Thinking in Sound: Endless Music Discovery with Molly Salas

Molly Salas is a music supervisor based in Brooklyn, NY. She is dedicated to lifting up voices of those not traditionally represented in sync & aligning her work with causes she believes in. With a decade of experience in the entertainment industry, and a lifelong love of music, she works tirelessly to find the perfect soundtrack to projects across disciplines.

Currently, Molly is a music supervisor at Halo Music and Sound, an NYC-based music company, where she is known for crate digging to find the perfect track for projects, music licensing, and sending pictures of her cat.

LBB> When you’re working on a new brief or project, what’s your typical starting point? How do you break it down and how do you like to generate your ideas or response?

Molly> From creative calls or receiving a brief, I start to hear ideas that jump out already. Then I quickly get on a kick off chat with Peter (Halo founder and my only co-worker) to workshop out our ideas. The sounds, artists, or inspiration flow from there and the conversation always tends to spark more ideas; one of us will suggest something which reminds the other of an EP from such-and-so, and from there we have a gameplan. Enter DISCO, iTunes, Spotify, my email inbox, and the deep recesses of my memory.

LBB> Music and sound are in some ways the most collaborative and interactive forms of creativity - what are your thoughts on this? Do you prefer to work solo or with a gang - and what are some of your most memorable professional collaborations?

Molly> Once the kick off chat happens, I like to work solo. I jump around way too much for anybody else to follow my train of thought. The finished product is such a collective effort that it’s nice for my creative corner of it to be at my own pace and process. Like a collaborative gestalt, but I like to incubate my part on my own.

Of course, so much collaboration happens with our sync partners on the label and publisher side. I love figuring out how their creative process worked to pitch songs our way for the brief. But even those suggestions remind me of other songs or other ideas, it’s great how our creative processes can inform one another. 

LBB> What’s the most satisfying part of your job and why?

Molly> Getting artists paid! Streaming and touring don’t pay like they used to and using our platform to pitch up-and-coming artists and allow them to make a living off of creating art is a very special part of the job. Also, endless music discovery being part of the day routinely is amazing.

LBB> As the advertising industry changes, how do you think the role of music and sound is changing with it?

Molly> Attention spans are changing, and using audio to capture that attention is important. Anything we can do to get someone to look up from their phone, or if you’re engaging on your phone, to turn the sound on, means we have a finite amount of time to engage. Another thing I’ve noticed is a desire to replicate meme-y, buzzy TikTok tracks in advertising. I was already chronically online but now it helps me at work.

LBB> When you’re working on something that isn’t directly sound design or music (lets say going through client briefs or answering emails) - are you the sort of person who needs music and noise in the background or is that completely distracting to you? What are your thoughts on ‘background’ sound and music as you work?

Molly> Music and noise in the background is almost necessary. Working in silence would be distracting! I also tend to music supervise my work music, too. Things that require a lot of writing and copy have certain artists I gravitate toward, more repetitive tasks have their own sound too. I’m listening to my writing music to write this right now. 

LBB> I guess the quality of the listening experience and the context that audiences listen to music/sound in has changed over the years. There’s the switch from analogue to digital and now we seem to be divided between bad-ass surround-sound immersive experiences and on-the-go, low quality sound (often the audio is competing with a million other distractions) - how does that factor into how you approach your work?

Molly> There’s something to be said about the range of possibilities for how somebody might engage with the work we do. Certainly somebody might be listening on-the-go out of their phone speaker inexplicably out loud without headphones on the subway as it screeches along (why do people do this), but that same person may have a dope speaker setup at their home and finish the thing they were watching in a more optimal setup. Once in college I watched arguably the most pivotal Breaking Bad episode as Vince Gilligan intended: on my iPhone, in my friend’s new apartment with no Wi-Fi or furniture in it. My friend and I may have each had one headphone in? I watched it later with real speakers on a big TV. The beauty in making the work is in making sure it’s at its best, for either scenario. Immersive and spatial audio are really interesting pioneering spaces with a whole lot of additional creative decisions, but that doesn’t discount how to optimise for the more typical day-to-day listening. 

LBB> On a typical day, what does your ‘listening diet’ look like?

Molly> First I am awoken to the soft purr (followed by loud yelling) of my cat asking for breakfast. After that it definitely depends on the day and what I’m working on, but it’s typically listening to a combination of new releases and old favs when I’m not in active search mode. I like to walk around my neighbourhood to music, but I also like to unplug and listen to ambient sounds of the city. In the beginning of the pandemic the New York Public Library released an album of city sounds that we were sorely lacking (crowds, people at dinner, rush hour, probably a lot of honking) and it was such a comfort to think that maybe one day the city would sound like that again. So it’s important to me to take it in when I can. 

Then if I’m cooking dinner I’ll put on a record or two. If I’m cleaning the house, it’s always HOMECOMING by Beyoncé. 

LBB> Do you have a collection of music/sounds and what shape does it take (are you a vinyl nerd, do you have hard drives full of random bird sounds, are you a hyper-organised spotify-er…)?

Molly> A sweet little combination of hyper-organized Spotify playlists, disorganized Spotify brain dumps, and iTunes library in addition to a growing vinyl collection. When iTunes ~was invented~ I was in middle school and would update album artwork and metadata from *redacted* (Limewire, I’m sorry!!!!!!), so I think in part it indicated what was to come for me, career-wise.

LBB> Outside of the music and sound world, what sort of art or topics really excite you and do you ever relate that back to music (e.g. history buffs who love music that can help you travel through time, gamers who love interactive sound design… I mean it really could be anything!!)

Molly> I work on a voter guide for New York City aligned with lefty/progressive criteria called Soft Power Vote. The name alone describes the way that art can shape public opinion and is reflective of politics. It can capture a moment, an experience, an identity, or a sense of belonging. 

Music isn’t always inherently political, but the best art is shaped by experience and that’s how the individual can inform and capture the energy of a collective. I think that creation, in and of itself, is a political act. The proudest I am of the work I do is when I get to centre and uplift artists whose stories are at the heart of what they create. 

LBB> As we age, our ears change physically and our tastes evolve too, and life changes mean we don’t get to engage in our passions in the same intensity as in our youth - how has your relationship with sound and music changed over the years?

Molly> I disagree with the premise of the question, actually! Over the years I have honed and fine tuned what I’m passionate about and how I engage with it! I am more fully myself now than I was when I was a young person and that has definitely shaped my interests and how I show up for them (shouts to having a fully developed frontal lobe). I can also revisit music I used to love with new perspective and get something new out of it. I’m not jaded yet. Music is the best.