Unless you are specifically asked for an edited version of a song or its instrumental, you should send the best, fully-produced and mastered version of your song to a music supervisor and just that version. And if the only version of the song is an instrumental, then of course you send the best version of it.
That said, projects and music supervisors will often need different versions or elements of a song.
This includes:
1. Instrumentals. fully-mastered and produced versions without vocals.
2. Stems: Songs broken down into major individual elements (e.g., vocals, drums, bass, piano, etc.)
3. TV Edits: Versions of songs edited to include minimal vocals or background vocals.
4. Trailerized Versions. These are re-mixed and often re-done and re-mastered versions to follow the format of trailer music.
5. 15/30/60 Second Versions: This is more for Ads and promos. These should be re-edited versions of songs that build to a crescendo, emphasise the main elements of the song (the hooks, chorus).
Whether or not you choose to create all these types of versions of all of your songs it up to you of course, but when it comes to metadata, you need to make sure that you notate in your metadata what versions you have available.
Here’s the way I do it.
1. I put it at the end of my comments, after the descriptive tags, master ownership and contact info.
2. I say “instrumental, stems, Trailer (and whatever other versions you may have) upon request.”
State only the versions you have on hand. If you only have the one version of your song, then say nothing in this regard.
Doing this streamlines the process for music supervisors and increases your song’s sync potential.
