MuseIQ (NYC) Launches “Recordshop” Music Licensing Catalog, Featuring Indie Artists

Brooklyn-based music licensing specialists MuseIQ  have expanded their MuseIQ Library of production music by adding a new companion module, the “Recordshop”, to the MuseIQ website.

Recordshop is stocked with pre-cleared original songs for synch licensing by indie bands and artists, and is similar to the MuseIQ Library with its streamlined graphic interface and sophisticated search functionality.

The collection was created to give music supervisors for advertising, TV, film and other content fast access to independent artists and bands.

MuseIQ founders Augustus Skinner and Ronan Coleman recruited former Morrissey co-writer and drummer, Spencer Cobrin, to the position of Head of A&R to expedite the growth of the MuseIQ Recordshop. Artists currently available in the Recordshop collection include Neal Casal, Vyvienne Long and Lux Lisbon.

The MuseIQ Recordshop uses the same Borean Search Engine as the MuseIQ Library, which has a client list including Amazon.com, Disney, IBM, Charriol, and Estée Lauder. Mr. Skinner explains the Borean Matrix as a unified language of terms relating to music, with over 3000 terms comprising the sensory, physical and emotional characteristics of music. Basic terms like “dark, city, and happy,” to detailed nuances such as “forbidding, cosmopolitan, and euphoric” are included. Each library track is encoded with 100-150 descriptors by a team of musical experts, then double-checked for accuracy.

 

Decon Records (NYC) Names Mina Louy Director of Music Licensing

NYC-based label Decon Records recently named Mina Louy to the post of Director of Music Licensing.

Prior to joining Decon to coordinate with music supervisors on synch licensing projects for film, TV, commercials and other visual media, Louy relocated to NYC from Los Angeles to produce original compositions for commercials. Advertising campaigns she worked on in that capacity included Mercedes, Nintendo, and Hersheys.

Located downtown, Decon is multifaceted record label/production company/idea shop. Artists currently working with Decon include 88-Keys, Aceyalone, Black Milk, Chali 2na, Classified, Closed Sessions: ATX, Dilated Peoples, Evidence, Freddie Gibbs, Freestyle Fellowship, Gangrene, Goapele, Greneberg, Haiku D’Etat, Jurassic 5, Longevity, Lyrics Born, Nneka, Pusha T, Rakaa, RJD2, Shad, and The Alchemist.

Indaba Music, Getty Images Music Partner to Crowdsource Music for Ads

NYC-based online music creation site Indaba Music has announced a music supervision-related partnership with Getty Images, a creator and distributor of digital media, to help independent musicians and producers get their songs featured in advertisements.

Getty Images Music specializes in commercial music licensing. The company will be regularly connecting with Indaba’s 600,000-member community, with the objective of curating a professional-quality catalog of tracks that fit the up-to-the-minute needs of Getty Images’ client base. Their clientele includes three major broadcast television networks, leading cable television networks, and the music supervisors at top brands in need of the right songs for synch licensing.

The first batch of content sourced through this partnership is entitled “The Hot Sound.” It asked Indaba’s musician community to create original pop songs based on several tracks that showcase current trending production styles – including LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” (which is featured in a Kia commercial), as well as Jennifer Lopez featuring Pitbull’s “On the Floor” and David Guetta featuring Flo Rida & Nicki Minaj’s “Where Them Girls At.”

Getty Images Music will add the resulting tracks to its database and shop them to clients seeking music for advertisements, TV shows, films, web content, and other synch placements. More opportunities will be launching soon.

SynchTank: Streamlining Music Supervision

DITMAS PARK, BROOKLYN: They’re not cavemen by any means, but when you get down to it music supervisors have ridiculously simple needs: These people need the best possible music that they can afford for their project – FAST.

But that deceptively uncomplicated aim can prove logistically taxing. Content, publishing info, song data, video assets, paperwork, and the other things that make a license tick can be spread haphazardly across the globe, challenging even the best-connected rights holder or music supervisor to pull it all together in time for deadline. Sooooo, in the age of the Internet, which has brought us such workflow miracles as Zipcar, why has no one yet made an efficient system that pulls it all together?

Someone has. Operating out of Brooklyn, SynchTank is a solution that makes sense out of music supervision. A thoroughly comprehensive online subscription-based IP management and licensing system, it’s the brainchild of Joel T. Jordan, who realized that a better synch mousetrap was possible while busily running Earthprogram Music, his own music publishing company and a couple small labels over the past two decades.

