Working in the music business for more than 30 years, Tommy and his two bands, THE TOMS and HORIZONTAL LADIES CLUB, continue to record and release alternative and independent music.

Besides writing and recording songs for all the major TV shows from Americas Next Top Model to the Theme Song for the CBS INSIDER show and Smallville, Marolda also has songs in many major films including “STAYIN’ ALIVE” starring John Travolta, “DAYS OF THUNDER” starring Tom Cruise, “ONCE IN THE LIFE” starring Lawrance Fishburn, “CARMEN” starring Beyonce Knowles, “O” starring Josh Hartman, “ROCKY BALBOA” starring Sylvester Stallone and Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Songs from the HORIZONTAL LADIES CLUB latest album are featured in “The City” on MTV.

I was especially excited to talk with Tommy as some of the songs he’s been involved in are part of the soundtrack of my life! In fact, the more we talked, the more songs I realized he was the writer of. It’s not often that you tell someone about one of your favorite songs and it turns out they co-wrote it! Tommy has done it all, from recording legendary albums and being nominated for a Grammy, introducing Jon Bon Jovi and Ritchie Sambora, to writing with The Killers, Rod Stewart and Cher to name a few!  Because of the length of Tommy’s career he’s able to share a ton of relevant insight and prove that in this business, you need to know how to wear more than one hat. Thanks again Tommy and I look forward to our next conversation. Aaron Bethune.

Tommy Marolda Interview

PILM: How did you get into the music and entertainment industry?

Tommy: I loved music as a kid! Growing up in the 50’s, once I heard The Beatles I was just knocked out. I decided that my friday nights weren’t going out anymore, it was learning the guitar, and eventually I joined some bands. I could barely ever get in as a guitar player, but everyone always needed a bass player, so I switched over, and soon after found myself playing with Bruce Springsteen before he got signed, same with the Bon Jovi boys before they got signed. I just loved the excitement of playing with all this mess of people. Then I decided to start up my own recording studio and learn all the instruments. I wanted to start recording original music since at that time there weren’t many people recording all their own original material without outside players.The studio went well and I continued on to put out other peoples albums as well as a lot of my own stuff.  I was singing, playing, arranging and producing my own material. Once word spread out, I became popular with certain big name people, and that led me to do what I do today.

PILM: How did you go about getting your first clients on board?

Tommy: Not many people were doing albums where they played everything by themselves in around the mid 70’s. Stevie Wonder, McCartney, Emitt Rhodes had done their own solo records, but not a lot else. After the word got out that I had started my own home studio, people started coming.  It wasn’t like today, where almost anyone has access to professional recording gear.  So I’d get these singer-songwriter types coming in.  Ritchie Sambora is an example, he was from Jersey which is where I was located and he’d come in and we started working, then became friends. One day someone from the Power Station had heard some of my things on the radio and invited me to come in, and here’s Jon Bon Jovi in another room and he’s looking for a guitar player. So I tell him “I know a kid called Ritchie, might be a good match” one thing leads to another, it’s a networking thing, and the rest is history.

When you’re young and put out your own record, people might not be expecting much, and then I put out The Tom’s record, and people were in awe of that. It wasn’t much for me, I did it in a weekend in my studio on some downtime. All of a sudden things started happening.  At that time I didn’t know the business of music, it was this mysterious world to me. I had all these people start calling me… I had the Beach Boys telling me they loved the album, Stallone asking me to do stuff and all after that record. So the business came to me you could say. I got lucky being in the right place at the right time as a young person.

PILM: Networking really helped you in this situation then?

Tommy: For sure. Where I was living was a great place for it. There were a few music scenes happening, but the New York, New Jersey, Philly area was really happening with a lot of young talent.  Today, it seems to be more difficult to make the same kind of real world networking; there isn’t as much of a ‘scene’ like there was in Seattle for Grunge, or Las Vegas 10 years ago to a degree. When I first moved to Vegas there was a little scene happening with The Killers, Panic at the disco, a few other rap artists that I started working with as well. I’m not sure if it’s just the new technology, but bands just don’t network as much as they should. Who would’ve known that introducing Bon Jovi and Ritchie Sambora would make this amazing partnership, they’re still some of the biggest concert grocers in the world today! It seems like it should be even easier to network now with the internet, but there is just so much out there that you have to weed through.  You don’t know whats good, whats bad, and who is just out for the money.

PILM: How do YOU weed through it?

Tommy: I don’t really get involved, I have my own people who run that side of things. The only thing I use the internet for is to communicate with fans of The Toms, Horizontal Ladies Club (my alter-ego group if you will) and also to send tracks back and forth with artists I’m working with, and listening to music online through itunes, or other streaming sites.

PILM: From when you got those first calls from big name people, like Stallone for Rocky, to now with your accumulated experience of years licensing, what are some of the biggest changes you see?

Tommy: Back then you made more money, for one thing.  Films don’t pay much for music now, because so many artists out there are willing to just about give away their music. Music has become very devalued over the last 10-15 years.  Some of the major artists are still getting 6 figures for a commercial spot or for a single in a big movie placement, but in tv there is nothing.  Tv is more about exposure for up and coming bands; they pretty much just give away their music for free. I find that because I can supply a tv music supervisor with music that replaces a temporary song that they are using, I still get a lot of placements… although now I am competing against free music.  I’ve had to lower my fee’s to stay competitive, but I am still getting the work.  Usually now a tv show will spend a fortune on licensing big name artists for the pilot, then come to someone like me for the rest of the episodes and say “Can you make something that sounds like Sinatra? Or the Beatles? Or the Bee-Gees?”. A lot of shows blow a lot of their licensing budget on the pilot by trying to hook in the audiences with recognizable music from well known artists. This gives credibility to the show but little do the audience realize that after that they’re going to be hearing mostly unknown independent artists the rest of the season. Overall the money in licensing has depleted. Now, for up and coming writers in America, you don’t get paid royalties on theatrical, unless it is foreign in which case you may see a few pennies.  The ASCAP, BMI payments have gone down too, they collect less money now from the licensors.

PILM: You spoke of giving music away for free.  Why do you think most bands are taking this approach?

Tommy: To get their foot in the door.

PILM: Does that work?

Tommy: 9 times out of 10, nope.  They can tell their friends, family, cousins that “Hey! We’ve got a song on Gossip Girl!” but it doesn’t really help.  Rarely will you get a huge hit song that sticks and gets you somewhere. Take “Somebody told me” by the Killers, everyone wanted a piece of that when it first came out. Unless you can get that sort of a hit, you’re dead in the water.

PILM: Do you think its the songs of The Killers that set them apart?

Tommy: Definitely, their ‘song craft’ was really, really good, and all of a sudden, despite being regurgitated 80’s pop material, sound wise it was something new and fresh to people of this generation, and had good energy with good performers.  All the links in the chain were strong enough to make it all happen.

PILM: With so many people illegally downloading music, coupled with bands giving away their material for free, where is the money now?

Tommy: Great question! (laughs) The real money is in the the top 1% of artists in the charts.  These are the ones who tour heavy, because no one really buys their music anymore. They make good money on those big tours.  But as an example, Lil Wayne came out with his latest record not long ago, and ALMOST sold a million copies (first week maybe?) but 10 years ago it would’ve been 10 million.  The ratio of what artists sell today compared to ‘before’, is very low.  The money in this business is made by a few of the major labels that are still in business who have major acts, and can then earn it back through merchandising, performance, premiums and publishing, the well known ‘360’ deal.  But thats really it, the upper tier of artist.  I don’t know how the other 99% make money to be honest, I just see too much of a gap.

PILM: Talking of this 1%, how would an emerging artist or group get their material to the right people, and in what format? Do the songs have to be the best they can be in terms of recording, producing, mastering etc, or is there still a chance if you just take your acoustic in front of a webcam, and hit record?

Tommy: There are many variables in that question. For instance, where is the artist located? If you are near one of the big metropolis cities, NYC, LA, Philly, Nashville, Chicago, Detroit, etc, where you have a chance to network and get ‘noticed’.  When you go to send anything to music publishers, A&R reps and the like, don’t send a product with a wrinkled suit and scruffy hair. The market is so competitive, you better have the best sounding product you can, that can compete quality-wise with anything else released recently.  Also, you need to have a good vocalist in the band; when you have someone who can sing in just the right range, not to extreme or over the top (Christina Aguilera), or a bit low down (Madonna), it hits a chord with the public. It also makes it easy to pitch to other artists to cover.  Adele and her song “Rolling in the deep” is a perfect example.  It boils down to have great production, a great vocalist, and a decent song that you believe in.  From there, you send it out.  The information and contacts is easily available online, but sending it to publishers directly is more effective to reach people who are looking for new music.  Let your publisher sift through material and hopefully he will need something. A lot of major artists and labels will go to publishers when they need a new song, because they know the stuff has already been quality checked.

PILM: Just switching gears a bit, when we spoke earlier today we talked about co-writing.  What are some of the benefits of co-writing for bands?

Tommy:  First, it lets you bounce ideas off of someone else. Even if you are an experienced song writer, show someone you respect your song ideas, and collaborate with them to get the best ideas you can.  It can help get that one really great song.  From there again, its about building that network, getting the word and your product out to as many people as you can, so your name keeps popping up.

PILM: For the legal aspect of co-writing, with getting paid and how things get split up, how does that work?

Tommy: Its a simple equation; if you and two other people are there when the song is written, you each get 1/3, if its two people, then 50/50.  If its 20 people, say for a big rap collective, 1/20th each.  The legal ramifications are pretty easy; everyone there is part owner and everyone gets a piece of the publishing.  Now, when the time comes where there is a placement in a major film or tv spot, you may have to give up a portion of those publishing rights to get the placement.  But you have to also be contributing to the creation of the song to get in on it, you can’t just sit there, say and do nothing, and expect to get publishing credits and part ownership.

