Nominees revealed for both ‘Music Supervisor of the Year’ and ‘Independent Sync of the Year’

The Association of Independent Music (AIM) has announced the nominee shortlists for the AIM Sync Awards, celebrating the ever-increasing use of independent music in the sync and brands landscape.

Returning for the second time, the awards form part of AIM’s global sync licencing conference and marketplace, AIM Sync. They follow a year in which sync revenues came to the fore as one of the ongoing revenue streams for rightsholders at a time when many other income streams have suffered or been cut off completely due to Covid-19.

The awards feature two categories focussing on the best independent sync placement of the year and the best music supervisor as voted for by music supervision experts and independent rightsholder businesses. ‘Independent Sync of the Year’ will be awarded to an independent label or self-releasing artist who has an interesting sync story to tell, and is judged by top music supervisors from The Guild of Music Supervisors, while ‘Music Supervisor of the Year’, is judged by a panel of experts from the AIM membership. Both awards recognise excellence in independent music and its use in syncs. The full list of nominees is as follows:

Independent Sync of the Year
·         BBC Earth - ‘Shape Shifters (Original)’ by Batch Gueye [Self released]
·         IKEA ‘The Hare’ - ‘Witness (1 Hope)’ by Roots Manuva [Ninja Tune]
·         ‘Our Stories’ - ‘Chrome Country’ by Oneohtrix Point Never [Warp Records]
·         TK Maxx ‘Lil Goat’ Christmas advert - ‘The Game (Remix)’ by Gabriel Garzón-Montano ft    
           Junglepussy [Stones Throw Records]
·         Wagamama - ‘Yo Mae Leh’ by Invisible Minds [Moshi Moshi Records]

Music Supervisor of the Year
·         Carbon Logic (Peter Saville & Zoë Ellen Bryant)
·         Ciara Elwis (Air-Edel)
·         James Marshall (Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe)
·         Ollie White (Theodore Music)
·         Pete Kelly (BT Sport)


In the awards’ inaugural year, Music Supervisor of the Year was won by Emma Middleton (Rubato Music), and Independent Sync of the Year 2020 was won by dance label group Enhanced Music for their placement of ‘I Feel the Love’ by Tritonal, Ross Lynch & R5 in Love Island Australia.

Sync is an area of the music industry that has come under criticism for a lack of diversity. AIM would like to see significant improvement in this area and is actively working to improve gender representation, ethnic diversity and to combat socio-economic barriers to entry in the sync landscape via messaging, speaker line-ups and by providing many free tickets to members of a range of organisations and grassroots charities who work to promote diversity.

This year’s winners will be announced at the end of AIM Sync 2021, held virtually on 11 February. Tickets for the event are free for full AIM Members (Rightsholders and Distributors) as well as Friends of AIM. Non-members can purchase tickets for £50. All tickets can be purchased here: bit.ly/aimsync2021

AIM thanks its Annual Platinum Partners - Facebook, Merlin and PPL - whose ongoing support makes AIM’s headline events possible. AIM Sync 2021 once again joins forces with The Guild of Music Supervisors, helping to expand the conference’s network of expert speakers and placing it at the heart of the music supervision world.