Putting his shoulder to the wheel, he and business partner Dave Comeau brought SynchTank to life. The result is a truly all-under-one-roof music supervision resource that record labels, publishers, libraries, ad agencies, media producers – anyone who has to think about synch – needs to know about. In this interview, Jordan was only too happy to help spell it out.

When you meet someone for the first time, how do you describe what SynchTank does?
SynchTank is a new online music technology through which anyone with a catalog of music can set up and power their own uniquely designed cloud-based asset management and licensing system.

SynchTank allows them — or any other user with proper clearance — to access their assets online and perform all the tasks that would normally happen in a day of licensing, from search to pitch, to video compositing, license and delivery.  By connecting fragmented offline and online processes with assets and data in one online environment, SynchTank increases levels of efficiency and enables marketing and delivery from virtually anywhere.

That’s definitely something the synch sector can use. Can you drill down deeper into the main functions?
The basic explanation in five steps is that with SynchTank a user can:

1. Search for music by its audible descriptive characteristics — tempo/bpm, key, mood, timbre, vocal pitch, presence, rhythm complexity and more — as well as any combination of writer and publisher information, master or release info, and lyrical content.   We use a sophisticated music analysis algorithm to automatically tag the songs with the relevant audible metadata on upload, making it a breeze to set up a deeply enabled search across thousands of tracks.

2. Save selected music into project or client specific playlists with custom artwork and track notes. Users can access, modify, and pitch any of their playlists at any time.

3. Create online video synchronizations of selected tracks with any uploaded video.  Users can offset a waveform of the track against the picture to determine the potential of a track and video together without ever leaving the browser.

4. Share, pitch, deliver and track playlists, individual songs, saved searches, and video synchs to contact groups or individuals.  Virtually anything on the site can be pitched, and can be sent as a simple email or as fully-branded HTML campaign. Email metrics with detailed information measures the success of each delivery.  Recipients can stream the tracks from the pitch page or download the tracks depending on the access level and resolution set for that delivery.

5. License and download any selected song through an automated process.  Publishers can accept detailed online licensing requests, while master and copyright owners can create pre-defined licenses and prices to offer automated transactions. That effectively lowers the cost of sale for previously uneconomic transactions.

Very thorough. Why did you develop SynchTank? What was the big problem in music supervision/synch that you wanted to attack, and how does this provide the solution?
I’ve had the fun and sometimes perplexing experience of running an indie label and publishing company for the past 20 or so years, so I’m always thinking as a record promoter and for better ways to promote my tracks and artists, especially for licensing opportunities.  I was using all the current methods of the past 5 years – iTunes, Zip, FTP, file-sharing sites, and mailing list programs, but at every step there was some disconnect with applications living offline and online, in different locations, and requiring uploading and downloading and many steps by both parties before the tunes are even heard.   To top it off, to be truly mobile meant I would have to carry my catalog — and computer — around with me wherever I would go.

Enabling my clients and partners to check out my catalog passively beyond sending out discs, hard drives or massive archive files, and then educating them on what was important and why was another story altogether. Even I didn’t know the entire picture of each tune I owned and wanted to be able to see everything about the track all in one centralized location – master info, writer and publishing info, and audible descriptive data.

I figured there must be a better way than spending afternoons at my desk sourcing tracks with only iTunes, gathering tracks, stuffing them into an archive, uploading them somewhere, sending out the link somewhere, and hoping that the recipient downloaded the tracks, unzipped them and put them in their computer or MP3 player.  This is a lot to hope for from a relatively unknown young indie label. Even worse was I wasn’t sending them anywhere that reinforced my brand, my music and my message.

Efficiency didn’t exist as I could only tackle one thing at a time with my limited resources, so any opportunity I could address would mean that another would fall to the wayside.  I was watching gigs pass by and taking gambles on others that might not even pan out. I knew all the steps could all be brought into one environment, allowing me to do all the creative work I was currently doing, but without ever having to leave the browser, work on a specific machine, or be in a specific location.

I imagined it wasn’t just me having these problems of access and delivering the materials in a consistent brand-reinforcing manner, and being able to do it from anywhere in an efficient, great-looking way that leads back to an actual measurable result: a view, click, stream, download, feedback or a license.

So I set out to design a tool that would not only reduce frictions and increase efficiency for me, but would also get the recipient to listen to the tunes with the least amount of steps.

So who stands to benefit most from SynchTank? Who are the different user groups that you’re anticipating?
Anyone interested in accessing and promoting their repertoire without the restrictions of traditional storage and delivery methods.  By traditional I mean what’s been available for the past five years alone.  Our current users are composers, producers, recording artists, bands, publishers, labels, distributors, management companies, production music catalogs, recording studios and synch houses.