PILM: So lets say you’re in a band with 4 people, and someone approaches you with a non-exclusive licensing agreement (you don’t have to give away any rights on your material). Do you need to get everyone’s signature involved?

Tommy: Oh yeah.  Everyone needs to be involved when a song is getting placed, everyone.  They all own a piece, you have to do it.

PILM: Now and then you hear a story of a band member signing an agreement on behalf of the rest of the group and later shit hits the fan when the others disagree with the placement!

Tommy: Ahhh thats what the attorney’s are for.

PILM: Fair enough. Lets talk about how you started your own company, SongGram, which started out as a part of your studio.

Tommy:  The word SongGram came out of the idea that I had where you send out a “song-gram” instead of a tele-gram to your loved ones or family.  I made a few bucks with it, but didn’t want to do it after too long.  So I kept the name, made it Song-Gram studios, then Song-Gram music (publishing), and then 15 years ago Song-Gram records, and I have 15 artist on there.  So thats how song-gram started, the opposite of a tele-gram (laughs).

PILM:  What is your main focus today with Song-gram?

Tommy: Since selling Cd’s has dried up, I focus on writing music for film and television.  I also get a lot of young bands coming to me to record and produce.

PILM: What is the best way to get in contact with you with regards to recording and producing?

Tommy: My website is the best, www.mysonggram.com.  There’s a contact there and I get back to everybody

PILM: One last question.  What is a good song?

Tommy: First part is easy; it has to hook you right away.  Either the beat, or something in the production,when the melody hits and you get chills up and down your spine thats when I know for sure.  There is always that “something” in the music that can hit like that, and its my drug of choice (laughs).  The first time I heard “I wanna hold your hand” by the Beatles, it just struck a chord with me and knocked me out.  When a song hits you emotionally and just stays with you, thats a good song!

PILM: How do you go about creating music that you are requested and given parameters for?

Tommy: I am a vinyl collector and have a huge resource of music to pool from so as to re-create certain sounds for a project I am working on. I don’t want to say I steal or borrow, but if I need a feel for something I know where to find it. It has become such an easy process that I can have a song recorded in 45mins and have it on the sound stage for dubbing in an hour. That’s why they keep calling me. 99% of what I get doesn’t exactly ring my bell (laughs).  But as for stuff that I have done, maybe of the 5000 songs that I’ve written in my career, 20-ish I would say I’m very proud of.

PILM: It seems today that there are many musicians who have a hard time separating their ‘musical, creative ego’ and their ability to create music as business…

Tommy: Oh man, are you right about that!! They just don’t get it until its too late.  The main thing in this business is to wear a whole bunch of hats.  You can’t survive with just one hat anymore, too many people are out there.  One of those hats is the business hat, it can set you apart from the crowd.

PILM: One last thing, anything that an artist should avoid?

Tommy: Don’t think your first song is going to get you millions.  It doesn’t matter what your wife, or family, or close friends say, it takes a lot of hard work and time.  There is no substitute for that, and pretty much everyone who has made it will say the exact same thing. It’s a long road and just enjoy the journey!

If you would like to learn more about Tommy or contact him you can do so via his websites. There you will also find the music of his two bands, Horizontal Ladies Club and the remastered re-release of The Toms (now available digitally).

www.tommymarolda.com

www.mysonggram.com

www.playitloudmusic.com

Every time I write my own little blurb in between interviews I find myself thinking about the “other” side of success, the role of the mind!

I have a son who is going to be two in December and when it came time to choosing his name the whole topic of “does the name make the person or does the person make the name…” came up. Now, I have a friend who’s called Rocky and his brother is called Harley and, as the name might suggest, they are two big, muscular guys. One is a bodybuilder and the other is a rugby player. The thought is, did their names shape their lives or were they destined to be born with names that would perfectly suit their beings…? One would suggest we get to become who we want and the other would suggest things are pre-determined…

It may appear sometimes that a person is pre-determined to excel at certain things and that what is a struggle for one is effortless for another. What is clear in my mind is that you get to make decisions and choices as to who you want to be!

When it comes to success it seems that successful people know what they want and don’t give up until they reach their goals. Even the interviews I post here have that in common: every one made a conscientious decision to make their career in the music industry and none of them have ever given up.

If you commit yourself wholeheartedly and believe that what you are doing is the right thing, chances are it is! If you know what you want, you have a goal and are committed to obtaining it then sooner or later it happens!

My point of this little rant is that you have to commit to success, you have to go out and get it, for the most part it doesn’t come find you and it certainly doesn’t come to the people who give up easily!

Aside from making the right business decisions, crafting the best marketing campaign, let alone writing your “hit” song you have to have mentally decided to be successful in the career path you choose. You would be surprised at how many people think they want something but when it finally starts to come their way they are afraid of what they wished for. I call it fear of the summit.

Here is my story of fearing the summit. I’ll be short:)

In January 2001 I was the youngest climber on Cerro Aconcagua. It is one of the 7 summits and the highest in the world outside of Asia. I have always had a passion for mountaineering and adventure and had spent the 6 months prior to the expedition working my ass off to be in the best physical condition possible. I was living in Spain at the time and the Picos de Europa mountain range was my backyard. Everyday I would run 18km, hike up a mountain with rocks or bottles of water in my backpack, practice martial art breathing techniques, even top it off somedays with a vigorous mountain bike trail. (I will add that it was thanks to my location that I was able to get this much training in as well as make a living!). My point is I worked really hard, always focusing on the summit and imagining myself reaching it. Skip ahead to the Andes mountains in Argentina. I remember after days on the mountain finally coming in sight of the summit. The feeling that I got was of fear, I suddenly realized that I had spent so much time focusing on getting to the summit that I had never envisioned complete success… getting back down again. I had trained to get there, not to get back. The idea that what I had been dreaming of was actually becoming a reality was overwhelming and I wasn’t sure after all if I wanted it to be any more than a dream. What happened after that moment was nothing short of an adventure, and every moment I spent in the Andes has been nothing but a life learning experience. I learned that if you put one foot in front of the other, no matter how slow it can take, no matter how many times you have to stop to try and breathe, you can get to where you want to go (and back!). However, if you don’t visualize yourself reaching your goals, decide before you even begin that you won’t give up no matter what, and above all believe in what you are doing and that you are ALREADY doing it, then you won’t make it!

A bit of a spiel but my point is that mental success is just as important as the physical. In this business if you are not strong in the mind you will be weak everywhere else!

Not everybody is going to agree with what you do, however running with the herd isn’t going to make you stand out. It is the people that are successful that take the biggest risks, make the biggest statements and end up standing out above the noise. If you believe in yourself everyone else will too! And if you’re lucky the herd will follow you!

Aaron Bethune
www.playitloudmusic.com

Along with being a Music Supervisor, Kyle Merkley also coordinates everyone’s needs including music submissions, licensing administration, and all the other fun stuff that comes with music supervision. As an avid musician and the top-ranked graduate of his year in the Music Business Management Program at Durham College, Kyle possesses a firm grasp of music licensing from both sides of the fence.

Kyle has also had the opportunity to serve as a panelist and moderator on various Music & Film panels at the Northern Ontario Music & Film Awards (NOMFA) and the InSight and Sound seminar series put on by Music and Film in Motion (MFM).

Kyle is someone who lives and breaths the music industry. From musician to music supervisor, he has a great understanding of what it is to be on both sides of the fence in the world of licensing! Usually I speak with Kyle once a week so interviewing him seemed like a logical thing to do. Kyle’s interview shares lots of insight and will be a useful tool to those trying to license music in this industry. Thanks again Kyle and I am sure we’ll be speaking soon! Aaron Bethune

www.playitloudmusic.com

How did you get into the music and entertainment industry?

 
I started off as a musician, playing in various bands starting in high-school, and even in the school string orchestra. Later, I started getting into more mainstream music. I was in a band with Dave Moffatt of the Moffatts for while. Happened to track each other down on MySpace (remember that?) and ended up writing some songs together and playing on ET Canada. I got into music that way, kind of a do-it-yourself manner taking on management duties out of necessity and by default. I realized that this music business thing is pretty cool, so I went to Durham College for Music Business Management and from there spent some time at SOCAN as an intern, which is one of the best choices I’ve made career wise! A lot of my friends were going to labels, and without seeming money-hungry, I tried to see where the money still was. At the time, it was in publishing/performing rights. While at Durham, I spent my time assisting with and organizing member events, such as the SOCAN awards, and took the opportunity to network as much as possible.  At one of the Gemini nominee reception parties, I met Ron Proulx, Owner/President of Arpix Media, who managed a few of the composers nominated for Gemini awards that year.  And then it was a little bit of a lapse before we connected again. Following SOCAN, I went on to work with Melissa Syme, who manages Holy Fuck, among others. I worked primarily in the tour management realm, but also was involved in other avenues such as online and film/television/ad placements. It was a really great job and a pleasure to work with talented acts such as Holy Fuck and Ruby Jean and the Thoughtful Bees. Ron Proulx then came back in the picture looking to add a team member and I took that opportunity to venture into Music Supervision – an area that I had never directly intended on getting into but am thankful I did.

 
What was the band you played with?

 
We were called Lights Out Love. You can probably still find some material of ours on YouTube or Pure Volume.

 
When you started working for Ron, what was the process of training you to the point where Ron could let you do your thing?

