Josh Rabinowitz is the Senior Vice President/Director of Music for Grey Worldwide. He is also Bandleader of the New York City-based funk group The Second Step, a group that has been actively performing for nearly 20 years. In the past decade, he has written and produced several thousand tracks for brands throughout the world. He has worked on ad campaigns with brands like Cover Girl and Dr. Pepper, and artists such as Rihanna, the Black Eyed Peas, Run DMC, Cyndi Lauper and Natasha Bedingfield. He has also worked on music for films including Waking the Dead and Arlington Road. In 2008, Josh created the record label Pantene/Grey Music, which was the first imprint to release music as a joint venture between a brand and its agency. Josh is also an adjunct Professor of Music at The New School and has taught a course on “Music in the Media” at the Steinhardt School of Music Professions at NYU. He is also an occasional contributor to Billboard magazine.

 

 

Recently, I connected with Josh, and he shared the story about his unique journey in the music and advertising industries. He also delivered some sound advice for artists that want to build a solid career in music.

 

 

Musician Coaching:

 

Thanks so much for taking some time to talk to me, Josh. I actually opened up for the Second Step when I was a kid. I was playing in a funk band, and anything with horns ended up on the same bill, often enough. You guys were ska back then. How did you come to be in the music business?

 

JR:

 

We eventually became a funk band. We started out as a ska band. I joined the band in 1987 and then became the leader of the group and took over the business aspect of the band. I booked all the shows. We were a touring band for a while doing 200-plus shows per year for a while. That’s what I was doing for a living at that time, if you can call it a living. During those years, the band was eight or nine people. Now we’re a seven-piece band. We still play gigs occasionally. In the summertime we’ll play on Block Island, in the Hamptons, or play a private party. We enjoy it. And when it’s a hobby, it’s a lot more fun than when you’re depending on all these gigs to pay bills and feed yourself.

 

Musician Coaching:

There are certainly easier ways to make money, no question about it.

 

JR:

But it was an interesting learning experience. My problem was that after I came out of college, I wanted to get into music and was really passionate about it. I just didn’t have any great connections. I didn’t have any family members that were involved in music, and neither my parents nor I had any friends that were involved in the business of music at all. I really didn’t have a foot in the door or a way of getting my foot in the door. That was kind of disconcerting for me.

 

I tried over the years to get a job. And a lot of the experiences I had with taking the band on the road, being a producer in the studio and as a side musician being a trombone player I felt like I had decent real life resume. I had gone to a music and arts high school in Manhattan and was one of the top students. I thought I had some skills and abilities. But I had no way of really connecting them to money in terms of a job. I tried all kinds of things.

 

Musician Coaching:

That’s a door that a lot of guys that are getting older or having families, but still want to stay in the business or play music as a hobby are trying to get through. How have you been able to find success with that?

 

JR:

 

It’s interesting, because I graduated college at 22 and didn’t get a job until I was 31. So, I eventually got through by banging my head against the wall, trying to connect with people I didn’t really know or have great hookups to – just doing everything I could. It was in the age where email wasn’t happening yet. So, it was a lot of faxing of resumes, cold calls and then doing whatever I could to just get by, which was essentially playing in the band, which was my main source of income. I was also a substitute music teacher and a music teacher in a public school. My daughter and son ended up both going there. And I was also a sideman on gigs.

 

I guess what happened was that it came to a point where I didn’t really have any promising possibilities. A lot of people told me, “I’d love to have you working in our A&R department,” or, “I’d love to have you work in our main agent booking gigs,” or, “You should definitely come work in our management department.” I got approached with a lot of things that I felt were really exciting and that would turn into something. But they didn’t.

 

Then, I met some guy, and he said, “I’ve been in the music business for years, and one facet of the industry that seems really interesting is the advertising music sector – the jingle houses.”

 

Musician Coaching:

 

And which year was this?

 

JR:

This was when I was about 30. So, it was about 1994.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

So, at that time, music and advertising wasn’t big yet. It wasn’t cool.

 

JR:

 

It definitely wasn’t cool. And I knew some people that were doing it that I had played with. They talked about how they did these sessions and then got paid session fees. And then they’d go to the union and get some checks. Then, I also knew some people who would just sing in ads and would get crazy money in the mail. I still thought of it as a sell out and not real music. And I was fairly principled, but I did need a job.

