Music supervisors on DISCO: your quick start guide

A practical overview for music supervisors and their teams. It covers bringing your collection into DISCO, setting up Inboxes and Briefs, processing new music, searching your own library and other DISCO catalogs, building and sharing client lists, organizing projects, and dividing the work across a team.

CONTENTS

Bring your collection in

DISCO started as a tool built by and for music supervisors, and it works best when your whole collection is in it, not just this week’s submissions. Start with what you already have on hard drives, in Box or Dropbox, and in old download folders.

Bulk Uploader - for hard drives and large archives, use the Bulk Uploader. Each lowest-level folder of files becomes a Playlist, and it runs in the background.
Box and Dropbox - import folders directly in the Playlist Creator.
Save to DISCO - when someone shares a Playlist or Catalog with you, save the tracks straight into your account instead of downloading them.

Music Supervisor plans include auto-tagging, so imported tracks get searchable genre, mood, tempo and instrumentation tags without you tagging them by hand.

Set up Inboxes and Briefs first

Most of your music will arrive from labels, publishers, sync agents and composers. Get Inboxes working on day one, so it lands in DISCO instead of your email.

Your Inbox link - every Inbox has an upload URL. Add it to your email signature and your brief template, so anyone sending music knows where it goes. Senders don’t need a DISCO account.
Team Inbox - for most teams, one Team Inbox is enough.
Custom Inboxes - if you’re busy, add a custom Inbox for a long-running job, such as a TV series or a film, so its music arrives already sorted. You can add instructions, such as the file format or stems you need, which senders see when they upload. Keep them few: an Inbox for every ad brief soon gets messy.
Briefs - send a Brief to contacts or a Mailing List with the usage, media, term, mood, references and deadline. Submissions arrive as Playlists inside the Brief, each sender gets an emailed receipt, and the Brief closes on its deadline. Group related Briefs, such as several episodes of one show, into a Project. For job-by-job requests, Briefs and Projects do what a custom Inbox per brief used to do. You can also share a Brief by assigning a URL and sending it any way you like.

Write each brief tightly, with mood, era, instrumentation and references, so you get fewer submissions that miss. Move your picks into a selects Playlist as you listen, and that becomes your reference list for the job.

Process new music as it arrives

New music only helps you if you can find it again. A simple routine:

listen through your Inbox regularly and file what you keep into a New Music Channel, with Folders by month, genre or source
build your own Playlists of favorite tracks from new releases, so your best finds are one click away when a brief lands
add contact details to the Comments field when a track arrives without them, so you know who to call when you want to clear it

Search

DISCO gives you several ways into your library, and most searches combine more than one.

Keywords - search covers every metadata field, including tags, notes and transcribed lyrics. Keywords combine with AND, and a minus sign excludes a term, for example driving -vocal.
Filters - narrow by BPM, year, genre or any other field. Search doesn’t include your Inboxes by default, so add them in the filters to search submissions you haven’t filed yet.
Similarity Search - find the closest-sounding tracks from a reference track, a YouTube link or one moment in a track. It’s included on Music Supervisor plans and works on auto-tagged tracks.
The waveform - shows each track’s shape, such as the build, the drop and the bridge, so you can skip straight to the part that matters.
Your past work - the tracks you shortlist are saved in Playlists named by job or production. Search for those Playlists to pick up where you left off, and open any track to see every other Playlist it’s been in.

Find music in other DISCO catalogs

Many labels, publishers, sync agencies and production libraries run DISCO Catalogs. You can dig through them yourself, at any hour and within a brief’s budget, without waiting for a licensor to send a list.

Turn on the Source filter on the Search page to include tracks from Catalogs that have opted into Easy Access. A Source column shows where each track comes from, and Similarity Search and filters work across them.
Discover Music lets you browse Catalogs as a whole, favorite the ones you use, and request access to Catalogs that need approval.
Each result shows the track’s metadata and licensing contact, with a link back to its Catalog, so you can go straight to the rights holder.
If the original recording is out of reach, search for other recordings of the same song. A different version can be easier to clear.
Save single tracks or whole Playlists from a Catalog into your DISCO, then work with them like your own music.

For the details, see Discover DISCO Catalogs and Navigating DISCO Catalogs: search tips for music supervisors.

Build client lists

On a team, each person searches and builds their own shortlist Playlists for the brief. One person then goes through them and builds the final list for the client.

Name the final Playlist by client and project, and turn on Client Version when you save it, so lists that went to a client stay separate from internal shortlists.
Add Playlist tags for the bigger picture: the network or studio, such as Netflix, to see everything you’ve done for them across productions, and the production itself, such as the film or series title, to pull every list from one job together.
In commercial work you may need to hide what’s on the list. Alias Metadata changes the track and artist names the client sees without touching your real metadata.
Use Sections to group options, for example by scene or by budget.

Share with clients

How you share decides what you know afterward and how protected the music is.

Copy link - fastest, with no record of who listened.
Email from DISCO or Assign a URL - shows which tracks each person streamed and downloaded. Watching which tracks the client keeps replaying tells you where the creative direction is heading.
Link expiry and passwords - limit how long a list is available and who can open it.
Stream-only - switch it on in Content Settings when you don’t want files downloaded.

For every option, see Security features for sharing.

Organize projects

A Channel structure that works for most supervisors:

an Active Projects Channel with a Folder per project, and Subfolders for Briefs, submissions, shortlists and client lists
a New Music Channel for incoming music you want to keep
an Archive Channel, where each project’s Folder moves when the job wraps

Because everything for a project lives in one Folder, archiving it is one move, and the work stays searchable for the next brief. For more layouts, see Channel organization examples and tips.

Working as a team

On a team, split the work so the music supervisor’s time goes on listening and decisions:

Coordinators ingest new music, check metadata, tag and file it, send out Briefs and run the first searches on a new brief.
Music supervisors review shortlists, build the final client list and send it.
Everyone works from the same Channels and Inboxes, so nobody needs to forward files, and you can see shortlists build as teammates add to them.
In the DISCO app, you can find and play a track during a call with a director or client.

Music Supervisor plans start with one user seat, and you can add seats for each team member.

Resources

How other music supervisors use DISCO

Wrap up

Get your collection in, put your Inbox link everywhere music might come from, and file new music as it arrives. When your past shortlists, Briefs and client lists all live in DISCO, every new brief starts from everything you’ve already found.

Questions answered

How do music supervisors use DISCO?
How do I import my music collection from hard drives, Box or Dropbox?
Where should people send music to me?
How do I send a Brief and receive submissions?
How do I organize new music as it comes in?
How do I search submissions still in my Inbox?
How do I find a track that sounds like a reference?
Can I search music in other DISCO catalogs?
How do I see every list I’ve sent to one network or production?
How do I hide track and artist names from a client?
How do I see whether a client listened to my list?
How should I organize active and finished projects?
How do I split the work across a music supervision team?