 
When I first jumped in, I really familiarized myself with a lot of legal terms and how deals are structured. Ron has an e-book called How To Licence Your Music in Movies and Television. It’s great, and gives you the right information to bring you up to speed. Having already gone to school for music business made the transition that much quicker, as I was already familiar with the terms. I became familiarized with the fees and commonalities for the shows we were working on, such as Heartland and Flashpoint, and began to better understand the current landscape of television licensing in Canada.  From there I became more involved, and eventually I started handling the music searches, music editing, license negotiating and tracking, etc. Although it is perfected with time and experience, you kind of just develop an intuition for what is right and what is wrong. This is both a natural intuition and one that is taught and improved upon by being taught by experienced professionals such as Ron Proulx, Chris Robinson and Andrea Higgins. They all really helped expand my horizons and knowledge base. Right now I’m working on a Spanish series for the Food Network and there are many forms of Latin music out there; it’s so important to be very particular about what is used in a show that is based in a specific region, like Spain. Music education/knowledge is a huge part of it all, and I keep working on furthering mine.

What’s the process when new licensors approach you with their catalogs?

 
There are new licensors representing a catalogue coming to us all the time – new ones every day. Typically, I’ll get them to submit something for a show we’re working on at that very time. That’s a really big moment because it demonstrates if they get it, and if they do, then the relationship will really take off from there.  If they submit something that’s really off the mark – I’ve had people sometimes that submit 40 tracks with only one deemed proper for the show.  Sure, you could submit your entire library, but annoying the music supervisor is not in your best interest. I’ve asked people before when they have submitted things if they might have anything extra for an additional project that I’m working on. When someone comes back to me and says, ‘you know I don’t really have anything like that, thanks for reaching out.’,  that is a perfect response.  It’s so important to try and be as accurate as possible, and to be as honest as possible. If you don’t have it, that’s fine. But you should just say that, and avoid sending material just to see.  Often I’m not reaching out to a metal label for their flamenco guitar but if we do by some chance, they can say, “Hey, we don’t have any of that stuff.”, I can say ‘great, I’ll reach out to you later when we need some metal tunes.” That’s where I stand on that. Either submit something that’s on the money or you think to be on the money or just say ‘hit me up next time, I’ll have that stuff.”

 
What about following up? How much is too much?

 
Timing is so important. I was working on this film for ABC Family, and there is a music producer that we have worked with before and he’s always kind of on our minds but he happened to send us a track on the day we were looking for a top-40 dance track and it sounded exactly like what we wanted. It was such perfect timing and worked out so well, but had he done so two weeks before, it might not have happened. So, part of it is luck, in terms of getting the placement, but as well, it doesn’t hurt to ask. Typically I’ll say to someone, “hey check in next month, if you have some new stuff, or keep me posted on developments.” But the biggest thing I’d recommend is saying, “Hey can you add me to your music request list?” I’m reaching out to people when I need something, so when something comes up, I’ll reach out and I’ll put together a brief, outline the fee, the rights involved, the scene, etc, and I’ll blast that out to people that I think are appropriate. You want to be on that list. You want to stay on that list. At Arpix, that’s how we operate. Anyone else I can’t comment on, but I think it’s a pretty good system.

 
How much new music do you find reaching your inbox?

I’ve seen a definite growth in the amount of people representing catalogues and that’s good for us, because we’re dealing with less singular entities. Now, I’ve only been in music supervision for two years but even in that time, I’ve seen a change. I know before my time at Arpix, they were dealing more so with specific bands, and in my time, I’ve been mostly dealing with what I call music brokers, people that are representing music strictly for licensing. There’s been a definite growth in that field. There are a lot of people getting into the representation of music, but they don’t quite understand the terms, and it gets scary when you’re not sure if agreements are in place to actually be representing the music. Even within bands it’s quite common to say, “oh yeah, we’re all friends, I can sign on behalf of the entire band.” and we can’t do that anymore. You want avoid a situation where the drummer would sign off on behalf of the band for a placement, and then the rest of the band will find out about it or hear it on TV, and say “oh my god, I don’t agree with this. I don’t agree with the fee, I don’t agree with the rights.” I’ve never had to deal with a situation like that, but I have heard of them happening elsewhere. So you have to make sure you understand and have proper agreements in place to be representing the music. But in terms of the amount of music coming in, there is tons of it. The challenge is that there is more great music than there are spots for great music. It’s not uncommon for great music to come in, I say “Hey I want to use this at some point,” and then that point doesn’t come for a year. So, it’s really, like I was saying, luck! It doesn’t hurt us that there’s so much music, but it can make it difficult for the artists/bands/labels/brokers/libraries to get through. Then with the internet, it’s so easy to reach anyone anywhere, I mean, we’re licensing music from all over the world, typically it’s from North American licensors, but we’ve licensed stuff from Australia, from Asia, all over the place. Everything is at your fingertips.

 
With all that you’re saying, how does this affect the value of music?

 
It probably sounds terrible to say, but you disregard so much music even if it’s good because there is just so much out there. If I do a music request for a certain thing, I could get 100-200 songs easily, as long as it’s not some kind of niche request. As for the singer-songwriter stuff, I could get three million songs. It’s so hard to stand out from that crowd, you really have to work your relationship with the music supervisor, be really accommodating of fees, of rights, have all your stuff in check. People that are getting back to me really quickly, I go back to them. Artists are often on the road, travelling, so that’s why I often deal with music brokers.  The artists are off touring, playing gigs, recording, being busy musicians; In TV, there’s such a requirement for a quick turnaround. The replacement of a song in one day, you’re at a mix, and someone says “Hey we want to change this end-montage song.” You have to be able to find that song in that day, clear it, license it and then have it air next week. You have to have someone who is capable of being there and always in contact with you, to get those documents, those licenses back to you. Having great music only gets you so far, you have to have your business affairs in check. Either yourself, or someone you trust to be representing you.

 
What do you think it takes today to be heard above the noise?

 
There’s so much music out there, that’s such a tough question. For me what I hear above the noise is what stands out, songs that fit a project’s criteria. Stuff that stands out these days is whatever goes with what I’m working on, and I can’t look past that . There’s stuff that I listen to personally that might stand above the crowd because I think it’s interesting or some kind of new element that I’m not used to hearing, or perhaps because it’s a fusion of genres. Typically when I’m at work and I’m using my ears to listen for songs that fit the mould perfectly for the project we’re working on. It’s about the filter I have on my ears for that day.

 
Do you think people who give away their music for free are in any way going to bring down the monetary value the music has when it comes to licensing rights?

 
There are certain bands that have reached out to me and said “Hey we’re giving our album away for free.”  That’s appealing to me just on a music fan side of things. I think that’s cool. I don’t see it as devaluing music, I see it as accepting the value of music. And that’s kind of my thing right now. If people can get it for free, then just give it away for free, and try and make your money elsewhere. You’ve got to use your music to hook someone in. As far as licensing fees, there’s been an increase in libraries and brokerages that are actually licensing their music for free but they’re only doing that to productions that will have a decent back-end on them – e.g. network television shows. We haven’t worked with those types of libraries, just because typically you get what you pay for. But those libraries and brokerages are out there, and if you can land something in a decent show, like a network show, sure you’re not going to get any money up front, but your SOCAN or PRO back-end cheque can be somewhat substantial. That can be worth it. Maybe it’s just ‘cause I’m younger, but I’m pretty pro giving away stuff for free, not so much in the licensed area, because if people are making money from the music, I think they should be paying for it. Either way you have to be accommodating to music supervisors’ needs and fees that he or she are working with.

 
How do you  give music a monetary value?

 
Part of that comes with the clout the artist is bringing with them, which is why so much of our business is based on finding sound-a-like indie replacements.  For example, a producer ideally might want to have the Arcade Fire, but the money to license them is not available in the music budget. That’s when we would come in and say, “there’s this really cool artist that hasn’t broken yet, that really sounds like Arcade Fire, and we can get them for $1000-$2000.”  The way we operate is much more about finding what would work for the money we have, versus trying to determine what something is worth.

 
What are some things people should keep in mind while negotiating?

 
Make sure you’re not getting taken advantage of, and look at any clauses that involve trailer or promotional uses. Sometimes there are deals where you’ll be providing in and out of context promotional uses, and typically a lot of production companies will go out and get both. But if you’re really looking at a low amount of money, one thing you can limit back is the trailer or promotional rights. And you can limit that to in-context only. Further to that, you can look at term, how long this deal’s lasting? Once again most production companies we work for are asking for perpetuity, which means forever. So you can try and scale that back. The norm really is world for all media, which covers all production for anything that they want to do. However, to be truthful, when you’re in a band starting out you should probably agree to whatever deal you can get.  When a music supervisor comes to you with a deal, it’s typically the best thing we can do. There’s rarely little room to exceed past that. So, when we’re coming to you with a fee and the required rights for the deal, that’s likely the best deal we can do. Anything beyond that becomes difficult. I think that’s something to understand – that the music supervisor, at least in my experience, is not holding back any money from you. Negotiating is often for the bands with the clout.  If you’re an indie band, it’s either you want it or you don’t. When we have an independent band, or a licensor working with independent bands looking to negotiate, it’s fine to ask if there is any more money, but it shouldn’t be expected.

 
What are some ways to go about finding out about these projects and gigs?

