FILMUSP (Music Publishing and Film: Toward a Production History of the Soundtrack in Italy, 1958-1976) is a research project focused on collaboration patterns between the film and music industries in the ‘golden age’ of Italian cinema, from the 1950s to the 1970s. The project highlighted the pivotal role played by music publishers as collectors of economic interests from both industries, which laid the ground of today’s music syncing.

At the heart of the FILMUSP platform lies the construction of a relational database that references a number of pre-existing resources, such as open repositories of data on films and records, copyright registers, and archival documents. From this perspective, pivotal figures such as Rota, Ortolani, Piccioni and Morricone emerged as representatives of an underlying industrial scenario that led to the establishment of film music as a genre in its own right. 

The methods and analytical insights of FILMUSP offer a holistic view of the relationship between the music and media industries, which can be usefully applied to other timeframes and geographical contexts.