This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
Alex Lasarenko has been making his living at writing and recording music for over twenty years and currently runs his own studio making music for commercials, film and TV. You may or may not have heard of Alex but you have heard his music. He has placed music in ads by Volvo, Lockheed, Sierra Mist, Volvo and Mercedes Benz and on HBO, A&E, PBS, Court TV, TNT, Disney Channel and several feature films.
I met Alex in his studio Tonal Sound in the West 20s… I sat down and before I got a chance to start recording he said:
Alex:
You have to believe that what you are doing is the right thing to do. Because there will be a ton of people telling you what you do is just shit… It really is a rollercoaster ride. Which is a problem if you don’t like rollercoasters.
So I guess bring me back to the beginning to how your career in music started…
Alex:
Well I’m from Ohio from a family of working class immigrants so there was nothing in my background that suggested that moving to New York was the right thing to do. I was getting a degree in piano performance. There was nothing in my cards that said I should move to New York and start a band.
But that’s what you did?
Alex:
Yes I moved to New York and started off paying keys and writing all the music with a partner Chris Ocasek who would write all the lyrics. We started in a band around age 21 and got signed to EMI / Manhattan records by Bruce Lundevall. Bruce was probably the nicest gentleman and a great first person to meet in the music business. It was an excellent experience. Someone must have thought something of what we were writing. I think it was partly that and partly that EMI was looking to exploit Chris’ lineage (Chris is Rick Ocasek’s son).
What did you guys do up until the point of getting signed?
Alex:
We were always writing music and playing out locally. Since I was classically trained and Chris wasn’t it was an interesting combination. Performing live was never my favorite I used to get very nervous or sick.
So Touring musician was never your first pick of careers?
Alex:
No, and the band was never set up to be like that it anyway, it was more like a studio project. The label wound up trying to take away what the band was and wound up trying to promote the record we made as the Chris Ocasek project. I wound up suing the label. So very early on I learned how to stand up for myself. I wound up winning and got the courts to prevent the record from being released as something that it wasn’t.
Wow, I didn’t realize that.
Alex:
It was an interesting experience that uh…you can be this kind of flakey creative artist but it is the business of art and the art of business…the two are intertwined no matter what you think, whether you like it or not.
So you were in your early 20s and you were signed for a year or a year and a half and I am guessing the lawsuit ended that?
Alex:
Yea
And the left you with a degree in Piano Performance and living in New York?
Alex:
Yes, the producer of the record that Chris and I made was Jonathan Elias and he got so sick of the whole label’s behavior he left so I wound up doing the whole record myself with an engineer
Was that your first time behind the board?
Alex:
Yes – Jonathan left to do a Duran Duran record after the problems started to surface with the label and I wound up producing the EMI record myself. You know, sometimes you get thrown into the deep end of the pool and you either sink or you swim. I always knew what I wanted to do musically, that came naturally so it was easy for me to get it done. When the lawsuit happened I wound up broke and I had a half an onion and I would literally sit in the lobby at Elias studios twelve hours a day waiting on their client meetings to be done so I could go in an eat something that was left over- that was how I ate for 4-5 months
So tell me about Elias studios-
Alex:
Elias was a large commercial music house, at that time it was on its way down as Jonathan has lost some interest in it. Jonathan’s brother told me if I was going to sit there all day I might as well write something so I did and it wound up winning some business for the studio. I wound up writing several pieces of music that won business for the studio and after six months they made him the creative director of the company.
From eating leftover food in the conference room to creative director in six months, not bad…
Alex:
(Laughs) yea it was $25,000 a year. For me, that was Huge! It was amazing I could afford socks; I could afford to eat and get a shared apartment. And I just worked my ass off…
Music Consultant:
So for you it was your songwriting and the production and engineering skills you picked up along the way?
Alex:
Yep, working on and producing commercials was a great lesson because I would do that from 9:30 in the morning until nine at night and then I would work on an album until early in the morning.
Did you ever have any thoughts of going back to band life?
Alex:
No after the lawsuit it was kind of over…but it was a great experience to learn that you can’t let people take advantage of you. And every time I have let me guard down or didn’t go with my gut instinct on that I have gotten burned.