 

I didn’t have a way to find out the names of the different jingle houses. Obviously, there was no Google. I would ask people about it, but then finding the phone numbers and information was really hard. I remember once I walked into Barnes and Noble and found a book about advertising. There were a couple pages that listed some of the jingle houses. And I tore the pages out. I think I still have those pages folded up somewhere in a memorabilia folder.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

That’s a great story.

JR:

Yeah. It’s funny to think about now. I found out about some of these places and sent a whole bunch of faxes. And then a guy called me and said, “Why don’t you come in, and we’ll give it a shot? I’m looking for a guy who isn’t really been in the business and hasn’t been jaded by the business.” And point I had borrowed a couple hundred dollars from my sister and bought a one-way ticket to New Orleans. As a trombone player, I figured, if I was going to be a starving musician, why not try to do it in a place where someone at least supports the type of playing I was doing? And even today, it’s amazing how many trombone players you hear about that are coming out of there and surviving doing it. So, maybe I made a mistake!

 

But, I took a job with this guy at a company called JSM. His name was John Silberman. And I worked with him for a few months. Once I got my foot in the door, I said, “Alright, I’m 31-years old. I have to make something happen.” So, I learned the business, which didn’t seem too complex to me. And I met a lot of the people. I went to parties, and I read all the industry trades and saw who was doing what. I was in the business, so it was a good way to meet people.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

It sounds like you really drank it up, unlike somebody like myself, who stumbled into the business early and took it for granted. It seems like you wrung the life out of it and really seized every opportunity once you got your foot in the door.

 

JR:

Yeah. I really needed to. I came from a nice, Jewish, middle-class Brooklyn family of professionals. And although there were some pretty unique experiences I look back on now fondly – in my 20s, it felt like, “Everyone is doing pretty well. The economy’s not doing badly. Why can’t I get a job doing what I love?” Obviously, to be able to sustain yourself doing what you love and playing music is kind of like winning the lottery in some respects; it’s very hard to do it. Certainly, I got pretty lucky and got my foot in the door.

 

JSM didn’t work out very well for me in terms of being long term. But I had my eye on the people who were the big-time hitters in the business. And there was a conglomerate called tomandandy. It was two guys that had a place in SoHo on Greene Street and a place out in Santa Monica. And they were doing some really cool film work and cutting-edge advertising work.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

And when you were at JSM, were you supervising spots or hiring musicians? What kind of role did you start out having when you got into the business?

 

JR:

I was hiring musicians, I was working on projects and was the point person between the music company and composers, engineers, musicians and advertising agency production people.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

So, you had to speak a collection of languages.

 

JR:

 

Yes. It’s useful knowing the language and balancing it with the business practices, and it was just about that and being a good and reliable person; those are all key skills in any business. It was also creating original music. Essentially, I created some jingles with singing in them, but a lot of instrumental music.

 

Then I started working at this place tomandandy, and they were working with “cooler” people and on more creative projects. I was hired as a producer and contractor of musicians and then became the executive producer there. I worked there for several years there. The problem I had with that business was the reality in the industry that if you are a truly creative spirit and have some sort of creative vision and think your work is great, that doesn’t necessarily mean the people you are selling to think it is great. And it was hard for me to swallow that. I wasn’t very good at taking the hits.

 

Then I thought, “What can I do next in this business? I can start my own company. But I can’t take the hits very well. Or, I could move over to the other side and be the person who’s hiring people to do the music. Maybe I can soften the blows and try to make some cool things happen.” And the advertising agencies were already my clients. So, there was an opening I’d heard about at one of the big ad agencies called Young and Rubicam (Y&R). And I connected well with them, and got the job. I ended up working there for seven years. That was probably 1998. And at that point, people were starting to license music a lot more for ads.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

Right. Well, the Cadillac commercial with Led Zeppelin was in the late ‘90s. It’s the one I always think of as blowing the doors wide open.

 

JR:

 

Yeah. That was an important one. There were a few in the late ‘90s. Sting had one where they used his song “Desert Rose.” He licensed it gratis to Jaguar. They used it, and it actually really helped boost his record sales. Moby was also starting to get in on it, and there was a great deal of attention around him. It was almost like you were clicking the remote to your TV and seeing classic rock radio station after classic rock radio station. But it was mostly famous, well-known songs, and not songs from emerging artists. Eventually, of course, it became about emerging artists.

