PANEL: The State of Sync
Featured Speakers:
Mike Boris - Owner and Creative Director, Jaded Melody | Mike Boris Music
Mike Boris is an award-winning Music Producer, Music Supervisor, and Sonic Strategist. He currently leads Jaded Melody, a thriving music consultancy specializing in Branded Content, Film, and New Media.
With decades of experience, Mike has mastered the art of producing, curating, and sourcing music for some of the world’s most recognized brands. A problem solver, expert negotiator, and storyteller through sound, he blends creative vision with strategic expertise, ensuring that music connects deeply with audiences.
His journey began as a drummer and recording engineer before transitioning into the world of marketing and advertising. Throughout his career, he has held key industry roles, including Music Producer at Ogilvy, Head of Music at Bates, and SVP, Head of Music at McCann, where he built a vast and respected network within the music and advertising industries.
Over the years, Mike has collaborated with legendary artists and produced iconic sonic branding for countless brands, including Mastercard, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Intel, Wendy’s, Estée Lauder, L’Oréal, Nikon, Verizon, TUMI, Men’s Wearhouse, AT&T, P&G, J&J, Pfizer, Google, Unilever, Miller Beer, Weight Watchers, Hershey’s, Capital One, Burger King, Walmart, Ford, Chevy, AMEX, TikTok, Amazon, Nike, and many more—including some of the biggest names in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.
Whether crafting memorable brand anthems, licensing timeless hits, or shaping new sonic identities, Mike Boris continues to define what great music sounds like in the world of advertising and beyond.
Josh Rabinowitz - Music Consultant and Professor, Brooklyn Music Experience
Josh Rabinowitz has had his hands—his ears, his instincts, his obsessions—all over more than 10,000 tracks, each one sneaking its way into the collective unconscious via brands, TV, film, and major labels. At Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, he was the first-ever Music Jury President. His 14-year stretch as Grey’s Music Head, preceded by 7.5 years at Y&R, played out like a long, strange trip through the intersection of music and commerce, where art and advertising slow-danced, bickered, and occasionally made something sublime.
As a professor at Berklee, The New School, and Brooklyn College, Rabinowitz has mentored, provoked, and occasionally bewildered over 2,000 students, pushing them to grapple with the way music infiltrates and shapes our culture. His consultancy, Brooklyn Music Experience, is part think tank, part crystal ball, helping artists and brands navigate an industry that reinvents itself every five minutes.
He remains obsessed with the messy, magical ways music collides with everyday life—the way a single chord change can rewire a memory, or the way a song buried in an ad can suddenly mean everything. His work lives in the background and foreground, in that strange space where sound becomes feeling.
Amy Crawford works at the intersection of music, brands & innovation as VP, Creative Development (Americas) at MassiveMusic/Songtradr. It’s highly likely that you interact with award-winning music and sound that she created as you go about your day, having led sonic branding & design efforts for global brands, entertainment and media having led sonic branding efforts for global brand and entertainment clients including Disney, HBO, ESPN, PepsiCo and beyond. Her thoughts on sonic branding and the future of music in media have been published by The New York Times, AdAge, AdWeek, Muse by Clio, Hypebot and more. She has been invited to lead workshops and/or speak alongside Muppet friends from the Jim Henson Company, at SXSW, at Advertising Week, the AICP and at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She is a member of The Recording Academy and President of the East Chapter Board of the Association of Music Producers.
Amy Crawford - VP, Creative Development (Americas), MassiveMusic/Songtradr
Taylor Ashcraft - Vice President, Commercial Synch Licensing, Columbia Records (Sony Music)
Taylor Ashcraft is a native Texan turned New Yorker that grew up playing instruments and attending every concert possible. Taylor studied at Baylor University where she majored in Music & Entertainment Marketing and minored in fashion. After a stint abroad in London and an internship at Columbia Records, she moved to NYC to pursue a career in music licensing. She worked freelance in fashion PR before accepting a full-time gig at Audio Network, a music publisher and library based in London. She built her career at Audio Network for 7 years before making the move to Columbia Records. The last six years Taylor has spent at Columbia Records creatively pitching and clearing music for their roster of artists including Beyonce, Pharrell, Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, Tyler, The Creator, Hozier, Vampire Weekend, Lil Nas X, Leon Bridges, Rosalía and many more.
Moderated by: Mark Frieser - CEO, Sync Summit, Disconic, Partner Metavate.ai
Mark is an executive and entrepreneur who’s the founder of three companies in the music and tech spaces. The First, Sync Summit (https://syncsummit.com), founded in 2013, is an educational company that through its events, educational courses, listening sessions and thriving online community helps people creating and licensing music for media to connect, create, collaborate, learn and network with and from leading executives and thought leaders in television, advertising, brands, games, film and interactive media. His second company, Disconic (https://disconic.com) is a sync agency that represents music from major labels and individual artists from across the world, including over 509% of the Japanese market and significant clients in Korea, Latin America, Europe and North America. His new company, Metavate.ai is developing a new solution to ensure better accuracy and updating of metadata across digital media.