Gothca. So one of the reasons I wanted to interview you Alex is one of the questions I get most often doing what I do is “can you get my music into film and TV and video games?” Now you are someone who makes you living on creating custom pieces of music for those kinds of things. Do you have any advice for people on how to get their music placed in those kinds of situations?
Alex:
Well it’s a different kind of a business (creating custom music vs. licensing tracks off of an existing album)…Making an album is a full time job, marketing it is a full time job…and it’s usually a thankless and unappreciated job…but I think it would be hard I don’t know what to tell you if you have one album’s worth of material…. Most people respond better to a body of work unless you have a hit- that makes it easier. When we license music it is because we have a library of material to choose from…
Does having more material help do you think?
Alex:
… I think content is king. If you have great success with a band and get traction then whoever you are working with will be able to get it in front of music supervisors…if you ant a long term relationship with music in movies and TV then you have to meet and talk to as many music supervisors you can and get to know them and what kind of music they use…I’ll talk to anyone, it’s interesting what you can learn when you are willing to talk to anybody.
How did you cope with the jaded attitudes you likely encountered when meeting music supervisors as a composer just getting in to the business? Is there any advice you can give about getting heard by these people?
Alex:
I made a decision that I was going to devote five years to scoring a movie. What I had to do was create music that was worth being in a movie. I think that nobody would take me seriously unless I had music that they could hear visually – music that they could see being part of their project. Our studio tends to score entire films rather than just portions of films, which is rare. What I have noticed that music supervisors tend to work within a certain budget. Some do 25-50 million dollar budget films
Of course the music budgets for those films is considerably less…
Alex:
Oh, considerably less…and then there are other music supervisors that do 1-10 million dollar films. I’ve noticed that when these music supervisors step up into the next category up they tend not to return your calls (laughs)…I guess their feeling is that they are now at a higher level…
When it comes to licensing and music supervisors I think that anytime that you can talk to somebody and get your music in front of them I mean what’s the worst thing that could happen- they say no? I mean you are going to hear no a lot in this business… And you have to be dumb enough to believe that they are wrong (when they say no)…I know that sounds stupid but when someone says no you have to believe that they are wrong and you are right.
I am sure that you know a ton of people who you came up with and played with who are no longer in the business- they either heard no too many times or couldn’t hack it and got straight gigs…
Alex:
Well some of them actually went on to be pretty big too…
Sure…but from what you have seen from those who made it who have either continued to make a living at music or have gone on to be hugely successful is there a defining quality that leads to that enduring success?
Alex:
I never chased the glamorous portions of the business so it was easier for me to stay in the business…but the people I know who fell away were not able to adapt they were unable to move past their niche. I know a woman who was one of the best oboe players in the world in my opinion and she no longer plays, she takes botanical photographs now.
So the ability to adapt…?
Alex:
If you are the best oboe player in the world and all of a sudden there are 3,000 plugins with great oboe sounds that don’t require a real person to come in for a session then…you’re in trouble. Ten years ago I used to file 300 AFM contracts per year. Last year we did two… I’ve had to adapt to, you have to make do what you have these days.
Any other advice?
Alex:
Well, while I everyone was out doing coke in the 80s I was in the studio doing work during the day and making time for my own songwriting at night…it’s a lot of work to make a living this way… You can always write music on your own but if you want it to blossom into something epic or beautiful or cinematic you have to keep the hamster wheel going… I would get Pneumonia and I would still go to work, work has to get done…
How did you know you were doing the right thing?
Alex:
The best thing that happened to me was a corporate coach came into Elias and asked me with no one else around – “what do you want?”… I gave him the corporate line but he asked again- no – “what do you want”…. What I wanted was to win an academy award for bet original score… all this shit fell away when I realized what I wanted.
You are lucky that your day job supports you in your goal
Alex:
Absolutely…you know someone is always throwing shit at you but you have to always believe that what you are doing is worthwhile…
Your skill that kept you in the game has been your songwriting and applying that to corporate needs- how did some of your peers use their skills to stay in the game, was it session work or waiting tables or…?
Alex:
Yes, Session work, people that do custom studio work like I do… I mean everyone is having trouble but…I don’t really know, I do know some great players. We all have to do the odd job here and there. The motto at tonal is we will talk to anyone, we will do anything…
Do you get calls for sound a-likes?
