Music Supervisor Eric Medina on Selecting Music For Queens and Sweet Life: Los Angeles

Since the start of the global pandemic, Black representation on television has increased significantly. Variety recently reported that 465 seasons released during the pandemic had a Black series regular, equating to 70.5% of all seasons. Zoom out, and you will see some familiar names working to ensure this positive number keeps going up.

Issa Rae is one of those people. Not only is she the co-creator, writer, and star of the HBO television series Insecure, she also owns Hoorae, a production company that promotes Black voices in the mainstream, and operates Raedio, an "audio everywhere company" offering music supervision services.

Eric Medina joined Raedio in 2021 as Sr. Director, Music Supervision and Library, and recently received a Music Supervisors Guild award nomination for his work on Sweet Life: Los Angeles. The coming-of-age reality drama follows a group of young, ambitious friends in South Los Angeles as they navigate their mid-20s. Issa Rae is the executive producer on the show. Eric, Sarah Bromberg, and Stephanie Diaz-Matos provide music supervision services (they all received the Music Supervisors Guild award nomination).

Days after receiving his nomination, Eric joined us to discuss his role sourcing music for the hit reality TV show and ABC's Queens. The latter is a scripted musical drama about four 90s hip-hop legends who reunite and attempt to recapture their former glory. Eve, Brandy, Nadine Velazquez, and Naturi Naughton make up the main cast.

Read our full interview to hear how Eric licenses hip-hop music, why he considers accurate music metadata essential, and learn about his favorite sync placement on season one of Sweet Life: Los Angeles.

To begin, can you tell us about your current role and how you became a part of the Raedio team?

Eric: I am on Queens, and I'm also on Promised Land. The Raedio team is really cool. We're really close, and we work with each other on certain projects. For instance, Promised Land is my show; I'm the music supervisor on that. It's a lot of work jumping from Promised Land to Queens to Sweet Life season two; you're thrown in many different directions every day. But all the shows I'm working on are really cool, so it's worth it.

Queens is a fun music show, so I have a lot of creative control around what licensed music goes into that. And we have another music supervisor, Stephanie Diaz-Matos; she primarily works on the original custom music created for the show.

Before coming to Raedio, I was at a company called All3Media which primarily does reality television. I was the in-house music supervisor there when we came across Sweet Life, and at that point, Raedio had their music supervisors (Sarah Bromberg and Stephanie Diaz-Matos) working on the show. So when they jumped on, I was still a music supervisor at All3Media. But we all worked together, and it was incredible. It was my first project working with Raedio, so it was really exciting. And basically, from working with them, they offered me a position. So then I transitioned over to Raedio, and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

Speaking of Sweet Life: Los Angeles, there are some incredible sync placements in that show. Is there one that you're particularly proud of?

Eric: The first song in the first episode is "Last Time That I Checc'd" by Nipsey Hussle, which sets the tone for the entire season. I remember going to the premiere, and as soon as that song came on, everyone went nuts. Seeing how everyone reacted at the Los Angeles premiere and seeing everyone respond emotionally to the song really meant a lot to me. And ultimately, at that moment, it became my favorite music spot of the season. 

That same episode ends with "Sweet Life" by Frank Ocean. Whose creative choice was that?

Eric: A lot of the creative choices were Issa's. She knew what songs she wanted in certain spots before episodes even began. And after seeing certain cuts, she would say, we need this song over here. We definitely thought about "Sweet Life" ending episode one ahead of time.

I’m sure there were also tracks that you were unable to license. What are some of the biggest roadblocks that prevent you from licensing a track?

Eric: With hip-hop specifically, there is often an issue with the writing splits. Sometimes, artists will sample older songs without getting the rights to do so, and you only find out after you go to license the track. That happened a few times with Sweet Life. 

Budgetary issues are a big thing, too. Every song will be a hit song in the beginning. Then we have to take a step back, look at our budget, and see which songs we really need. Do we really need a huge song that is only playing for 10 seconds, or can we swap that out and go with something cheaper? That’s always part of the discussion when we start finishing an episode.

But for hip-hop, it’s usually finding the rights holders, because sometimes they also don’t agree on the splits. Let’s just say there are no samples, there still might be eight writers on a song. One writer might claim 15%. But then another writer might say ‘hey, no, he doesn’t have 15%, he only has 5%.’ Then everyone starts fighting and we can’t equal 100%, so then we can’t license the track. 

How much of your time is spent negotiating music rights vs. sourcing music?

Eric: 24/7. I guess what I mean by that is that since I’m working across several shows, I might be clearing a song for preproduction in one episode, and for a different series that is airing in two weeks, I have to urgently clear a bunch of songs.

Songs I send out for clearance one day, I might have a month to get cleared, so I’m always following up. Then I’m urgently clearing other songs. So I have to sit down each morning and figure out where I’m at with each episode, see what songs are still pending, and what clearances came in overnight.

In terms of sourcing music, it can honestly be hard to find time to just sit and listen to a lot of the music people pitch to me. Before we start a show, we send a bigger brief out to many indie and major labels and start collecting music. We deliver a huge amount of music to the editors, so they can see what music they have available to them before the series even starts. 

Then, as they cut the scenes, there will be something they cut, and they’ll say, ‘hey, we just created a montage here with a lot of the footage we shot. Do you have anything in this style?’ And that’s when we’ll go back and try to find something. Every show is different, too. On some shows, the producers might not have a lot of input, and they might just say, send me the best music you can possibly send. Then others have a real hands-on approach with the music that’s selected. It always changes.