 
One would be looking into production listings. You could be looking into things like Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, etc, seeing what’s in production and tracking down that production company.  If it’s any kind of reputable production company, reach out to them and say, “Who is your music supervisor on the show? I’d love to reach out to them.”  Ideally for us, you own the masters and the publishing 100%, because that makes it one-stop and really easy. From there just offer to submit your music and say you’ll love to get involved and hear more about any opportunities that may be involved in making that production. You want to monitor what’s going on, and once you reach out to the music supervisors, keep in touch with them, and be accommodating to what their needs might be.  It really goes back to following up with music, and making sure that you’re conveying to the music supervisor that you understand the ownership of your music. I think I might have mentioned that briefly before. It’s just that when you are reaching out to a music supervisor, my favourite emails are “Hey here’s a link to my music, I own it 100% masters and publishing.” That’s a big thing for me – immediate explanation as to the ownership of your music.

 
What are some things you think people should not do?

 
The first thing that comes to mind is really lengthy and verbose emails. I think when I get those 3-4 paragraph emails, I read maybe 4% of it. It’s so important to be concise, to be accurate and be very communicative of what you’re saying. I think it’s important to stay in touch and quickly get back to music supervisors, so don’t be writing people and not be responding. Because if you get a response from someone in my position, you should jump on it pretty quickly, otherwise, you’ll be forgotten about. Also, don’t send CDs. I’m so against CDs. Not only for the environmental reasons, but because you spend $3 to send me a CD in packaging, and I take it and listen to it for such a small amount of time that it’s so much better to just send me the link to stream online. There are certain music supervisors that actually still work with CDs, but for someone reading this wishing to submit to Arpix, do not send one. I feel guilty when I get all these CDs. It’s such a waste of plastic and postage. My favourite saying is that I often spend more time opening and unwrapping a CD than actually listening to it.

To find out more about Kyle and the company he works for please visit:

Arpix Media Inc.

Interview by Aaron Bethune

www.playitloudmusic.com

Mark Hornsby is an acclaimed music producer, audio engineer, musician, writer and marketing consultant – widely considered to be one of the most diverse figures in today’s music business.

Mark is the former co-owner of one of Florida’s largest recording and rehearsal studios – Ridenour Studios – whose clients included New Found Glory, Foreigner, Ricky Martin, Joey Kramer, Steve Winwood and Johnny Depp.

As a producer, engineer and sound designer Mark moved on to work with acts from all over the world, consulting in A+R and marketing for numerous music companies and record labels, while also consulting on software development for a variety of high-profile audio technology companies. Mark is a certified Pro Tools Expert, accredited by Avid.

Recently, Mark has found that his experience in both music production and the business side of the industry often enables him to help artists take themselves and their music to new levels. This has taken him all over the United States to appear as a guest speaker at colleges offering music and music technology courses.

Mark is also a regular contributing writer for Recording Magazine, who featured his work at Abbey Road Studios in London as their front cover story in October 2010. He has had the opportunity to work with a wide range of artists, musicians, and companies in various capacities, including:

Jon Anderson, IK Multimedia,Travis Tritt,Kat Bowser,The Hoppers,Jerry Marotta,EchoXS,Lifeway,Ronnie Brookshire,Carolyn Martin,Steven Curtis Chapman,Sonic Reality,The Judds,Nick D’Virgilio,Richard Sterban,Leticia Wolf,Steve Green,Ashlyn Metheny,Rewiring Genesis, Porter Wagner, The Jordanaires, Neal Peart, Kevin Gilbert, Dream Makers Music, Word Entertainment, Projecto 151, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Ricky Tims, Kitty Wells, The Carolinas, Gallus, Dolly Parton, The Titan Hot Seven

Out of all the interviews I have posted so far, Mark’s interview touches upon the most important aspect, the very core essence of it all… the music! Mark has a vast knowledge in the topics we cover, including the acoustic differences of recording rooms, mic techniques, the importance of capturing a sound that is authentic and able to be played live, how to be prepared for the studio, networking, studio funding and what a great sounding album can do for your career. I highly recommend that you spend some time reading this one! Thanks again Mark for agreeing to do this, it is always a pleasure! Aaron Bethune. www.playitloudmusic.com

Interview with Mark Hornsby:

How did you get started in the music and entertainment industry?

I must have screwed up somewhere! I guess I started when I was 12 years old. The church I attended growing up was televised and I got asked to run sound for the broadcast mix. So on the first day, the guy said, “Okay, this is really simple. Here’s all you got to do. Here’s the order of the service. Here’s when the music happens, when the music stops. All I need you to do is when the music’s not on, mute it and when the music’s on, un-mute it. When the pastor stops talking, turn the music back on, etc. You need to watch these two meters right here and make sure they don’t go in the red. If they do go in the red, take the master fader and turn it down a little.” So I said, “Okay, cool I can handle this.” Through the whole service I kept my eyes glued on those meters. At the end, he said, “You did a great job. I’d like to have you come back next week.” After I commented about the multiple sets of meters he had and what all they did, he said “Hopefully I’ll have this pair fixed by next weekend,” and he pointed to the pair that I had been looking at. The whole time I was sitting there looking at the wrong set of meters and I had no idea. That experience taught me a lesson: if somebody is going to pay you a compliment, don’t back out of it.

How did it go from doing sound on a Sunday to making this your living?

Long story short, I grew up playing sports and music, and by the time I got to high school, I decided that music is where I wanted to concentrate. So, by 15, I was trying to figure out, “How do I work and make a living in the music business?” I didn’t know a lot about it. I was a guitar player and all my older musician friends I’d seen get out of high school– they were either making little to no money or playing wedding bands on the weekends. That was all fine and good but it didn’t interest me, so I did my homework and realized I could get into the production-end of this thing. After the couple of years doing the church broadcast thing, I got into doing independent live sound, and ended up getting a job at a CBS affiliate right when I was getting out of high school. I had a lot of audio production experience and all the music experience from playing. I figured if I put those together, I could work behind the scenes on records.

This was before the days of 600 plus audio schools in the US… SAE, FullSail, all these great accessible places to learn about ProTools and what not. We didn’t have any of that back then. My parents wanted me to get a traditional degree, so I basically had three options for a degree in audio engineering: Middle Tennessee State in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; the University of Miami, which is a more technical-based program; or Berklee School of Music, which is more on the music side of things. I grew up in Tennessee, so MTSU was obviously the cheaper choice and they concentrated a lot in theory which was of great interest to me. In November of whatever year that was – I drove down there, checked out the program, took a tour of the place, and was on campus in a dorm room by January working on a Bachelor’s of Science in audio production. While in school I started my own live production company. By the time I got into the recording credits for the degree program, the company I owned had 2 or 3 employees and the business could run itself. Basically, I could keep my bills paid and concentrate on music production. This freedom led to me getting a job at Seventeen Grand Recording on Music Row (Nashville).

So by the time I graduated college, I had my own production company and I was working as an assistant engineer in one of the best studios in Nashville. That led to independent engineering, going out and doing overdubs for people and really starting to branch out on my own. Then in about 1999, country music took a bit of a crash. I remember working 60 hours a week for the first half of that year and maybe 60 hours total for the back half of that year. This is around the time when all the labels had been chasing the Shania Twain formula and it had gotten to the point that everybody was turning out music that sounded exactly the same. This happens all the time, it’s a cyclical thing, but at that point it crashed and it crashed hard. Everybody started pinching their pennies, quit putting out records. Studios started closing. What was I going to do now?

I had an opportunity to go to Ft. Lauderdale and do some work. So I ended up moving to South Florida. Through a strange turn of events, two college friends of mine, an entertainment attorney and I ended up owning a recording and rehearsal facility in Ft. Lauderdale. It was 8000 square feet and had two recording studios, five rehearsal rooms, a 2000 square-foot sound stage, an instrument repair shop and an electronic repair shop all under one roof. It did pretty well for us, so we ran that for several years. In 2005, a Hurricane Wilma came along and ripped the roof off of it, flooded it, totally took it down and us out of business. We all parted ways at that point. One of us kept part of the business, I got out completely, someone else kept the name. We worked it out amongst ourselves, and I moved back to Nashville and now I’ve been back here for five years. That’s the Readers’ Digest version.

What are some of the biggest differences you’ve seen in this business?

The technology has definitely changed, everybody knows that. I think Avid has finally gotten to the point in which people that don’t know anything about music production know the name ProTools. It’s synonymous with “Studio Magic” to people that don’t know anything. I’m talking about people that sell insurance for a living – that have nothing to do with what we do. So it’s been put on the radar for a lot of people outside our industry.

A lot of things are done on the computer. I was fortunate when I started out in this business, it was still analog tape, ADAT had come on the scene. The first ProTools system I worked on was built in ’93. At that point we had a 256MB hard-drive and we would fly one vocal track in at a time. I remember working on this live George Strait project where we’d fly in the lead vocal track, and we had the very first version of AutoTune, and we’d fix a note, fix another note, and then fly it back. It was a daylong process.

I think the mentality has changed a lot too. When you think of your classic records, if you really go back, it was all about capturing a performance. We didn’t have many other choices. There was no “I’m going to fix it later.” And now today’s younger generation, not all of them, but a lot of them, they have the approach of record, record, record, and we’ll just fix it later. That doesn’t work for me. It might be fun and they might enjoy that but 90% of what makes a great record is capturing a performance-not manufacturing one after the fact. So, yeah, the mentality has changed a bit. It’s also in the marketing – you walk into a Guitar Center and tell the guy behind the counter “I want to record this and want to sound like that,” and they’ve got a product that’s been marketed to do just that. It’s totally a different perspective.

What would be the major reasons to go into a professional studio over a home-recording set-up?