I think anyone with creative intellectual property can and should use this software to their advantage.  I figure if you’re going to spend money on a website it might as well be extremely useful and not only generate more business, but help you manage it as well.

Who are some adopters right now?
Since January we’ve launched unique systems with top tier US clients like Primary Wave, IRIS Distribution, Reservoir Media Management, and with international clients ATC Mgmt (UK), CueSongs (UK), and Budde Music (Germany).  We’re now in negotiations with one of the majors, as well as many more indie labels, boutique publishers, digital distributors, and sound designers.

This is a deep system. How would you describe the experience of bringing something like this from concept to reality?
It started off like Superman III: sketched out on a napkin one night in the summer of 2008!  Since then it’s been an exhausting and exhilarating process making it come to life.

It’s been one of the longest projects I’ve personally ever been involved with, but one of the most deeply satisfying experiences as well because we’ve actually solved a real industry- wide problem. It’s been so much work — thought, design, discussing, sketching, programming, rethinking, redesigning, reprogramming — over and over till it’s refined.

The core design and development was done by just two people — myself and my partner Dave Comeau — and not by committee, so we’ve been able to move very quickly.  We’re both relatively talented at what we do — me being the designer, and him being the know-it-all programmer that literally can do it all — so we were able to sketch out the idea and have a working model that actually looked really good in about five months.

After the first beta we spent a year adding on and improving, breaking it up into a series of small projects that would compose the whole system, allowing us to focus without running in 20 directions.  This August will be the start of the fourth year of development and halfway through our first year as a revenue-generating business. There’s really no end in sight to our R&D plans, as the customers are now coming up with great suggestions to make the gear better and better, and we’re at it daily.

It’s great working with the labels and publishers: As they’re getting the benefit of real time development, without any of the risk or expenses of trying to develop and manage long-term high-tech projects internally, we’re benefiting from some of the most creative minds in music, marketing, and licensing helping to shape the product.

It’s a win-win! What have been the other big happy surprises that come with starting a niche-oriented, music industry business like SynchTank. What’s making all that work rewarding and worth the effort?
The biggest surprise was that there was an opportunity to begin with.  When I was initially doing research on existing systems I knew there were systems that did a bit of what I wanted, but upon a deeper look there was nothing out there that was affordable, did all the tasks I had hoped for in one place, and could be designed and modified any which way and without a ton of up front costs.

Now that the gear exists, I can see that I’m not the only one that feels this way, and that’s been the second biggest surprise: How quickly it’s being embraced by many different types of companies at many different levels.  It’s really rewarding to be assisting so many different cool companies with unbelieveable catalogs. We’re helping the industry solve some of its long-standing access and asset management problems, and at the same time helping the industry grow.

On top of what SynchTank is contributing, how do you see the music supervision/synch sector evolving, and why are new solutions for this market still needed – by both music buyers and sellers?
By easing processes and integrating the management, discovery, licensing and promotion of music into one platform, we’re now able to address more business and with higher levels of efficiencies across individuals or organizations.  Through even more automation and computer aid we can shift the gears of the global music licensing economy and enable an even larger, yet-to-be seen music market to emerge.

That’s what we call the big picture! So who inspires you? Let us in on some other business/music innovators who are keeping you motivated.
Steve Wozniak, Jim Henson, and Mark Twain. These days I find just the sheer number of new inventors and operations that have sprung up to support their ideas inspiring. The amount of ingenuity that is happening right now is mind-blowing. At times it’s like watching digital evolution at fast forward, and every day there is a guarantee of something new to learn.   We’re very excited to be a part of this wave of innovation that is shaping new methods and technology.  Thankfully there will always be a problem to solve, and that’s motivation enough.

Amen! What makes NYC the right place to launch SynchTank from?
I’ve been in NYC for 15 years now and I don’t know anywhere else I could get the inspiration, the guidance or the energy from.  If I weren’t in the center of it all, the project probably wouldn’t have clicked as quickly as it did. I can’t imagine being anywhere else trying to do something as in-depth without the given wealth this city offers.

Being here I have been able to seek out advice and expertise on anything and everything music-, copyright-, licensing-, business-, legal- and tech-related from some of the most connected and knowledgeable individuals that call NYC home. I have been able to literally take it to the doorsteps of the intended users and gather real time feedback as it develops.

– David Weiss

Conference Alert: PromaxBDA Arrives in NYC June 28-30

PromaxBDA is the global association for marketing, promotion and design professionals in the entertainment industry. The organization’s annual conference returns to NYC in 2011 this week, June 28-30, at The Hilton, New York at 1335 Avenue of the Americas.

