If you watch ad-supported streaming or TV, you’ve heard Mike’s work. From the Super Bowl to multi-year global campaigns, he’s the guy behind the musical storytelling for the world’s best brands.
Find out what actually makes a top music supervisor tick. How he discovers. What he loves. And also learn what goes into this wild job!
Mike’s one of the best (and kindest) in the business. Sync is how musicians make a lot of their money now, but it’s often a black box. There’s no one that shares wisdom so freely as Mike — a great guy who truly loves music!
Since joining Droga5 in 2016, Mike Ladman founded and developed the Music Department managing music and audio capabilities across the agency and client roster. During this time, Mike has helped lead the agency to win over 90 music and advertising industry awards, notably 1 sports Emmy, five Cannes Lions, two D&AD Pencils, four Clios including the Grand Music Clio, eight AMP awards, 2 Guild Of Music Supervisor Awards, a Ciclope award among others, across Droga5 clients such as Google, The New York Times, Facebook, Hennessy, Levi’s and others. He has created and supervised music across global campaigns including work for the Super Bowl, Olympics, Grammy’s Oscar’s, Emmy’s, and Presidential Elections. In 2018, Mike was named one of Billboard's Top Branding Power Players. He has been an international music delegate around the world at music festivals and conferences in Denmark, Amsterdam, Israel, Brazil, Mallorca and more. Prior to joining Droga5, he was a Music Producer at McCann for nearly seven years, where he provided music for clients, such as Microsoft, the United States Army, Verizon, MasterCard and more, across the agency’s roster. Mike received his first film credit managing the music supervision for an indie film, Tracktown, which premiered at the LA Film Festival in 2016. In his free time he DJ's under the alias DJ PuppyHiccups and produces music under many aliases with lots of collaborators.
Connect with Mike on his:
✏️ IG
And listen to his eclectic Spotify Playlist at:
✏️ LadmanMusicDiscovery
For 30% off your first year of DistroKid to share your music with the world click DistroKid.com/vip/lovemusicmore
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Tune into my music and surf the different-yet-connected platforms at ScoobertDoobert.pizza 🍕
Pick up my new LP "I" on vinyl in its full spinning colorfulness while they last 🎨
Double tap and dive a little bit deeper. Have the momentum. Awesome and weird and wonderful. And the consistency. In the zone. To figure out a thing. That’s the magic. Contributing to that joy. Sprinkle on something. It’s like, relax. If all we have is time. It was everything. It was wild. Find that new shirt. Kick off this whole cycle of feeling good. Wanna do cool stuff. Figure out what’s the best approach. Kinda rinse and repeat. The structure and the changes within a song. Chasing the dragon. Ideate. Transference. Aware. All of that. Chasing that thing. Keeps that carrot. A song can unlock that. The creative vibe. Can do this. Listen to everything. The consistency thing. That can endure. A great song plus time. Some cooler direction or genre. Coalesced into this moment. Being in the record store. It sounds strange now. Back into the show. Is when it’s really music is telling the story, A bunch of things in play. Cool crate digger. Recontextualized and repurposed and reimagined and brought to life. Hit the airwaves. Boom. A high-wire act. 🌉
Edited by Rebecca Sansom
Set Design by Max Horwich
Podcast Produced by Beformer