I’ll answer that first with my dental analogy. If you needed to have your teeth worked on, would you be comfortable with going out and buying a set of dental tools and doing it yourself? Of course not. It’s the same thing with music. If your time is valuable, like a lot of people’s time is these days, I like to think mine is, it’s time versus money. Take Photoshop, for example. I’m not a graphic designer – I know how to use Photoshop – but I don’t try to create images for artists I’m working with. I have other professionals I turn to. I’d rather have someone who spends 3 or 4 hours on it and does a magnificent job do the work and pay them, versus me spend 15 or 20 hours on it and come up with something half as good.

As far as making music is concerned, you have to think about music and the creative process, which comes from one side of the brain. When you’re sitting there trying to figure out why there’s a delay when you’re trying to record on your laptop and why your computer keeps crashing, that triggers the other side of the brain, and totally distracts you from being creative and whatever vibe or moment you were in. I think it can be very limiting. A friend of mine says he used to tell people all the time that if you’re going to make a record, get out of town and do it. That’s not always feasible for people, but I like the idea – get away from anything that’s distracting, whether it’s the technology or the people around you. Just an environment that is a little more inspiring or someplace new can go a long way. A professional recording studio can be one of those places.

What about the room, what kind of difference does that make?

Rooms are definitely a part of it. Abbey Road for example is a very unique sounding room. Is it the best audiophile sounding room I’ve been in? No, I don’t think so. It is very cool and familiar sounding because we’ve heard a lot of records that have been recorded there. To me the word ‘room’ is synonymous with the word ‘acoustics’. A great room is preferable. You don’t have to have a multi-million dollar building, but you need to be educated on the environment or house, or wherever you’re going to be working. A quick answer to your question, I think rooms are great, rooms are important, rooms are characters, just like microphones are characters. It’s all different paints on the palette but at the end of the day, it’s not about the room or the building, it’s about “How is this drum set? What kind of tones is it giving off and how is it reacting with it’s environment?” When you set it up, you can listen and decide if it is good or bad, and then proceed accordingly. Sometimes a rehearsal space is great-where everybody’s playing live in one big room and you’re using packing blankets and some baffles to isolate some stuff so that you have control over it later. There’s lots of different ways to slice that.

What could great-sounding recording do for an artist’s career?

A lot of people would argue that it can’t do anything and I don’t agree with that. MP3’s have proven that convenience is more important to consumers than quality. The SACD-DVD audio 5.1 thing that came out about the time the MP3 thing started rearing it’s head. Now, how many retail stores do you know of that sell a 5.1 disc or a 5.1 player? Apple and iTunes have played a large role in really dictating where the business is going. There are so many recordings out there that are mediocre, and people are used to hearing that. Some of it is budget-related, and some of it that people just aren’t educated, or the people working on the recordings aren’t educated. Every now and then, there’s something that rises above all that. People that have been in the business for a while, they recognize that, and as far as the industry is concerned, that is important for the artist. It’s going to get them recognition, it’s going to raise somebody’s eyebrows, it’s going to make someone listen to it again, which is ultimately what you want. As far as the general public, it’s hard to say – there’s groups of people out there who are really into vinyl and stuff like that. Vinyl sales in 2009 were up about 30%. Granted vinyl as a medium in general has gone down tremendously, but an increase like that shows that there still are trends and customers who care about what they’re listening to. There’s also audiences that get mad when stuff technically sounds bad-like Metallica’s Death Magnetic record. Do you remember that whole controversy?

At the same time Metallica released Death Magnetic, Activision released the Guitar Hero version of it. The fans started noticing that the Guitar Hero version, sonically, sounded better than the CD release. I won’t get into the reasons why that happened but a lot of people were mad about the way the album sounded. The whole thing is very loud, and the majority of it is distorted – beyond the usual passable, occasional clipping. There’s sections of songs where it really bears down and it hurts to listen to it. A petition went around online, and I think something like 30 or 40 thousand people signed it to get them to remix the record. This happened with rock music, which is one of the genres you would think people would care the least. That event actually showed that at least several thousand people would raise their hand and say, “No this is unacceptable. You’re the largest rock band in the world and this sucks. You should do better. No excuses.” I thought that was impressive. Obviously the band didn’t agree, and their management didn’t agree – I’m not going to get into who’s right and wrong on that but I will say that as a fan, I too was disappointed. I do a lot of lectures at universities on music technology and the question of loudness always comes up. That’s the example I use now. I’ll pull up a cut from that Metallica record, and I’ll pull up a cut off one of their earlier records, Master of Puppets. I level match them in ProTools and play them back. They’re off considerably in volume, it’s ridiculous. It’s like a 12dB difference. But when you level match them and listen to them, hands-down the recording from 1986 sounds ten times better. It’s not fatiguing to listen to and it’s not distorted. The point being, at the end of the day, louder isn’t better, it’s just louder.

Do artists benefit from networking?

Relationships are everything. It’s true in so many businesses-I love the clichéd phrase from the movie Jerry Maguire, “The key to this business is personal relationships”. It’s about building a team around you; building that trust factor with people. I always say, when people want to work with me, my preference is good people or good music-preferably both. A lot of times, it may be something musical that doesn’t strike my fancy, but if I can take it up one or two notches or take it to another level and I really connect with the artist on a personal level, then sure, I’ll go to bat for them.

We’re overhyped by emails and Facebook messages… we hit delete, delete delete. But when a friend of ours calls us or emails us personally, saying “I want you to check this out, I think it’s really cool.” That’s what makes us stop and listen. It’s that personal connection. It goes a long way.

What do you feel are the other elements an artist needs to have as part of their product to go out there and pitch it?

A business plan. It’s not the individual pieces; it’s the sum of them. The sum of them is the long-term goal, your long-term plan. What I tell people (I recently wrote a blog on this) is it’s what I call working backwards. Start off with the end-all goal. Why is this group of musicians coming together?. Why are you doing it? Is it to have fun? Is it to make money? Is it that you want a record deal? You don’t care about a record deal? You want to do your own thing and tour regionally and sell product? Identify what the goals are and from there, sit down and say, okay, what are the critical success factors that are necessary in order for us to achieve those goals? If you just want to play for fun, then it’s probably a shorter list than a band that wants to make money or pursue a record deal.

If you want a record deal, you need good recordings, imagery, photography, graphic design-everything. You need every representation of you and your product to be as good as it can be. Those are the kinds of things that would be on that list. Once you identify all those things, you need to prioritize them. What do you need to do first? Don’t go in the studio if you’re not done writing songs. A lot of bands will say, “We’ve got this 10-song album, and we’ve got eight good ones; we’re going to go ahead and start recording, and we’ll hash out the other two while we’re in there.” Don’t do that. Write 20 songs, go play them live, talk to your fans, and find out what they like. Get out of your opinion or headspace; because it’s not what you think, it’s what they think. Then use that to narrow it down, and go play those songs a whole bunch – practice, practice, practice and then go into the studio. Your studio time will cost a lot less and you will come up with a lot better product. So many other things will go a lot smoother if they are planned out ahead of time.

How many of the artists you work with are able to match live what they’ve done in the studio? Is this the norm?

All of the artists that I have produced match live what they have done in the studio. If I sign on to produce a project, I’m interested in capturing an artist’s sound. I’m not interested in making it sound like something else or manufacturing a product. As a producer and engineer I have two separate work flows. On the engineering side of the fence, I have clients that send me hard drives asking me to fix stuff and make stuff sound better. Yeah, I do that, it’s part of what you do for a living if you choose this line of work. But if my name is going on it as a creative director, my goal is for the listener to be able to throw it up on a set of speakers, get familiar with it, and then go watch the artist do the same thing live. To have that same experience. People are not stupid. If they go hear an artist live, love it, buy the CD and take it home and it’s nothing like the live show, then they’re mad, and don’t listen to it anymore. And vice versa: If someone downloads a song, it sounds really good and they go watch the artist live and the artist can’t pull it off, then they get disappointed.

If anybody thinks they’re doing themselves a favor by manufacturing music that just sounds good in the studio, they’re not doing themselves any favors. Granted, that’s fine if your only goal is just to make a cool sounding recording. But for the touring artist, it’s hard enough to make people buy a CD. So, it’s more important than ever to have integrity.

Who in the music industry is making the money? Where?

People who are willing to diversify, think outside of the box, and check their ego at the door. I work on records, do consulting, do marketing work, produce shows… I do a lot of different stuff to keep me busy. I enjoy the diversity of all this. I’m extremely busy, and part of it is because I stay diverse and part of it is I try not to let anything go out the door unless the client is 110% happy.

Its just like some bands who will swear off doing cover songs. What’s up with the ego? If you know the song, play it…anything you got to do to claw your way to the top. If you’ve got to play Brown Eyed Girl, go play Brown Eyed Girl. There’s a lot of ways to move ahead as a band. Sometimes bands get stuck on the image thing, they won’t let go of that, and it prohibits them from taking advantage of opportunities that are right in front of them and they don’t even know it.

How do you value studio time?

That’s an open-ended question – but I’ll take a shot at it. In 2009 there were approx ¼ million records released in the US. The statistic I read said somewhere in the neighbourhood of only 3000 of those records sold 5000 copies or more, only 10 or 12 did over a million. That’s some scary numbers compared to what the music business used to be. But what that number tells us is that most acts aren’t selling over 5000 records, most of your independent acts are making money off merch and live shows.

