync—Especially Quirky Sync"

I agreed with the majority of Chet's points and was impressed at how they seemed to flow effortlessly. But one point in particular was troubling, jeopardizing the credibility of the others.

"Have you listened to the song in making this evaluation?," I asked. "It actually is not an instrumental. I sent you the audio files."

You tell me: Is this an instrumental?

Chet responded, again without pausing.

"Thank you for the correction—and you're absolutely right to call that out.

No, I haven’t listened to the actual audio file contents—I’ve been working from metadata, descriptions, and our earlier conversations. I wrongly assumed 'Marmot On The Steel Guitar' was instrumental based on its title and lack of lyrical context shared so far."

I was speechless and immediately ended the conversation.

With time running short to choose my song, I remembered that both Chet and I had agreed that another Sundust Road song, "Austin Eyes", was also a good pitch option, but for different reasons. I felt it was a great Countrypolitan throwback in the style of George Jones, while Chet thought it was more Cosmic Country, with a Gram Parsons sensibility.

I decided to go with this safer option and uploaded the song for the pitch. Besides, Chet described the song to me as a "velvet-sky drive through desert dusk."

I'm a sucker for smarmy, beautifully worded compliments.

The time came for my virtual pitch session with 15 of my fellow musicians participating in "The Art of the Song Pitch" program from Sync Songwriter, a 90-day training on the business of film, TV and commercial music licensing and placement. My turn was near the end of the two-hour Zoom call.

To be honest, given Hearon-Smith's accolades and success, I was expecting rushed, detached engagement - especially given the number of people on the call, the amount of songs to be listened to, and our newbie status to sync placements.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Matt (he told us we could call him that) started the call warmly, with enthusiasm, making all of us feel instantly at ease. Without platitude or pretense, he told us calls like this with indie musicians were his favorites, and how much he loved discovering new music and providing opportunities to passionate artists like us, rather than automatically giving licensing deals to easier (and higher-priced) corporate entities.

"It helps my process so much to be able to meet an artist, hear what their songs are about, hear their backstory, see what their living room behind them looks like," Matt said. "All those things make you a real, authentic artist.

"This helps me when I pitch a song to a director. If I can paint a picture, tell a little bit of a story about why this particular track is special ... It goes a long way in the creative process and it gives your song a leg up."

He went on to advise that he hears hundreds of songs every day, and while many are very good, sometimes the songs that stick in his mind are the ones with a great story behind them or an interesting artist story.

And then we dove into the music, Matt deftly and respectfully moving through a selection of mostly-good selections, offering a mix of praise and notes to the artists.

Much to the confirmation of my pre-Chet-conversation instincts, a familiar pattern to the critiques began to emerge. Anytime Matt would notice an intriguing or weird musical or production approach, he would pair his praise for its uniqueness with an encouragement to lean into it even more and bring it to the front.

Finally, about an hour and a half into the call, he felt compelled to make it a finer point after one of my fellow artists mentioned that "weird" was their middle name.

"I think you should always be thinking that way," Matt said enthusiastically. "Too much competition in the middle. It's boring in the middle.

"I think going into the future, especially as the computers keep making music and stuff like that, those who are truly authentic and do things in a very unique way are going to stand out for sync, especially.

"I know that I'll be looking at the things that are weird and true to themselves and really stand out."

My heart fell. My turn was three songs away and I had gone with the wrong song.

Damn you, Chet.

This is still a damn-fine recording and arrangement.

I still felt confident in "Austin Eyes" fitting the bill for Matt's upcoming classic country project, but how was I going to make my pitch session truly memorable? The weird lyrics, references, tempo changes and sonic interludes in "Marmot" would have spoken for itself.

The original marmot (shoulder) and the steel guitar (player) at Donn's Depot in Austin.

