The perfect music sync can augment a project in myriad ways , but it doesn’t necessarily always have to break the bank.

Case in point: the series premiere of North of North (pictured), a groundbreaking comedy set in Iqaluit, Nunavut, which premiered on APTN and CBC in January and globally on Netflix in April. While it included the original Britney Spears mega-hit “…Baby One More Time”, it also featured Inuk singer Riit’s Inuktitut-language cover of Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” (“Ikiaqqik”). The choices made for the Northwood Entertainment and Red Marrow Media production ultimately combined pop- music familiarity with cultural resonance.

“For the showrunners, it was important [for the music] to set the tone for the show,” actor Anna Lambe, who plays lead character Siaja, tells Playback. “We’re trying to redefine and recontextualize what people think of the Arctic because people often think we’re quite disconnected, remote and isolated. But through the use of pop music, and, even more, pop music that’s covered in Inuktitut, we show that we’re very current and connected to the rest of the world, and we always have been.”

Other songs in the eight-episode series include Alanis Morissette’s “You Learn;” Doja Cat’s “Vegas;” Inuk singer Josh Q’s cover of Megadeth’s “Peace Sells;” Inuktitut covers of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” (“Taimangalimaaq”) and Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” (“Sinnatuumait”) by Juno Award-winning Elisapie; and Angela Amarualik’s Inuk cover of Kelis’ “Milkshake,” recorded specifically for the show.

“It’s a nice blend of our community and our language, but also our love for everything pop culture,” says Lambe. “Every time I watched an episode and heard the soundtrack, my mind was like, ‘How did we get this?'”

How, indeed. Music is typically not one of the top line items in the production budget. With Canadian programming typically working with significantly less spend than U.S. productions have for music, and production budgets generally trending downwards, how do music supervisors fulfil the often ambitious wish-lists of producers and showrunners?

For Instinct Entertainment’s Michael Perlmutter (pictured left), a Toronto-based music supervisor who has worked across such series as Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and North of North among others, the key question is how important music is to a particular project, with budgets – and the challenges therein – a close second.

Perlmutter, the co-founder and former president of The Guild of Music Supervisors, Canada, can’t disclose the music costs for North of North but he says the music budget for a Canadian TV show can be as low as $5,000 and as high as $50,000 per episode.

“One of the challenges is that sometimes a line producer or someone creating a budget might take a budget from a previous show,” he says. “However, maybe that project didn’t have a lot of music, so it’s quite low, and we [then] have the conversation to get it across the line to get it made. They can re-jig the budget once it’s greenlit.

“Just like fees for songs are negotiable, so are internal discussions about a music budget,” he adds.

Manny Danelon, a line producer and president, film and television services for De La Garza Productions Canada, says challenging budgets are par for the course for Canadian music supervisors, citing a range of between $10,000 to $20,000 per episode.

“What I’m always challenged with is the appetite of the creative team to request more than we have in the budget,” he says, “but there’s always a way to find a compromise.”

For the CBC and CW crime drama Wild Cards (Blink49 Studios, Front Street Pictures, Piller/Segan), Danelon says the less expensive workaround was having Perlmutter license the sync rights for Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine,” but paying the Calgary-based duo Nice Horse to re-record it. He did the same for Hall & Oates’ “Private Eyes,” hiring Vancouver band Dear Rouge to cut a version to use as the theme song for the Piller/Segan-produced TV comedy-drama of the same name, which aired on Global.

“So, we can say to Michael, ‘I would like to have [Led Zeppelin’s] ‘Stairway to Heaven,'” explains Danelon. “He says, ‘Well, you can’t afford it, but there’s this great Canadian indie band, take a listen.’ And you pay a fraction of the cost.’

“That’s why music supervisors are there to say, ‘I understand you’ve used a temp track in your rough cut and it’s a very iconic song to set the tone and the mood, [so] let me see what I can do to give you that tone and mood within the budget,'” he adds.

Conversations between prodcos and music supes continue all the way through production, but the key moment is the spotting session, in which the creative teams, from directors to composers to post, discuss the score and the songs.

“If there’s four songs in the episode, we know where the score is going to go under certain scenes. So, we talk about those four songs,” says Perlmutter. “Let’s say that we sent three of those songs to the editor, we know we can afford them and we’re good with them. [But] there’s that one other [pricier] song; we have to go replace it.”

“We can also go to the rights holders early on, if we know we want a song, to see if we can afford it,” Perlmutter says.

Those rights holders could be sync departments at record labels or publishing companies, indie and major; sync agents who represent artists and catalogs; artist managers; and an increasingly favoured option among budget-conscious producers and platforms – independent artists that are “one-stop,” owning both their publishing and their masters.

Cheryl Link (pictured right), general manager of global publishing company peermusic Canada, says there are various factors at play on their end, as rights holders, in determining sync costs.

“The way you work out a quote is usually based on production budget, music budget and then what the project’s about: term, media, usage,” says Link. “End credits and opening credits are more; themes are more. It comes down to relationships, as well. Sometimes, you can work out a favour with somebody like Michael.”

Peermusic has had two songs placed in North of North so far. The character Ting whistles about 10 seconds of Cher’s “Believe,” co-written by Paul Barry and Brian Higgins, who are represented via an international sub- publishing deal by Recognition Music (formerly known as Hipgnosis). They also placed “Angajusakuluk” by legendary Igloolik-based band Northern Haze through their publishing partnership with Aakuluk Music in Nunavut.

“For us, at peermusic, we look at the history and the calibre of the song,” says Link. “Is it a recognizable one, and is it recognizable on a global stage or more of a domestic stage? And then you can price it up from there.”

Having been in the business for 25 years, Perlmutter says there are a few new wrinkles in the process. Significantly, turnaround time is now shorter as the gap between production to post to air is quicker than ever.

But while artists – both established and indie – are benefitting from the increase in licensing opportunities provided by the streaming era, producers still need to face the music when their “eyes are bigger than their stomachs” – or their ears are bigger than their wallets. A well-connected music supervisor can serve as the meeting point between production companies and music rights holders – both of whom want to get maximum bang for their buck when it comes to licensing a song.

“One of our jobs is to manage the expectations when we have these conversations about the types of songs and the artists that they want to use,” he offers. “It’s the understanding that songs have value and the publishers or record labels are there to protect and ensure that the correct value is given to them.”

Top image courtesy of CBC; bottom right photo of Cheryl Link is by Jenna Muirhead

This story originally appeared in Playback‘s Spring 2025 issue