So, in terms of studio time, we have to keep things in perspective in order to build a long term relationship with a client or artist. Let’s work the money backwards from those numbers. For example: Based on previous sales, your band is on track to probably sell 5000 copies of their next release. Let’s assume that the band wants to make a profit on their albums. We live in a digital world, so let’s focus on that. Aside from units sold at shows with merch, iTunes and other digital outlets pay out about 60%. On a $9.99 album, you clear about $6, that’s $30,000 on sales of 5000 digital records. So, if there’s $30,000 to deal with and the band wants to make a return on the money they are spending to record the album, they need to decide if they want to make a 100% return on their investment or do they want to make a 50% return on their investment? Let’s say it’s 100% return. If that’s the case, the band has a $15,000 budget to complete their next album. Recording, mixing, mastering, photography, graphic design-the whole nine yards.

I’ve seen a lot of bands with 5-10 grand to cut a record. What do I charge? Well, you can do an album for 5 grand, you can do an EP for 5 grand, you can do 2 songs for 5 grand. How much time and energy are you going to put into it? You’ve got 3 options: quick, cheap, good – pick two.

There are a lot of people that have their day rate. From the top of the top of the industry, you’ve got guys like Chris Lord Alge that are mixing songs every day at $10,000 per song to guys or girls right out of SAE. Everyone wants to come up with a day-rate, and I think it’s getting harder and harder to do that. All you can do is build a resume of work, and then connect with the artist, figure out what the artist’s budget is and then come up with a win-win scenario.

Where do you find most artists that you work with get their funding?

Some of them save up their own money or still have part-time jobs. A lot of them go out and sell merch or copies of their last CD and they keep the money and reinvest it. Some of them borrow it, some of them put a business plan together, some of them win it in contests. It comes from all kinds of places. I’m not saying any of these options are good or bad, I’m just saying they are options. People get capital from a lot of different places. A bank is the last place to give you money to record an album.

When I was in college and started my production company, it started doing really well and I felt I needed to expand it. I remember going down to my bank and talking to them about a business loan. I was 19; they didn’t laugh at me but they basically told me it would be a cold day in hell. So I took out student loans at a low interest rate to expand my business. That’s what student loans are for: to help the livelihood of the person going to school. I borrowed $5000, paid it back. Borrowed another $5000, paid it back. The interest rate was 5%, that’s was a lot less than what a business loan would have been if I could have gotten one.

Now I’m not a big advocator of debt, and personally I think it wrecks a lot of people and relationships, but if you have got the discipline, a situation that feels comfortable, a business plan, and you believe in it, then go for it.

In your opinion, what classifies as a good mix and a good master?

It all starts with the song. Is the song being conveyed? Can you hear the song? Is the emotion of the song conveyed? Are the vocals audible? One trend these days in indie music, if they don’t have money to record correctly, they trash it out and chalk it up to style. Now that doesn’t do you any good. It’s one thing to sound grungy and be creative about it but if you can’t understand what the singer is saying, then no go. It’s not helping you, it’s not helping the song, it’s not helping anybody listening to it. Vocals are important.

If it’s an instrumental project, as one of my colleagues would say, “Turn up your heroes.” Whenever a 4 minute song passes by, at any given moment in that song, if it’s well thought out and well produced, there’s something going on that should have your attention. That should be audible. If the listener has to strain to hear it, then that’s a mix problem. So a good balance of the instruments is always ideal, but you want whatever your focal point at any given moment to be turned up and transition gracefully throughout the song. It’s like a movie: you don’t want to lose anything in the plot.

Good mastering engineers are just basically polishing off what you have done. If it’s a good mix, they have to do very little. One thing I suggest, especially for young engineers, is get to know a mastering engineer, or someone who’s done it for a while. Get to know them, work with them, send them different versions of mixes and ask for feedback before you send them the final to master – that’s crucial. If you’re mixing an album on a small set of speakers, you probably have no idea that there could be a really bad 40Hz thing going on in there. It helps to talk to people, send them a mix, say, “Throw this up and tell me what you hear.” Most mastering engineers that are worth their salt have a pretty flat system. They’ll be able to tell you if the high end’s off, or the low end’s weird. Work with them, give them what they need to help you either polish what you’ve done or maybe enough take what you’ve done up a step from a B-level mix to an A-level mix.

How has this changed since the introduction of MP3s?

There’s a great book by Geoff Emerick called “Here, There and Everywhere: My life recording the music of The Beatles.” One of the ways you worked your way up at Abbey Road was cutting lacquers. You had to be familiar with that process. So by the time they got to that point that they were mixing records, they were very familiar with the limitations of the end-medium, the final product. They knew what they could and couldn’t do, and where the levels needed to be. They were very in touch with the destination medium. That way of thinking carried on all the way till we got to MP3. An MP3 is different, because now when we‘re mixing records, we mix it, we buy the best convertors, we do all this stuff, take it to a nice mastering house, and they up-sample it to 88.2 or 96k and they master it and dither it back down to 16-bit, before you know it we’ve got a red-book CD master….and what’s the first thing the band does? Rip it to a MP3 and throw it up online. Now, can you see the disconnect?

It used to be we knew the limitations of vinyl, cassette and CD, and everything was produced with those limitations in mind, all the way through the mastering process. Now we’re still focused on a CD generation in terms of production workflow, and then it gets ripped immediately to MP3. I think that’s interesting.

Some bands and artists have embraced this and in the mastering process, they’ve actually mastered the record for CD and then converted the mixes to 320-bit MP3s and then mastered the MP3s. When you’re mastering an MP3 versus a full-bandwidth file – it sounds different, you approach it differently and the compression you use is different. I’m not suggesting a call to arms where everybody does two different versions of their masters; but it’s something to think about.

What MP3s have done is made things convenient for everyone. Be in touch with what your MP3s sound like. Before you go to the mastering stage, convert the mixes to MP3 and listen to them on a big system, listen to them on a pair of headphones. What is it doing? Is it doing something you like to the mix? Can you not tell? Is it doing something you don’t like to the mix? Address that before you master the album.

The other thing I’ll say is going back to the loudness war. The loudness war was all about radio; it was all about how loud we could get it, even though the radio is going to compress it even more. Nowadays, with an iPod, if you don’t like the volume of something, what do you do? You just turn it up.

If you’re able to capture something that’s beautiful and dynamic, don’t sacrifice that just so it is as loud as the latest pop record – it’s not worth it. If it is a pop record and the dynamic’s aren’t important, sure squash it, have fun. People who buy pop records are looking for that.

Tell me about your upcoming book.

A lot of people talk very highly of their parents and I’m in that category. I am very lucky to have parents that cared a lot about me and supported me in what I wanted to do in my life. My mom is still with me and my sister but my dad has passed on. My dad was a quality management consultant. Through his work he developed leadership models, team-building formulas and toured around the world giving lectures and seminars to upper management at major organizations, some of them Fortune 500 companies. He gave me The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey when I was in high school and I gave book reports on it at the time. I was fed this stuff at a young age and I’m very grateful for it now, because it really is a part of who I am and it’s one of the reasons I manage to stay busy and relate to people the way that I do.

A couple of years ago, he’d already written several books so I went to him with an idea. I have never been able to find a music business book or resource that deals with the topics that he taught in the mainstream business world: people skills, creating a business plan, networking, making a personal mission statement, etc. This personal success philosophy isn’t mentioned in the music media either. If you Google how to be successful in the music business, you get information on how to make records or contact lists, etc. There is just not a lot of information out there that tells you how to talk with people and build bridges for yourself and your career. There’s a void there and they don’t teach it in music or audio schools. There was an emanate need for education on how to be successful as a creative person.

My dad and I wrote this book together before he passed away. I’ve been road-testing it over the past year. I’ve done a lot of seminars on entrepreneurship in the music business – lecturing, taking questions, and tweaking. I’m going to be releasing it in late 2011 or early 2012. The title of the book is “Sounds Great! Now What? A personal approach for success in today’s music business.”

It’s geared toward someone who wants to work in music. They go to school or put several years into the business and pay their dues one way or another. Then they come out on the other end, saying “Now what do I do?” We’ve tried to answer that question from the perspective that this all starts inside your own head. As we discussed earlier, this business is about relationships. Here’s how you get organized for yourself. Here’s how to get organized to work with other people. Now take that and combine it with your professional skill sets; whether you’re a musician, an engineer, a producer or a songwriter, etc. Put all those together and see how far it will take you.

To learn more about Mark and for contact info please visit his site: www.markhornsby.com

www.playitloudmusic.com

In today’s industry, do you need to leave the small towns and cities and head for the NYC’s, LA’s and Nashville’s of the world to be successful …?

As much as the industry may change, the fact is people are still going to need Music. A  great live performance is often what makes the difference between making a living from music or paying to have an expensive hobby. With a great live show, you’ll sell album’s, merch, win over fans, and create an experience that the fan will re-live every time they play the music. The question is… can you be successful by staying in your own territory, become a big fish in a small pond? or do you need to make the move to an “LA” or “NYC”?

The concept of 1,000 true fans suggests that a true fan will spend $100 a year on an artist. This includes albums, merch, shows, etc… 1,000 true fans can create nothing short of a good income! But do you need to leave your “pond” or can you find the fans right where you are?

I recently spoke with Jack Conte of Pomplamoose about the couple’s incredible success and how YouTube has helped generate a full-time income from music sales. Although the band has recently completed a mini tour of the US’s east coast, up until this point the band’s success was mostly online. The band created some well edited videos of popular covers and made YouTube’s “suggestions” function work for them. They created artistic videos showing the duo recording covers and uploaded them to YouTube. YouTube’s “suggestions” function helped draw fans of the original artist to Pomplamoose’s versions. Soon enough the videos were getting massive views and the band was adding their original music to the channel too. The point of true success came when they were able to convert their online followers to paying fans. This happened when they released their album “Tribute to Famous People” on iTunes and had 30,000 downloads. Since then the band’s success has only grown and now when the phone rings it’s Toyota and Hyundai asking to synch their music in commercials. We all know how lucrative that can be…

With the power of the internet, you can reach millions of potential fans all over the world.  For bands that are touring independently the cost of touring across the country or making it to international territories can be expensive to say the least. The lure of “touring,” an adventure with band mates, can sometimes be more powerful than common sense… Are you promoting a radio single? Is there PR support? Are there going to be people to see the shows and buy merch? Are there guarantees or are the shows door deals? Is there contracts in place? Have deposits been made? You need to have these things in place for your local gigs, let alone anything further a field.

