Sometimes we second guess ourselves too much. The music licensing guru Bodie Johnson learned an important lesson about that. He was working on a small budget project. He knew that a hit song by a major artist would be a perfect match. So he gambled: “ I had to try, and I had to ask.”

Much to his surprise, the artist’s team loved the project that Bodie’s client was working on and how they intended to incorporate the music. Norman Greenbaum immediately approved rights to the song “Spirit in the Sky” for use in Anthill Films’ “unReal,” a mountain biking movie. Bodie also learned from that experience that assuming an artist won’t work with a small-budget client is a misconception.

Since then, working on a tighter budget, he’s gone on to have song rights granted by artists like Shakey Graves, INXS, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, The Pixies, and Gang Starr.

“Just because an artist is famous doesn’t mean they and their team don’t care about beautiful, smaller artistic films,” says Bodie. “It often just takes time to educate the rights holders and build a relationship with the teams so all parties can benefit.”

Bodie always encourages clients to begin dialogue with artists early so that they can know as quickly as possible if the song they want is available. “That helps them use their overall production budget effectively,” he says.