Are there different challenges to sourcing music for a show like Queens, which stars 90s hip-hop icons and requires a lot of nostalgic music, and a show like Sweet Life, which has a younger cast and is also a reality TV show?

Eric: A lot of times for older songs, and again, this is a hip-hop thing, a writer might have an AOL email address that they listed on the PRO site in 1995. That email no longer exists and the writers no longer talk to each other because it’s been over twenty years, so we can't license some of those older songs.

I guess the only issue for newer songs is getting in touch with some of the indie artists. Yes, we use some big songs in Sweet Life, but we used a lot of independent artists as well, and a lot of them aren’t even on PRO sites. They have no ASCAP, no BMI, so sometimes it’s really hard to track them down.

I remember there being a writer on one song whose percentage was .05%. At that point it’s like, dude, you shouldn’t even be a writer on that song. But if they have a percentage then you have to clear it. I remember that writer being really hard to track down.

Like you said, you don’t just use recognizable music; you also license a lot of background instrumentals to drive the mood and keep the vibes in check. Can you explain how you go about breaking down the budget so that you can license all the tracks you need for a project?

Eric: There are different approaches depending on the show. Many times we will have a composer, and that will be a separate budget from the licensed music. Say the composer is really good at hip-hop; we then know that if we can’t afford a certain song it’s not the end of the world because we have a kickass composer who can come in and compose something similar. Not a sound-alike, but something that drives the same energy and mood. Projects like that are very cool because we know that if a license slips through the cracks, or we can’t afford it, then we have a really good composer who can create something special. 

But overall, what typically happens is that we get a script and before they even start shooting there may be songs scripted in that the writer or producer will want in that episode. I’m just gonna give some ballpark numbers. Say we have a budget of $100K and there are two scripted songs in there. We know that before they even start shooting that we want to get quotes out to see how much it’ll cost. Worst case scenario is that they have a song in there that we can’t clear. Then we have to go back to the producer and say that song is scripted but we can’t use it.

Say we can clear those two songs for $60K. That leaves us with $40K. So as we reach the editing stage after the episode shoots, we talk with our editors and producers and let them know that the songs they wanted will cost $60K and we only have $40K to play with. If they have a huge request, I’m not going to say no. I’ll say yes, we can put it in, but just letting you know, this will put us over budget. But a lot of times we have many stages and weeks to narrow down the budget, so we can look at an episode with eight huge songs and then, after the fact, sit back and say we don’t need that song here; here are some alternative ideas for those scenes. 

Raedio has a library of one-stop music, but other services like Songtradr also offer easy-to-license music. How often do you license music from these services and what benefits do they offer you?

Eric: The benefit of libraries is that I never have to worry about splits issues or what the fees are gonna be because it’s always the same. The rights holders’ information is there. Usually, they have the lyrics up. They have clean versions, WAVs, MP3s – everything you need is there. So a lot of times, I don’t even have to reach out to a rep. I can just search for background music, narrow it down, download it, give it to the editors, and they have what they need. I don’t have to take that second step of reaching out to everyone and saying, ‘hey, are these tracks cleared?’ because I already know. 

One-stops or really affordable indie labels is where we go to collect a lot of music before the season starts. We give things to our editors, and we say this is the expensive stuff for the big moments, however, feel free to use as many of these tunes as possible for background moments. Not library background, but for 15-second transitions or something playing in a car where we don’t really want to highlight a big song, but we still want something cool playing there. Then, every once in a while, we'll get hit with a really cool gem that will work as a replacement to a huge commercial song. 

The thing with Queens is that we only wanted to use recognizable songs. So if you look at Tunefind, there is a small selection of indie songs, but those songs would be playing in the background in a restaurant.

There are a couple of songs in Queens that came from Songtradr. Can you talk about those?

Eric: There are two. One is called “Lonely Weather” by Lo Lytes, and we used the instrumental to play in a bar. For that scene, we specifically didn’t want bar piano or rock. We wanted something more upscale because it was supposed to be a speak-easy. I actually knew that artist from my time at Songtradr. Honestly, there were many times when I was working at Songtradr where I was like, I wish I could find a spot for this song. So I still remember a lot of songs on the platform from when I was there. Sometimes when I’m in a last-minute crunch and need a song, my brain will remember all these songs from Songtradr.

And I remember the song “Break Free” by Fabrikate. I think we were replacing a Doja Cat song. The music was playing so lightly in the background that we didn’t need a commercial song there. But, we needed something fun and cool, and I remember that episode being way over budget, so we had to go in and take out some of the big songs.  

This brings us to metadata. How important is music metadata in your line of work?

Eric: It’s one of the most important things. Quite a few companies who are either one-stop or have certain rights will have ‘artist name,’ ‘title,’ ‘album,’ ‘year,’ and then in the comments field not only do they have a contact, but they have the splits of the writers, publishers, and master recording owners, and that’s one of the most helpful things ever.

Sometimes we will get something from a company that says one-stop and we’ll go to license it and they’ll say, ‘hey, sorry it’s not one-stop, we only have 100% of the publishing and 50% of the master.’ You expect it to be very fast and easy and sometimes it’s not because there’s missing information. So when it’s all included in the metadata, it makes our work a lot easier. 

Also, when episodes finish, we have to submit stuff for cue sheets. So either way, we need the writer and publisher information. If it’s not there, we will have to come back and ask for that information, which adds another step. But if it’s already in the metadata, we don’t have to worry about it. 

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