Picture this: You wake up in the morning, get ready for work, go into your office and find yourself overwhelmed by a large collection of albums, all desperately awaiting their turn to perk your ears. After listening to this mountain of music, your job is to match the best songs with scenes from one of television’s most popular and trendy shows to date.

This is your job, this is what you get paid to do, and your creative efforts have been heard by millions of people. Not to mention, they’ve also been made into five compilation albums, with the most recent just released in November.

Welcome to the life of Alexandra Patsavas, music supervisor for “The OC.” From the live shows at the Bait Shop to last week’s taste of dios (malos), Patsavas has a hand in it all. Although she has a liking for the genre of music commonly heard on the show, Patsavas says there are certain guidelines a song must meet before it turns into background music to Seth and Summer’s conversation.

“First and foremost, we focus on enhancing the drama and making sure that the characters are supported by music, and that the scenes are supported by music,” she says. “So I look for such a wide variety of things – like a great instrumental that conveys an emotion, an interesting lyric that might support but not obviously telegraph what’s happening in the scene, and just, you know, a great song.”

Every week, Patsavas receives about 400 to 500 CD submissions from music contributors all around the world. Listening to every one is a close to impossible task to take on, but Patsavas says most every submission makes it through her hands.

“I try to give everything a chance, it may not be the longest chance in the world,” she says. “I have three great music coordinators, but I really do try to listen to everything myself.”

Patsavas’ job doesn’t stop when she switches off the music. Her daily schedule is anything but typical, as she faces different tasks and obstacles each day.

“I go to spotting sessions with producers and editors, I pitch music to already edited and shot scenes, I go through submissions, I do paperwork for licensing, I do interviews – so it just really depends,” she says.

The music chosen for “The OC” comes about in many different ways. Patsavas sends the producers a weekly compilation of new music, from which they select and use certain songs to edit with. Other times, Patsavas says Josh Schwartz, creator and executive producer of the show, may already have a song in mind before he even writes the first draft. In this case, the scene is created and tailored especially for the chosen music.

“For instance, the Imogen Heap track at the end of last season was a song that was selected before the scene was shot,” she says.

Once chosen, the song must be licensed. Patsavas says she must make very specific requests to the involved parties, including the scene that the song will be used in and the exact timing of it. The cost to license a song differs.

“It depends on the size of the artist, the length of the scene, how many times it’s used, how much budget I have in a particular episode – are there three songs or 50? You know, everything sort of makes that message shift,” she says.

All the busywork and details of her job is what makes the music happen. And thanks to “The OC,” many smaller and lesser known bands have gained attention. Exposing new and up and coming artists, however, was not the goal Schwartz and Patsavas had in mind when first starting out.

“It wasn’t the goal but it’s been a really incredible byproduct,” Patsavas says. “The goal was always to use the best possible music for each moment. But I’m really glad that small artists have gotten exposure.”

“Josh definitely wanted this kind of music to be prominent in the show. It’s the kind of music that we both happen to connect because we are big fans. It wasn’t a leap for us.”