The Conference stands as the world’s largest entertainment marketing, promotion and design event, with high attendance and interest from television networks, cable channels, local stations, station groups, distribution, syndication, media/creative agencies, design and emerging media.

The 3-day event hosts multiple sessions, panels, exhibits, screenings and networking opportunities for attendees, focused on the international business of television marketing, promotion and design.

As a result, PromaxBDA is worth checking out for production music libraries, audio post professionals, and music supervisors who work within the sector. Note that walk-up registration from this point forward is $1,595.

Participants in this year’s conference include Spike Lee, who will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award for creativity; keynote speaker Vice President Al Gore; actor Judah Friedlander of “30 Rock” ; founder and editor-in-chief of Motionographer.com Justin Cone; founder-CEO of IfWeRanTheWorld Cindy Gallop; and COO of Dentsu Network West John Partilla.

Also taking part will Elmore Leonard, author, screenwriter and executive producer of FX’s “Justified”, “Anderson” host Anderson Cooper, former NBC Universal President-CEO Jeff Zucker, PepsiCo’s CMO and Joint Ventures President Jill Beraud, TAXI’s Chairman and Co-Founder Paul Lavoie and modern film title designer Kyle Cooper. Myriad other leaders from the design, creative and music fields will be part of the panels and other sessions taking place throughout the event.

For the full schedule, visit Promax.

Event Alert: Women in Music Present “Sync it Up!” on 6/22

On Wednesday, June 22nd , at 6:30-9 PM, Women in Music will present Sync it Up:  Maximizing Opportunities and Revenue from Music Placement in Film, TV, Advertising, and Gaming.

The event will be held at BMI, 7 World Trade Center, which is at 250 Greenwich Street, New York, NY.

The event is free to WIM members, $15 to non members. RSVP here by 7 PM tonight, 6/21.

As WIM explains it:

“Join Women in Music on June 22nd,  2011 at 6:30pm for an informative discussion on the placement of music in visual media such as film, TV, gaming and advertising and on optimizing license revenue streams.

We have an expert panel comprised of top executives and creators active in the current music placement and licensing world:

Moderated by: Charlie Feldman (VP, Writer-Publisher Relations – BMI)

Panelists include:
Jessica Sobhraj (Co-Founder & Senior VP of Production – SirGroovy.com),
Brooke Primont (VP, Music Placement & Licensing – Razor & Tie),
Rose Adkins (VP, Business Development – Audio Network US),
Janice Ginsberg (Music Supervisor & Film/TV Producer and Consultant),
Ali “Dee” Theodore (President – DeeTown Entertainment)

The panel will, among other things, explore music placement strategies utilized by top executives in the field, online tools that develop and facilitate opportunities, and license deal points that maximize revenue.”

TuneSat LLC Secures a $6 Million Funding Round Led by General Electric Pension Trust

NYC-based TuneSat LLC, an audio fingerprinting technology company that enables music rights holders to track the usage of their music on TV and the Internet, announced today that it has raised over $6 million in a funding round led by General Electric Pension Trust, advised by GE Asset Management.

Scott Jones, Founder and CEO of ChaCha and former CEO and Chairman of Gracenote, together with several existing TuneSat investors, also participated in the round.  Jones and Carlos Monfiglio of GE Asset Management will join TuneSat’s Board of Directors.

According to TuneSat, the company will utilize the new equity capital to expand the global reach of its content monitoring services.

Founded by BMI award-winning “NFL On Fox Theme” composer and producer Scott Schreer, along with composer/producer Chris Woods, TuneSat provides rights holders with near-real time visibility into when and where their music is being performed on TV and the Internet.

The company utilizes a proprietary audio fingerprint technology and monitors hundreds of broadcasters and millions of websites across the globe.  As a result, using TuneSat data, content owners can ensure that they are properly paid for licensed music while protecting themselves against its unauthorized use.

MusicRevolution.com Marks One-Year Anniversary

Online production music marketplace MusicRevolution.com (Trumbull, CT) celebrated its one-year anniversary this week.

The company’s co-founders, Mike Bielenberg and Chris Cardell – both former executives with Jupitermedia – noted that the contributions of hundreds of artists had expanded their production music library to 12,000+ tracks and growing. The tracks are intended for the use of media producers, video producers, filmmakers and other music buyers.

To mark their first anniversary, MusicRevolution.com has created a page of royalty-free music tracks that are free to use in film, broadcast, Web, physical media, video productions or other commercial applications.

Music Seen: Music-to-Picture Hot Picks * Curious Pair by Debate Team

Artist: Debate Team

Song: Curious Pair

Why I Luv It: Remember the 1990s? I do. Vaguely.