We know that the Justin Beiber’s of the world are getting discovered on YouTube, and that time and time again YouTube is a major means of discovering talent. Videos make it to major label A&R meetings,  performance is judged from the images before ever seeing the artist live. If they like what they see then they will make arrangements to go to the artist or bring the artist to them to get the live experience.

(Drum roll, please!) So with this in mind, is it really necessary to move to “where the action is”?

………OR  is it better to attract attention through your local following, to have images of performances to excited crowds and comments on your online presence, to be known for THE band to watch from your area… essentially, to be the big fish in the small pond?

Just a little something to pond-er.

Aaron Bethune

www.playitloudmusic.com

Problem is that you can have all the talent in the world but if no one knows about you then who cares? It’s like the musician who doesn’t want to give up any publishing on their songs to a publisher, but in the meantime does nothing to work their catalog themselves. They end up making 100% of nothing instead of 50% of something…

Truth is how many people spend every waking minute writing songs, playing an instrument, singing, performing, recording, touring…? I find it hard to believe that there is not even 30mins in the day to do some social media, some e-mails, etc… These days there are so many apps that allow you to do all you need from your iPhone that there really is no excuse (check out this great example of a viral video that puts Apps to good use). Snapping a shot in the studio with one sentence and posting it to your Facebook, taking a picture of the crowd from the stage and getting people to tag themselves, sending a Tweet out to your fans to meet up when on tour, blogging about each place you visit, video blogging, videos of sound check, the writing process, lyrics, the recording process, etc, etc, etc…

Most people find it hard to know where to begin. When it comes to content you don’t have to always make posts that are directly related to your music. In fact, it would be in your interest to blog about things that interest you. If you like fashion, art, traveling, base jumping, Twister, Scrabble, Super Mario Bros, Finger Puppets, Opera, Climbing, whatever it might be, blog about it! This allows people to have a better idea of who you are and relate to you.

There is endless content on topics that interest you and you can link to them in your posts. If there is a video you find interesting, share it with your fans. Web 2.0 is all about two way communication. To be able to have that type of communication is one of the most valuable tools that exists in the new music industry today.

One of the most followed celebrities on Facebook is Vin Diesel, because he actually posts things about himself, real things, things non- related to his career, photos at his birthday party, hanging with his dog, etc…

Work your craft, hone your skills, become the best you can be, get out and play, learn from mistakes,… but do the business too! The reality is, that as an artist you’re an entrepreneur and a business owner! If you can’t invest time into to all aspects of your own career then no one will!

Aaron Bethune

www.playitloudmusic.com

It depends on the artist and the individual situation. The problem in today’s industry is getting heard above the noise. Anyone can record and release an album digitally, or give it away for free. Unfortunately, there is no quality control as to what reaches the public and what doesn’t. With more music available to the consumer than ever before and with no filters, rising to the top is no easy task.

Something to consider is the fact that if a song is not written by a band member then it is the writers that are going to see no return on the free giveaways. Many bands give their music away with the hopes of generating more fans and consequently more ticket and merch sales, etc… this however does not benefit the writers (except that with more exposure can come more opportunities to license a track).

If you choose to give your digital music away for free it should never be for “nothing;” it needs to be part of a larger marketing plan and at least be in exchange of an e-mail address. You can always sell ‘special deals’ to customers later through your newsletters.

I see musicians making money back from their “free” downloads by building their brand power. If you see yourself as a brand, then touring, merchandise, giving away your music, social media etc… is all marketing that adds to your brand value. There is money in the licensing and publishing side of music but to receive top dollar for a placement you need to prove your brand value. An indie band with little presence online, that isn’t touring, that has low quality photos, and bad product isn’t going to get as much for a synch license or a guarantee at a club, as a band with greater brand power. It all starts with the music, and if you can’t get people to buy it then you are better off giving it away for free.

Brand partnerships are a key element to generating revenue streams. Bands that tour have hundreds of posters put up in the places they play. They create events, posts, radio spots, press releases, have merch stands, websites, mailing lists, followers, a devoted fan base, an appeal to specific demographics,… All these outlets are beneficial to a potential brand partner.

If you can build your brand value, show how others can benefit and be creative as to who you approach for these brand partnerships, making a return on your musical investments is easy.

The industry has changed, fans and bands are able to communicate directly, there is no middle man. With no guaranteed success formula, a ton of new tools, and the ability to be creative, bands have the power to find new ways to get heard above the noise. A good example is a lot of the viral videos that bands are putting out with minimal budgets and a ton of creativity.

Times change and the people that succeed are those able to change with the times. Free music may not be the -end all be all- solution but neither is trying to stick to old models in which album sales paid all the bills. As a professional musician the end goal is to have your music reach the greatest audience possible and make a good living at it in the process.

When I ask people “how do you make money in this industry?” I hear more and more often that it comes from a combination of sources. If you are in an original band you may need to teach, play in a cover band, work a day job in the industry, whatever it takes to call yourself a professional musician. This applies to most industries, you do an array of things you “like” and don’t just to pay the bills. At least you are in an industry you have a passion for, could be worse….

When you realize that your brand has multiple sources of revenue to pull from you should do whatever it takes to make any one of them benefit the greater whole. This ultimately results in an overall greater income.

Aside from the business of music, I have toured and recorded 3 studio albums with two bands, recorded on numerous other sessions, come up with the money to pay studio time, mixing, mastering, artwork and packaging, merchandise, music gear, band vehicles, PR, radio tracking, etc, etc, etc… So when I approach the business I am very aware of what it is to be a musician and I know what it takes to create a product and what the costs are.

One thing that is for sure is that to be in this business you need passion and drive… if you can imagine doing anything else other than music, you shouldn’t be in it. That said you need to be able to put your ego aside, see the big picture and realize what you have is a branded product… So use both sides of the brain to sell it.

Aaron Bethune

www.playitloudmusic.com

Playing from the brain means the performance has been too focused on singing the song correctly, pronouncing the words perfectly, playing precisely, and in the process the performer’s personality is lost. Personality and emotion can also get lost in the editing stage and from bad direction given in the studio.

I guess you could call playing “from the heart” the auditory factor X if you are listening to a song without seeing the performance. A song that is sung from the heart and is performed with emotion hits you, it connects. It’s funny because I remember taking a studio recording class  and dealing with midi. You could get everything so perfectly in time that it would sound robotic, there would be no push, no pull. So, to solve this problem you could use the “humanizer” effect, and what would this do? It would make everything slightly off, not quite so perfect, create push and pull, some tension and release, make it breathe a little.

When you think about how the recording process started, there was no way of perfecting things… “fixing things up in the mix” didn’t exist. In fact, there was no full drum set as everyone recorded in the same room and the drums would have overpowered the other performers. Jump ahead in time to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and you are in the era of multi-tracking and the art of studio magic. People are creating music that would be impossible to play live… It happens all the time today, you get bands showing up to a gig with backing tracks just so they can pull off the record… What worries me is that there are musicians recording albums that not only they cannot perform live, but that have never performed on a stage to a live audience prior to recording… I believe in the approach that you test your songs out on stage and get the crowd’s reaction, that you “own” the song before you record it and that you have an audience waiting to receive it!

In today’s industry, you need to be able to put on an amazing performance, have a great show, so that people want to walk out with your album and re-live the night over and over and buy your t-shirt so as to say “I was there”. It sometimes seems music is being pre-fabricated, and if music is pre-fabricated, “fixed in the mix”, then how can it not come from the brain instead of the heart? If your music, your performance, your reason for being in this business doesn’t come from the heart, if you’re trying too hard, you’re not going to connect with your audience, you’re not going to move the masses, you’re not going to be heard above the noise!

I could ramble on forever but I will leave it at this. If you are interested in this post then I  highly recommend watching a great documentary called “Before The Music Dies”, I saw a screening of it a few years back and have been recommending it ever since.

Aaron Bethune

www.playitloudmusic.com

The purpose of my interviews has been to ask nosy questions that I feel can help further the careers of those who read the answers. For my blogs, I would like to share with you my own opinion to questions that I get asked all the time.

There are two sides to following a career in music. There is the element of being business savvy and doing all the right things from a promotional stand point, and then there is the aspect of simply playing and believing that your music will conquer all. The truth is that neither work without the other.

I read a book called Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner a few years ago and it really made some great points. It talks about reaching effortless mastery, playing perfectly, making every note sound beautiful, and it has a lot of great exercises including meditations. In these meditations, Kenny talks about imagining yourself playing perfectly and trying to re-create that sensation every time you play. He uses examples of playing a semi tone away from the key a song is in (he solos in Ab when the song is in the key of A) and that by believing that every note he plays is beautiful the listener will too. When you listen to Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Charlie Parker, Jaco Pastorious, Ray Charles, Clapton, John Mayer, Bob Marley, Sting or any musician that you can think of, they don’t always play or sing the “right” note. A lot of times if we were to analyze the music we would find that certain notes are not “supposed” to work theoretically. So why do they work? The answer is in a confident delivery and they always know how to resolve. In other words, when you play something with confidence, and you play it like you mean it, then the audience don’t question it, in fact many times they’ll tell you how great your performance was because of your “unexpected” note choices. I am using the example of solos in what I would call improvised organic music but this applies to the delivery of any performance.