 

When I got to Y&R I was responsible for specific accounts and the music used in those accounts, including creating original music – which was almost the entirety of it – and some licensing of existing songs. And I got lucky enough to work with a bunch of artists, because this was a time when artists were seeking revenue opportunities and getting paid pretty decent money to be part of an ad, whether in the ad itself or writing the music for the ad. I got to work with an array of people, like the Black Eyed Peas before they were famous. I worked with Run DMC, LL Cool J, Celia Cruz, Mark McGrath, Macy Gray – there were a bunch. I also did a spot with an artist named Alana Davis who was critically acclaimed, but not necessarily a huge name. We did a spot where they put a chyron on the spot that listed the name of the artist, the song and where you can download it. We also did a synergized deal with Sony Records where we released a CD single of a version of a Crosby, Stills and Nash song that was on an ad. It got a lot of attention around the time of the Super Bowl.

 

Fortunately, I’ve been involved in some projects that have been bucking the trend and ahead of the curve. So, I’ve been able to get some press and create a name for myself. Eventually, there was an opening at Grey, where they wanted someone to head their music group and bring some mojo to it. They hired me about six years ago. At Grey, we’ve done a bunch of cool things, and I’ve had some great opportunities. I’ve been able to do a lot of moderating of panels and some op-ed work. I was a columnist at Billboard for a while doing a column called “With the Brand.” I’ve done a lot of extra-curricular work.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

Another reason I wanted to talk to you is because you’re very good at managing your own personal brand, which these days it’s good for every musician to be able to do. You’re someone who is paying real attention to how you’re perceived in the modern era. And that’s important. It’s not just self-preserving; it’s self sustaining.

 

JR:

 

I think of it as self-sustaining. That’s totally the phrase I use. In any field that’s associated with the media, entertainment and music, you have to be self-sustaining in appropriate ways. There are inappropriate people who are completely self-serving. The way I look at it is, it’s very hard to survive doing any kind of music work consistently. And certainly, with the way the economy is, it’s just becoming incredibly challenging. We are all feeling the strain.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

You’ve been a musician concurrent to your executive career, so you have a unique perspective. How is the business changing, and what should musicians be doing in order to get their music licensed? It seems like there are just so many options, because you can sign up with so many aggregators, etc.

 

JR:

 

If I were an artist trying to get my music licensed, I would be networking as much as possible, going to conferences and meeting as many people as I can. And then obviously if you’re an artist, after feeling like you’ve developed a decent sense of who the good and reliable people to work with are, get someone to represent you, or just be entrepreneurial and represent yourself. The DIY thing is in full effect. I feel like unless you’re just such a prolific creator that you just don’t have time to multitask, sell your own work and create your own matrix of connections, do it yourself. Create your own website. Create meaningful relationships. Do things on spec. And really show your value, your creativity and your reliability.

 

There are people that are completely entrenched in their work and can’t step away. I’m always jealous of those people, because I’ve never been able to do that.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

Nor have I. It’s too much left brain and right brain for me too, which is how I probably ended up on the business side of it.

 

I’ve had a taste of what you’ve been talking about a little bit, though not to the extent that you have. I had a “desk where dreams go to die.” And as such, it can be really overwhelming and hard to give people the attention people deserve. I always try to put it into perspective for people and say that if they go up to someone like you with two albums and you have Sony on the other line calling with all of Western music, it’s not really a contest. Do you have any advice for artists that are approaching music supervisors like yourself?

 

JR:

 

What gets my attention – and there are just so many things that sometimes I can’t even begin to handle it – is if somebody knows somebody I know, and if that person is somebody I like and respect. That’s how I will connect with somebody and at least give their music a listen – how they become a blip on my radar. For me, that’s literally what it is.

 

There’s great music out there. I created playlist after playlist of songs in my early years that I thought were the most creative and interesting songs to me. And I would kill to get that artist involved in some type of work I was doing. And I also have favorite artists from my experiences over the years and a gazillion friends I grew up with. I grew up in New York, so I just know a lot of people. But it’s not always the stuff I like that will get the air.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

You’re ultimately beholden to each client’s needs, I would guess.