One of the things that separates it from now musically is the deep divide between “pop” music that charts and sells and indie bands who write and produce their own music. Save for a few acts that manage to break through, such as The Strokes or Kings of Leon, most music that sells and sells well is glossy, well-produced dance pop hand-delivered to you by an adorable tween.

Gone are the halcyon days of cities that represented small pockets of rock music: Seattle, Austin, Portland, Chapel Hill, the list goes on. One of the genre victims of the death of this trend was power pop. Simple, straight-forward, catchy, pop rock which virtually dominated the 1990s in college charts AND the radio.

So that must mean that Debate Team are either creepers in their mid-40s preying upon this memory (read: Rascal Flatts) or kiddies too young to even remember its existence (read: everyone else). No, the Los Angeles five-piece fall right in between those two categories on their debut EP Debate Team Wins Again.

Sharing members with OK GO, The Hush Sound and OneRepublic, the band has power pop pulsing through its veins and clearly has the formula down for hits. Strongly recalling the underrated Fountains of Wayne or a far less ironic/irritating version of Weezer, Debate Team has revived the genre with hook-filled defibrillators.

Obvious single “Curious Pair” is an insanely catchy pop confection with witty, nursery rhyme-y lyrics that bring to mind elder Canadian poppers Sloan and could very easily be placed in spots across the board.

Scene I Can See It In: The lyrics of the song tell a story about meeting someone on the street who is so similar to you that it’s almost frightening. While at first the narrator is taken aback, it ends up being the one thing that brought these people together.

“For my entire life I thought I was the only one, I thought I was unique
But little did I know that somewhere out there in the world there was another me”

This is exactly what technology companies constantly strive for: “What does your phone/media player say about YOU??” These days with Apple’s dominance of the market, people are less concerned with what their devices say about them and just want to be part of a shared global experience.

I could see this song being used in a spot for another brand’s competing device. “Don’t be part of the herd! Think outside of the box! Be unique!” Most of the lyrics are slightly too specific, but an instrumental version with just a few choice phrases kept in could easily get this across.

“What would it take to make you see that I’m not the only me?”

The device catches on one person at a time as its owners meet other like-minded people because of the product. The shimmering introductory guitars set the stage for separated friends or loved ones, longing for one another and staying in touch only because of their devices. A lonely soul messages someone at night as someone receives it, moments later it in the morning. Both happily stay in touch with the help of this technology and as they go about their day, they encounter more and more people using the very same technology, creating a new shared experience for everyone.

As the spot continues, we get to larger and larger places with more people all of whom are using the device and noticing each other. By the final grand sweep of the song, we pull out of a huge arena during a concert where thousands of them are lit up and held in the air.

The angelic coo’s in the background help take us into outer space where millions of lights now shine all over the planet. While this moment was an impossibility in the 1990s, we can still use its musical influences to soundtrack the shared experiences of today.

Chris Tarantino is a Music Supervisor at Thwak! Music in NYC, a writer for The Village Voice & host of his own radio show on East Village Radio.

Indaba Music: Remix Tracks from Daft Punk’s TRON Soundtrack to Win iPad2, KCRW Airplay, Disney Release

NYC-based Indaba Music is giving its community the chance to remix tracks from the TRON: Legacy original motion picture soundtrack, which was composed and produced by Daft Punk.

The TRON: Legacy soundtrack was the highest charting score soundtrack in over a decade when it was released last December. On April 5, Walt Disney Records will release the remix album TRON: Legacy RECONFIGURED, which features an eclectic mix of acclaimed DJs, remixers and producers including M83, Photek, Moby, Com Truise, and others.

In the Indaba contest, the grand prize winner’s track will be considered for airplay on the well-known radio station KCRW and featured on the KCRW Music Blog, and will have the chance for their winning remix to be released by Walt Disney Records.

The winner will also receive an iPad2 and the TRON: Legacy original motion picture soundtrack deluxe vinyl box set. Ten runners-up will receive the TRON: Legacy original motion picture soundtrack deluxe vinyl box set.

Remixers can work with any of the three songs on the Indaba Music site, “The Grid,” “Derezzed” or “End of Line,” but mashups will not be accepted. There is no limit to the number of entries per person.

Submissions are due by April 27, 2011 at 5:00 PM EDT, and the online voting for 20 finalists ends May 11, 2011 at 5:00 PM EDT. Jason Bentley, the music supervisor for TRON: Legacy and also KCRW’s Music Director and “Host of Morning Becomes Eclectic”, will listen to submissions to determine the Grand Prize Winner, and will select the 10 runners-up from the 20 finalists as chosen by the Indaba community.

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