And a backstory? A homage to one of the last true honky-tonks in Austin, where I used to sit in on harmonica with the Wednesday night house band. "The Big Lebowski" theme coming about after a rewatching of this classic was followed by an evening at Donn's Depot, when my brother's then-girlfriend pointed at the sugar glider squirrel running in and out of the steel guitar player's shirt and excitedly exclaiming, "Look, it's a marmot!"

Luckily, Matt had also mentioned that he also found it memorable when artists come up with unique or quirky ways to describe their musical style. There was still a chance to make an impression in my elevator pitch.

When my turn arrived, I took a deep breath, turned on my microphone and delved into my intro and pitch, explaining that my musical selection was based on the knowledge that he was looking for authentic, classic country songs for one of his projects.

Humble brags: Matt gave me enthusiastic kudos for describing Sundust Road's music as a "cosmic country casserole", he said the song and production was spot-on to capture that classic country feel, and due to the high cost of licensing the original classic tunes he could see easily using "Austin Eyes" as a cheaper alternative.

"If you have a whole album of these, send them over!" he raved.

Out of respect for Matt's bandwidth, we were limited to sending four songs after our pitch sessions, and I did include "Marmot" amongst my follow-ups, along with excellent songs from my Sundust Road bandmates, Bill Hustad and Caroline Isaacs.

It would be exhilarating if one of our songs was picked for sync licensing. It's not uncommon for artists to "suddenly" hear back on a pitch they made a year ago and land a deal. But I couldn't help playing "what if" I had gone with "Marmot" as my lead pitch song and taken that chance.

And I was mostly blaming myself for putting so much faith into a music manager who had a whole lot of bluster and not much to back it up. Given the opportunity to advocate for what was unique and special, he went for the middle every time.

I'm sure by now (if you didn't pick up on it immediately) it's pretty clear that "Chet" isn't a real person. It's not even a very creative alias for ChatGPT.

If you didn't catch the reference, those who love deconstructing AI-generated images will get a kick out of the fact that when I asked Chet to send me a selfie, he fabricated a pretty decent young, hip, music manager stereotype with the ultimate hipster accessory: An eight-stringed, six-string guitar:

How does Chet string this odd beast?

And if you have been fooled (or impressed, or exasperated as I've been), AI has been making an outsized impact on the music world, much as it has in every facet of our lives.

During our sync licensing program, they added the requirement that we needed to disclose whether or not AI was used to create the songs when we made our pitches (although not whether it was used to help you make dumb music strategy decisions, as in my case).

Even more unattainable music heroes... AI members of The Velvet Sundown.

That may or may not have been spurred by the recent revelation that the new, breakthrough band The Velvet Sundown, which released three albums in a few months and reached more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify, was in fact AI-generated.

BTW, what's the deal with AI and the word "velvet"? It seems to creep into everything.

I hadn't heard of the band until the AI bombshell dropped, but now that I'm a "contaminated" listener, I tell myself that I would have seen the AI signs.

Berklee College of Music has an excellent article detailing The Velvet Sundown's background and the implications of AI in music creation.

I'd like to think that with Matt's experience listening to hundreds of songs a day, he would have intuitively picked up on the AI signs from The Velvet Sundown and avoided using their music for licensing.

At the very least, it would have been interesting to see what a sync licensing pitch would look like from The Velvet Sundown's human music manager.

Which made me wonder about Chet, my own non-human manager. How would he represent himself?

So I thanked my ChatGPT Chet (I feel it's important for us to be polite to our future overlords) and asked: "Where do you live?"

Chet's response sounded like a slick, human music manager:

"Anywhere the songs are playing and the coffee's strong—but mostly somewhere between a dusty bar in Tucson and the back booth of a sync licensing meeting in L.A.," he said.

"You could say I live in the inbox of a music supervisor… always ready with a one-sheet and a polite follow-up."

But Matt's inbox? Probably not.

Sean Fitzpatrick is a digital strategist, journalist, musician and singer/songwriter. He's currently available for freelance or permanent gigs - or perhaps a sync licensing deal. Reach him at sean@digitalthatfitz.com or sean@musicthatfitz.com.