 

JR:

 

Yes. It’s a totally collaborative process. So unfortunately, my vision isn’t always the vision. However, I am the one who’s guiding the process and trying to sell the work to all these different participants, whether it’s a specific client, the creative directors, art directors, producers or the account director on my side. Sometimes there are about ten cooks in the kitchen. But I am the one who is ultimately responsible for the music, so I am in control of the process to an extent and try to manage it well. I try to make it work. And what making it work means is that it’s not always about the thing I think is the greatest; it’s about what collectively everyone involved thinks is the greatest. I’m managing expectations of people and trying to give the group what they want. It’s great when it’s just one person I’m working with who is the ultimate decider, but that’s not necessarily the case.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

I would imagine that especially with the size of the accounts that Grey handles, you’re constantly having to placate a number of different entities.

 

JR:

Yes. And everyone loves music. Everyone is passionate about music – or at least 95% of the population, especially people in the creative and media-related marketing fields. Music is such a powerful thing and so subjective.

 

I remember reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,  by Tom Wolfe. And there was a word – “intersubjectivity.” He said when people took drugs they came to this intersubjectivity. That’s kind of what I do. I try to create an intersubjectivity where everyone is liking something.

 

Musician Coaching:

 

That is politically not an easy portal to keep open, is it?

 

JR:

It’s very challenging. Now, if I have a vision for something, and I think it’s going to be just groundbreaking, or if I’m involved with a project, and I can tell something is going to get a lot of attention and be positive towards my brand and great for the brand we’re working for and the brand of my agency, I’m going to fight. I try not to give up. And those instances come up occasionally. But there are some projects you work on that are impossible to make great and satisfying. It’s not necessarily what’s they’re about. It’s about scoring a concept or a story or underscoring or creating a bed for something – to steal a line from Brian Eno – that’s “as ignorable as it is interesting.” So, it’s not really about making a huge statement.

 

Musician Coaching:

Sure. Not everything’s going to be an iTunes commercial.

 

Your story is definitely an interesting one that a lot of people would like to emulate. Do you have any parting words of advice for musicians and young music business professionals?

 

JR:

 

Try to create a meaningful relationship with someone like me that is a gatekeeper to music, or someone who can actually get you paid some money for your work. To me, it’s about having a deep pool of connections and not just pinpointing one or two people. What’s great about the business I’m in is that there are a lot of really interesting people. So the journey in terms of creating meaningful relationships with these people is a fun journey. You’re going to struggle, but it’s not like working in tax law or computer coding, where it’s arduous, detailed work. It’s fun and creative. There is a lot of music flowing, and a lot of people who are as passionate as you are to make their art happen and to monetize that creativity. In that journey, you’re going to meet a lot of interesting people. You’re also going to meet some freaks and have some disappointments. My problem was that I wasn’t enjoying the journey enough at some points because I was getting too tense and stressed. It is ultimately fun if you can enjoy it.

 

To learn more about Josh Rabinowitz and his work, check out JoshRabinowitzMusic.com.

Bill Meadows is the Executive Integrated Producer of Music, Celebrity Talent and Public Works at the very successful advertising agency Crispin, Porter & Bogusky.  By way of being a frustrated lawyer who offset his discontent by being in bands and DJ-ing Bill has been working with the agency’s creatives and clients to integrate music, celebrity and brands for the last eight years at Crispin.  Bill has placed music in far too many successful campaigns to list here.

Music Consultant:

Tell me what a day in your life is like. You do more than just music. You’re really looking to incorporate music celebrity with the brands the ad agency’s clients – correct?

BM:

Yes. My job involves everything related to music and then I do celebrity talent negotiations as well. To a degree I get involved in events with the “Public Works Team.” If the event involves music or celebrities, or if we want to book a band or a DJ or a new venue owner, I might get involved with that. I’d say 99% of our content has music or sound involved with it and I’m involved in procuring the appropriate music for TV spots, interactive work, etc., everything from national campaigns down to award shows. There’s a creative element to working with the ad agency’s teams that are involved, to try to find what they’re looking for and perhaps make suggestions, but ultimately get them what they’re looking for, because it’s their baby. I’m there to help them and hopefully help them make their work better under their guidance, as it’s their creative project. Certainly a big part of everything I do is the business side to negotiating the terms of the deal.  That can be anything from hiring a music house to compose a musical score or licensing a track by an existing artist from labels and publishers or even stock library music.

