{"id":806462,"date":"2020-04-16T15:02:11","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T21:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=984861"},"modified":"2020-04-16T15:02:11","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T21:02:11","slug":"how-chvrches-scored-the-netflix-deal-of-the-music-industrys-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/how-chvrches-scored-the-netflix-deal-of-the-music-industrys-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"How Chvrches Scored the Netflix Deal of the Music Industry\u2019s Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The third season of Netflix<\/a>\u2019s Elite,<\/em> a Spanish-language drama centered around the secret machinations of teens at a private high school, kicks off with a scene overlaid by Chvrches<\/a>\u2019 synth-pop song \u201cForever.\u201d As plot lines unfurl across eight episodes, the song rears its head again, and again \u2014 and again, marking a near-takeover of the TV series.<\/p>\n

While neither the band nor the song are ever mentioned by the show\u2019s characters, \u201cForever\u201d serves as a sonic motif for the entire season, thanks to its repeated appearance in flashbacks and moments of suspense. \u201cWe wanted to create an atmosphere with music that symbolized what the characters were doing,\u201d Lynn Fainchtein, the music supervisor for the show \u2014 and the supervisor of a litany of other film and television projects including Roma, The Revenant, Birdman<\/em> \u2014 tells Rolling Stone<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Fainchtein was asked by the show\u2019s directors to specifically find a song that could carry the season-long plot. \u201cIt was very competitive initially; I send around 30 songs per episode to the producers and directors,\u201d she says. \u201cI get music from tons of labels and publishers. \u2018Forever\u2019 is a song that worked well because it helped to tell the story of certain characters without being obvious.\u201d (Spoiler alert: The song was chosen in part because its lyrics \u201cI always regret the night \/ I told you I would hate you \u2019til forever\u201d mirror the interpersonal turmoil of the characters as they grapple with the fallout of a murder that takes place at a dance club.)<\/p>\n

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What serves Elite<\/em> well from an aesthetic perspective also translates to a major win for Chvrches \u2014 which gets to share in the show\u2019s multinational revenue streams alongside its label and publisher, and has also seen enormous boosts on digital platforms like Shazam and Spotify. A band of Chvches\u2019 size could easily command a five-figure deal with a distributor like Netflix, industry insiders say.<\/p>\n

Sync licensing, as the realm of film\/video deals for music<\/a> is called, has proven an increasingly lucrative field for artists whether they\u2019re newly rising and established for decades. Per recorded-music revenue figures<\/a> from the Recording Industry Association of America, sync licensing has grown from $200 million in 2009 to $276 million in 2019. And that pool of money becomes especially significant in times of crisis<\/a> when all other revenue streams dwindle.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is competition for all film and TV syncs at this point,\u201d says Kristen Bushnell Perez, head of film and TV at Glassnote Records, Chvrches\u2019 publisher, which received part of the fee from the multi-episode deal. \u201cI\u2019m always pitching the newest releases \u2014 but it\u2019s always fun for us to see a song like this, which is from 2018 off a previous album, get a new life.\u201d<\/p>\n