When it comes to the music and it’s business, it is important to have confidence in yourself and to take every step like you mean it, nothing half assed! If you don’t believe in yourself no one will. One of the common threads that show up in all the success stories I have witnessed, read about and in the interviews I post here, is that no one that is successful has ever given up! You do what you do confidently and you stick with it. It works the other way too, you take a great song or a great idea and deliver it with no confidence and it won’t come across as credible to the listener.

As a musician you can compare your career to that of an entrepreneur, you build your business from the ground up and you stick to a plan. You set your goals and then you follow your road map. The ultimate life lesson for me was climbing in South America in high altitude. It wasn’t easy and the lack of oxygen didn’t make it easier. I would take ten steps, stop to rest, then keep going. The lesson I learned and have applied ever since is that if you put one step in front of the other and and don’t give up you always reach your goals.

Your bubble gets burst over and over again and if you can’t get back up and keep at it then you’re not cut out to be in it.

You need to have major confidence, realize that there is no one else out there like you, that what you have is unique and above all you need to know you’ll reach your goals. This mentality balanced with being business savvy is the way to success.

Having over nine years of experience in the Entertainment Industry, with a focus in Music and Audio for Video Games, Film, Television, Interactive Media and Commercials, it is fair to say that Stacey is firmly established in this industry! Her credentials range from Music Supervision for Video games including Shaun White and Warhammer, 40,000: Space Marines, to TV series including Queer as Folk and Rookie Blue to movies and documentaries including “The Bang Bang Club” E1 Entertainment, “Textuality” E1 Entertainment, “Cairo Time” Foundry/Samson Films, “Science Of Interrogation” National Geographic, and many more! Not only this but she has been a guest speaker, panelist, and judge at numerous festivals including:

NXNE – Guest Speaker (2011)
Festival Of Games – Moderator (2011)
NARIP – Panelist (2011)
Pop Montreal Music Festival- Moderator (2010)
Juno Music Awards – Judge (2009)
Hockey Night In Canada Anthem Competition – Judge (2008)
The Toronto International Film Festival- Guest Speaker (2007- 2008)
Ontario Media Development Corporation- Panelist (2008)
Interactive Ontario- Panelist (2008)
The Atlantic Film Festival- Panelist (2007)
Canadian Music Week Festival- Panelist (2006)

I first interacted with Stacey when she was working at Vapor music with David Hayman, who’s interview you may remember. Through Stacey I was introduced to Michael Perlmutter whom she has also worked with. Over and over, networking proves to be the most important tool in this industry. I love how Stacey got started in Music Supervision and how it has taken her from Victoria, British Columbia, to The Big Apple, NYC!

Aaron Bethune.

———————

Interview with Stacey Horricks

How did you get started in the music and entertainment business?

It started back in 2001 when I was juggling college with bartending at Suze, a hip martini lounge in Victoria, B.C. Along with shaking martinis in record time, I was also in charge of the music. So if the CDs skipped or conflicted with the ebb and flow of the night, I had to drop my long list of martinis and save everyone’s ears from the severely liquor damaged CDs. I cursed those dreaded CDs and after a couple of weeks of racing between the bar well and stereo, I decided to tackle the problem straight on. So during my free time, I would buy CDs and recompile them to musically suit the vibe of my shift. And from that point on, a funny thing began to happen… what started as a pure annoyance, quickly turned into a passion and I was addicted to creating the ultimate “mood” music compilation. To top that off, people actually loved what I was playing. So much so, I had around 10 customers per shift asking me what CD I was playing, and when they realized that they couldn’t run into a record store to buy it, a few of them chose their martini drinking days around my schedule.

That’s right, I was a ‘glorified DJ’! And it wasn’t long before my boss got wind of this sudden popularity and offered me a side job to revamp their music library. $30 for each CD I compiled – score! But it didn’t stop there.. turns out that a few of those customers who liked my compilations were business owners and slowly approached me one by one to help with creating libraries for their establishments. So, I went with the flow and started compiling music for other restaurants, clothing stores and even a cruise ship.

Then one night, a couple of music supervisors from Toronto sat down at my bar – and we started chatting about our passion for music and mix-tapes. So when I eventually asked them what a music supervisor did, my jaw nearly dropped. I had no idea that outside of a composer, you could actually make a living out of marrying two of my favorite things, music & film. Weeks later, I couldn’t shake that conversation out of my head. Even when I was in the middle of exams, I was dreaming of music supervising the next Donnie Darko.

So I decided to do something drastic. I would drop everything in Victoria…. college, work and even my boyfriend (eek!) and move to Toronto to woo those music supervisors. I cannot deny my tenacity, but without having an education in music, I wasn’t the strongest candidate for an internship. So I fell back on what I was good at – making specialized compilations, but this time I catered it towards the shows these music supervisors were working on. Ten compilations later, I landed a part-time internship that eventually turned into a full-time music coordinator. And after nine years I’m living in New York and have over 35 music supervision credits in film, tv, gaming and sourced music for some of the world’s top brands in advertising.

Now that you’re a music supervisor, how has that changed the way you listen to music, from the perspective that it’s your job?

It’s actually changed quite a bit. Sometimes I get anxious when I listen to music because I instantly relate it to work. If I hear a particular song, riff or lyrics that would have worked great on a project, my mind starts spinning…“Ah, I could have included in my last advertising pitch.” And it doesn’t help that I live in Brooklyn, where so many restaurants, bars, coffee shops and clothing stores are playing something that perks my ears and has me pulling out my “shazam” app. And if I think the song would be great for an upcoming project or client, I download the song off of iTunes or Amazon and file it away.

I’ve noticed you’ve music supervised for a number of different mediums. A lot of people I’ve spoken to specifically deal with reality TV, or movies, or television, or video games. Now that you’re dealing with TV commercials, what would be the biggest difference btw TV commercials, TV shows, movies, video games, etc.?

If I were to break it down, there are different styles that really appeal to different mediums. Ads usually require a definite hook, something to grab attention sonically in addition to the visuals. And with 30 seconds to do so, everything needs to happen fast.

With film and TV, you have much more freedom. Placements are longer, often mixed differently and isn’t really genre specific. I remember back in 2009 we had a month straight of death metal requests and it wasn’t just for one TV show.

With games, I’ve noticed that pace is really important – there needs to be a momentum when it comes to music in games. Games, as visually stunning as they are, face the big problem that they can’t use live actors in their projects, so the music has to be a little bit more dramatic to compensate for the lack of emotion they’re unable to bring to their animated characters. Energy is so important to game developers. A driving rock song – yes. A meandering singer-songwriter ballad – not so much. The exciting news is that things are drastically changing in the video game world, and it won’t be too long before games will require the same music you see in film. In fact, you’re already seeing this with Red Dead Redemption, Braid and LA Noir.

Which mediums gain the most exposure for bands?

That’s a tough question. I would probably side with ads and promotional trailers, just because of the circulation. You see the spot and hear the song maybe 5 times a week. A film you might only see it once, same goes with a television episode (unless it’s the show’s theme song).

How do you give economic value to songs that are being placed in these different mediums?

Songs in ads should always be paid the highest. You’re selling a brand, not someone’s personal story or expression. As for Video Games, I view them as art and believe they should be on the same scale system as film and tv. Large budget games should pay more than the indie games.

How do you find new music?

70% of the time it’s from the labels, publishers and music licensors who send their latest releases via email. I also go out a lot in New York, so live music shows, cafes, bars, lounges and restaurants are also prime resources. When it comes to online, I don’t visit blogs as much as I use to but I do check out the music my friends are posting on their facebook and twitter feeds.

Do you need to have relationships with publishers, labels and libraries, or are the chances of an artist contacting you directly just as good as going through a library or publisher?

The chances aren’t quite as good and it heavily relies in the presentation. We get so many emails from music labels, publishers, licensors and artists in one day we’re not able to hear everything. So if you want to get noticed, know how to market your song in an email. Visually it needs to catch my eye, whether it’s with a smart subject line, promo shot or an intro that draws me in. For instance, the artist might know what projects I am working on and has hand selected a few songs they think will work. Letting me know this within the first 5 – 8 seconds of reading will hold my attention longer than “Hey, I just wrote a couple of songs, are you looking for anything?”

Does it make a difference what it says in the subject line of an email?

I usually try to open up all my emails, but a great subject line goes a long way.

On the subject of emails, how much follow up is too much?

A weekly basis is too much. Check in every two to three weeks, and try to do so with a relaxed tone. From time to time, I get a few anxious emails from artists asking if I have any placements for them. I love their enthusiasm and tenacity but you have to draw the line on when it’s overkill. If the music supervisor is organized and has filed the music for consideration, it still might not get placed for a year, regardless of the song. Even if WE think it’s screams “music placement worthy!”, we might not be able to place it due to what style of music is needed for our projects.

What would be a normal timeline from a submission onwards to when a song is actually placed in the project?

I’d check back in a week and a half to two weeks. Different music supervisors work in different ways. Sometimes they need 2 days to sort through the submissions before they present them to their clients/producers. And if you don’t hear back from them after 3 weeks, chances are your music didn’t get placed.

To contact Stacey and learn more about Massive Music here is all the info you need:

MassiveMusic | Stacey Horricks
New York – Los Angeles – Amsterdam – Shanghai

20 Union Square East, New York, NY 10003 USA
T: +1 646 495 4955
F: +1 646 495 4905
www.massivemusic.com