Music Consultant:

Could you estimate what percentage of the music you use is by original artists?

BM:

I hesitate because it’s cyclical. It’s rather unpredictable. This doesn’t exactly answer your question, but my instinct is that the more dialogue-driven the spot is, the less chance there is we’re going to use a known artist.  I am fortunate to work at a highly creative agency, and there is a lot of dialogue-driven content. Certainly less than half of what we use is from an existing artist – meaning a vital, working artist.  Yes – more than 50% of our stuff is composed for the spot.

Music Consultant:

You’ve been a musician, so you know about running around with a demo and trying to get arrested with it. What would you say to somebody who is an aspiring artist or an artist who is a work-a-day artist and not a known quantity yet to get your attention?

BM:

I’ve never worked at a major label, but it’s probably not too different.   I get loads of demos and stuff in the mail every day.  I fully respect everyone that’s sending me stuff and the music they’re sending me, but it’s just that there aren’t enough hours in the day to give the stuff I get the appropriate attention. Blindly sending stuff isn’t necessarily the worst thing you can do, but it’s hard to prioritize listening to things when there’s so much coming in. I think one comment I made on a panel last year was that basically think about what would you do to get on the radio before? People nurture their relationships with radio. An artist would go to radio and get interviewed and play a song in the studio and nurture that relationship on a personal level. I think in a way I’m contradicting myself because I certainly may not have enough time to meet everyone personally but there are a lot of people like me out there.

There are a lot of ad agencies and a lot of ad agencies that don’t have music producers. Letting people out there know about you and that you’re great is best done in person. I think touring artists should certainly make efforts. For example, I’ve had a lot of people – even platinum artists – perform in our lobby for people at the agency because they want to get to know us. It’s certainly well appreciated and starts a dialogue and a relationship amongst the parties. Even if something doesn’t happen immediately and we don’t license a song the next day, those people are always at the front of our mind because you had a personal connection with them. If I were in a band right now and my focus was to promote my band, I’d figure out where there were advertising industry conferences and try to go play shows on site during the day acoustic or try to play the after party and get in front of the decision makers and influencers in the system, with reasonable expectations of the results – not expecting necessarily that there will be a meeting within the next week to bag a giant national ad campaign. But starting a grassroots network of those people and staying in touch with them and working it on a personal level is really important.  So, say you’re at a show and you’re playing at a show in Atlanta. Figure out what ad agencies are in Atlanta and figure out who are the creatives there – the writers, art directors and the producers or people who have music in their titles.  Try to go by there during lunch and bring five pizzas and an acoustic set, and invite everyone to your show that night. Put them on the guest list and send them all zip files of your tracks. Nurture that network of people, because it’s not likely that you’re going to get on the radio. You have a much better chance of getting exposure through the platform of advertising and media buys than through the platform of radio. Also, there’s nothing speculative about the cash flow. If they like the song, in 30 or 60 days you get a check. It’s not like, “I’m going to make an album and hopefully someone downloads a song or buys the album.” It’s real money in your pocket. It’s really mostly about the personal relationships and developing that network, in my opinion.

Music Consultant:

Tell me about third-party aggregators. The companies out there like Pump Audio who is part of Getty Image and there seem to be more of them every day. Do you ever use aggregators like that who develop relationships because they have a wide catalogue and stuff that’s easy to clear? Is that a viable way to get heard?

BM:

If you want the honest truth, I did business with Pump Audio for the first time this week. I think we licensed a song from there. Nobody’s ever promoted it to me. I’m aware they are a big entity and do tons of business so I’m sure they must have something great going on. To a degree, I tell people that come to me – make no mistake, I hope you print this – I don’t hold myself up as some music industry expert, because I’m not. I’m just an educated outsider to the workings of the industry of selling music. But a couple people have come to me – artists I know – and have said, “Hey, I got a publishing deal with a big publisher. What do you think?”  If someone is asking me that, I want them to get the most attention they can from the people that are working on their behalf.   My instinct would be to assume that if you are with big aggregator with hundreds of thousands of songs maybe you would get lost in the shuffle and not the individualized attention that you need to promote your music. But I don’t know that to be the case, because as I said, I’m not on the “music industry” side of the equation.

