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Amy Stroup in her Nashville writing studio

If the upcoming television season is anything like the last few, hardly a night will go by without the music of an independent artist from Nashville appearing in the background of dramas like ‘Private Practice’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’

Hollywood has created a budding scene of Nashville artists who are building their careers around primetime placements, whether they like it or not.

“I’ve had a friend say, ‘you don’t even tell me when your songs are on TV anymore.’ And I say, ‘because you all don’t care anymore. For you all it’s becoming old news,’” says Amy Stroup, an artist who has had songs on all the biggies.

One of her first placements – known as “syncs” in the business – was on ‘Brothers & Sisters.’

“They had this rooftop scene where Kitty, one of the characters who had cancer, was going to eat with her husband, and there’s fireworks. So the first placement was awesome,” Stroup says.

The song is called “Hold on to Hope, Love.” It’s the kind of tune that is all wrong for radio, Stroup says. It’s too long and too slow.

“But I know that six million people watched it or heard it on the night of Brothers & Sisters,” she says.

Exposure and a Paycheck

It’s unbelievable exposure for artists who measure album sales in the thousands. Not to mention, they’re getting paid by the TV studios, several thousand dollars per placement. And yet Hollywood sees a bargain compared to licensing a hit song, which could reach into the hundreds of thousands.

The TV studios also appreciate having less red tape and fewer lawyers.

“Companies like ours that represent artists that are independent can be a little more flexible,” says Daniel Higbee, who works for a company called Secret Road based in Los Angeles.

Higbee handles licensing for independent artists, who often own their music. Someone like Amy Stroup can get a call, sign a few papers, and a show has rights to her song.

Higbee says independent artists have been showing up on TV with increasing regularity since shows like ‘The OC’ made it trendy to use undiscovered music. But not just any style works. Higbee says a song needs plenty of musical interludes, sort of spare arrangements.

“Nothing too specific lyrically,” he says. “A lot of the stuff that’s used is broad. You don’t want to fight with the dialogue of a scene.”

More and more, Higbee works with artists who have almost developed dual career tracks

Two Artists in One

“They realize they’ve got to be two different artists in a way,” he says. “Kind of create music that would be more viable for TV placements and more cinematic, and then it helps them get in the studio and create an album for them to go on tour with.”

Whether he likes it or not, Matthew Perryman Jones fits the description.

“There’s a part of me probably 10 years ago I would have spit on myself had I thought you’re going to write a song for a television show,” Jones says. “Like, ‘you sell out.’”

For Jones, albums have become a gamble, and tours usually loose money. He now makes most of his money through television.

“Some people will make the point, if you want to get a song on TV, just write a generic sort of song that says nothing,” he says. “And I will argue that.”

Jones says he now sees the challenge of the small screen. While the song can’t be filled with vivid imagery, it still has to connect, even if just through a feel.

Last season, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ picked up a song titled “Until the Last Falling Star” that Jones wrote. The song did not, however, show up on a Matthew Perryman Jones album. He may have come to appreciate the art of writing for TV, but it’s still not exactly his art.

“It’s kind of like, that’s a good song…It isn’t like what I would want to say to the world,” he says.

But right now, Jones says, it’s those songs that allow him to make a living playing music.