Music Consultant:

My philosophy is, if they’re non-exclusive and you still promote yourself, sign up.

BM:

Yeah, I like the idea of non-exclusive but I don’t think you can rely on aggregators alone. If it’s part of a number of things you do to promote your music, then that’s the call. Perhaps it leads to other things. Someone likes the songs, and maybe the person that licenses it comes back and says, “You know who was great? So-and-so.” And then they go back to it and it opens the door to a relationship.  So perhaps to that end, have a comprehensive approach with the aggregator being one part of that.

Music Consultant:

Tell me about the decision making process. You like a song, and how many people chime in at the ad agency? How does that decision usually come about?

BM:

There’s a creative approval process that has multiple levels. I might suggest certain songs, but ultimately it’s somebody else’s creative project, I’m there to facilitate someone else’s creative vision. My role is slightly creative and deal making and hustling. I want to be creative, but you’re always deferential to a creative’s opinion, because in their mind they see it a certain way or hear it a certain way. I’m there to try to interpret what they’re saying and to get what they want. There are various levels of approval. When the agency has an agency-approved, internally-approved song, it is extremely rare that the client has ever disagreed with our music choice. There’s only one time in eight years that  a client ever brought up a discussion about music we had chosen. The only way it may be an issue is if after we’re in the process we decide we really like this one song that’s by a super famous artist that exceeds our budget, and we have to go back to rework our budget and get more money to get another song. They might push back on that because of budgetary issues, but creatively it just never happens that a client pushes back. It’s strictly an internal process.

Music Consultant:

Speaking of budgetary constraints, how often do you have a call for sound alikes? How often do you conversation with someone and say, “Hey, I need something that sounds like ACDC because I don’t have the two million dollar budget?”

BM:

The term “sound alike” is problematic and is never a term I want to hear anybody use at Crispin. When you’re creating a sound alike, presumably you are trying to create something that sounds like something you can’t afford, and you’re asking for a whole list of legal issues. It’s a creative and legal minefield. I never endeavor to sound just like any other song. First of all, I want to open up our minds to different types of music and not say, “We have to have one thing.” By the same token, you don’t know what people are going to do. If you made the mistake of saying, “We’re looking at certain song A.” It’s really easy for someone to go into the studio and try to rip that song off and say, “Oh, we had this song lying around.” I don’t want that kind of situation. I don’t want to be put in a situation where I’m involved in trying to get close to sounding just like any other song so I do everything I can to avoid tainting the process.

Music Consultant:

I commend you, because there are a lot of people who are in the knockoff business.

BM:

There are. It must’ve been five straight years of Coldplay “Clocks” rip-offs on the air. How have they not sued any number of places for ripping that song off? I felt like every time I turned the television on, there was something with that exact same stuttered drumbeat and piano. There’s so much music and so much great music in every genre that is available to be licensed that there is no reason you should have to create a sound alike. It’s creatively narrow minded to say, “We really love this Beatles or Led Zeppelin or AC/DC song, and we have to have that or something that sounds identical to it.” That’s just lame and means you’re lazy and not open to listening to other music and creatively exploring what options there are to make your spot great. That’s just lazy. There are too many great artists that are known and unknown and too many great pieces of music that are available to be licensed at reasonable prices that you can get that can make that spot great without going to the originals. It’s just lazy and lame to rip songs off.

Music Consultant:

Are there places you look online for music? When you’re not looking for a human being, is it random Internet search, or … ?

BM:

Having been at this for a while,  I know a lot of people with a lot of great music.  When I know styles of music or budgets of music or whether we’re looking for big artists or mid-sized artists, or we don’t care which type of artist and know what the task at hand is in my mind people will pop up to contact.

Music Consultant:

Which archetype of person?

BM:

In interest of efficiency, I trust if someone’s pitching me music, they know their catalogue of 20,000 songs a lot better than I do.  People have organized their music and know how to navigate their catalogue and find what I want a lot faster than I can look online at their catalogue. In that type of situation, I’ll go to publishers or labels or third parties. There are third-party individuals or companies that will take a whole label’s catalogue or have ten labels they represent.  I like those people, depending on what it is, your regular catalogues and labels. I’ll also contact bands’ management directly. Sometimes if I know an artist and I don’t know who their management is, but I know the artist and I will contact that artist directly. All of the above. As you might imagine, I have thousands of CDs on my shelf. Once in a blue moon I’ll be on the shelf looking for something, but the reality is the person out there who’s pitching music knows their catalogue best. If I go to them and say, “Hey, this is what I’m looking for, etc,” and then I reach out to a number of those people I get a lot of music in and filter through stuff and figure out what’s appropriate and filter out what’s not appropriate. You don’t want to give a creative too much stuff. You don’t want to give them 100 songs, because they don’t have time to listen to it. I like to give them about fifteen songs around, so they can rip through it pretty quickly and maybe pick five things from that they want to put to picture.

Music Consultant:

Any parting words of advice you might have for people trying to get your attention? How about do nots? What is the most common do nots?

BM:

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but if you’re just going to send me something in the mail, I have to have a reason to open it up. If I get ten padded envelopes or CDs a day in the mail and they’re all that manila color and there’s a printed out label with my address on it, I need a reason to open it, not because I’m a snob, but I get a lot of mail and while part of my job is to open mail I also have many other tasks.  If I open something and there’s a CD with a magic marker or sharpie-written thing that says, “Bob’s Music,” it gives me a reason to not listen to it. If you don’t take enough pride in your product to represent it properly, it’s hard for me to spend the energy to check it out. Present your product as if it’s the only shot you’re ever going to make. In no way take that as that I am too snobby or cool to listen to it.   Just the sheer volume is such that you should take pride in all aspects of your work and career. If you’re not confident and passionate enough in what you’re presenting then it’s hard for me to get psyched about it.

I think blindly sending mail doesn’t do anything. You need to call, e-mail and be patient. And calling me isn’t ever annoying. I respect the fact that people are trying to hustle and make a career. It’s not at all annoying to me to receive an e-mail once a week or two from someone or a phone message. I shouldn’t be the only person you’re doing it to. You should be doing it to 100 people. I’m one guy at one agency. I think people see it as just the fact that they got me on the phone means they’ve reached the finish line. “I got him on the phone, I sent him my CD … now the money’s going to start rolling in.” Maybe there’s a letdown when a month later they say, “Hey, what’s up? You haven’t licensed any of my music yet.” I tell everybody who I deal with pretty much that if you’re patient with me and have an on-going dialogue, at some point we’re probably going to hit on something.

There are people I’ve known for years that I still keep in contact with, and for whatever reason it’s never resulted in them getting cut a check. There are other people that have hit me up on Facebook, and I’ve met them somewhere and had lunch, and a month later, we hit a deal. There are a lot of factors beyond their control and my control that determine whether or not we’re going to connect. So, work your network, stay on top of people. There’s a fine line between it being a little over the top and staying on people’s radar. You have to stay on people’s radar because of the amount of people that are calling. Even if I love someone to death, and they’re super cool, if I haven’t talked to them in five months, it’s not in the front part of my brain to get in touch with them.

I think another interesting thing is that some of the most influential music people by the nature of the process are editors. A lot of time stuff comes because an editor starts cutting some music as part of a demo spot and it may influence the director as to where the music goes.  So, if you have any friends that are editors, definitely give them your songs. I think one thing that’s super important too is to have instrumentals at the ready, and also to have your stems at the ready as well. Lyrics can be a great thing and make something really hit, but more likely than not you have a better shot at placing something instrumental. Don’t just try to push your version with vocals, but have the instrumentals with them. Its’ hard for things to sync up lyrically with a campaign, and additionally, if it’s a dialogue-heavy spot, creatively it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have vocals conflicting with the dialogue, because it distracts from what you’re trying to do with the dialogue. Frequently I say, “Can I get an instrumental of this?” And the person says, “Oh, I don’t know. I have to find my producer” or “I have to find my engineer.” Having those versions ready is vital. Having your stems available is also definitely important. A song may be great for something, but there might be some issue with timing or how it times out in a spot. You want the song to come in at a certain point and you need someone that’s mixing it and editing it on the sound side to hit the transitions in an exact spot, you can’t do that with someone’s MP3 with vocals on it. You need instrumentals or splits so they can chop them up to get really specific. Having those is really important.

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