Alex:
No, we don’t much anymore, rates have come down most people can afford the originals…you also have tons of small studios looking to break in who will work for free.
Would you warn someone against doing tracks for free?
Alex:
My feeling is if you are doing music for free, what do you think of yourself? This is a business and we provide a service. This whole notion that you have to demo for free for an online free when agencies are still charging their clients a lot of money. People often ask me “should I do this track for free?” and I always say – “do you think you are worth nothing?”
Enough said about that…
Alex:
It’s a nerve wracking moment in business right now…everyone is walking around like a zombie…in the end if you believe what you are writing is great it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks
One final question- would you do anything different?
Alex:
No, no regrets.
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You can check out Alex’s work @ http://www.tonalsound.com
Jonathan Cargill is a partner in the Labels Jagjaguwar, Secretly Canadian, Dead Oceans and the companies Bellwether Manufacturing and SC Distribution. He makes management decisions for all of these companies but his areas of expertise are publicity and music licensing / placement. Jonathan and his partners have had a great deal of success of late with artists like Bon Iver, Black Mountain, Okkervil River and Antony and the Johnsons.
First of all – tell me how you got into the business and wound up running all these different companies?
JC:
I knew I was going to be involved with music. I thought I was going to be a rock star, but I definitely learned very early that I wasn’t going to be a rock star. I was managing a cafeteria at a university dormitory, and one of my employees – someone I had connected with and who had similar musical tastes and career aspirations – ended up being my partner Chris Swanson. After talking for at least a year, we decided, “Let’s just jump in and do this.” So he called upon his brother, and we pooled our collective savings. We knew of an artist, so we raised the money to press his CD. And once we had the CD, we realized we had to do something with these. We jumped in and figured it out and made a lot of calls and found distributors and a store. We just got some lucky breaks early on to the point where we had distributors and their attention, and it grew from there.
About how long ago was this and which of these companies came first?
JC:
This was Secretly Canadian in 1996. Our first release was an album called “Gloria Hole” by June Panic, which came out September of 1996. It just grew from there, to give you more in-depth background about what goes on here in Bloomington, Indiana. After a couple years of doing Secretly Canadian, we connected with Darius Van Arman who was running Jagjaguar Records by himself in Charlottesville, VA. We connected with him because we saw some early Jagjaguar releases in stores that were compared to Secretly Canadian artists, which made us intrigued. We got to know Darius, and in 1998, Darius moved Jagjaguar from Charlottesville to Bloomington to hang out with us and have a little brain trust of struggling labels. From there, things kind of happened organically. We also have Bellwether Manufacturing and SE Distribution running out of our office. Those came about organically because we realized we were paying too much to get our CD’s manufactured. So we did a bunch of research and cut out the middleman and started working with CD manufacturing plants directly. That’s pretty much how distribution came about, because we a) didn’t have distribution and b) the people we worked with weren’t paying, so we took matters into our own hands.
Fast forward to today- we run the companies Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguar, Dead Oceans, Bellwether Manufacturing and SE Distribution out of our offices.
You are a partner in all of these companies but what are your areas of expertise?
JC:
From the beginning, we all realized that we’re all partners and we all make macro decisions, but we have to specialize and have a division of labor. We found that pretty naturally, because we had people that were interested or had the expertise. Since there were four of us with four different backgrounds, we naturally went to our own positions. For the first eleven years I was the publicist for Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguar. Then as we hired more publicists, my role morphed. That’s when I got into the film and TV licensing. That happened out of necessity because we were getting a lot of inquiries and not really knowing what to do with them or how to handle them. I stepped up to learn how to do all that.
I am guessing that because the phone was ringing you were able to build relationships and did a handful of cold calling as well to build up a roster of people to place with? Is that how that worked?
JC:
Definitely. I did it the same way I built up the Rolodex of publicity contacts but with film and TV executives. It was figuring out who’s who and how to contact them.
You really had to build this from scratch.
JC:
Yeah, but I don’t know what else I was doing, so I figured I’d just jump in and make it work. The first six years of Secretly Canadian, I also had a full-time job. It was just a super hobby, because the label was also another 40 hours. It got to the point where something had to give, and I decided to follow rock and roll. It was really a tough decision because I was taking a large pay cut and jumping into the unknown, but I just knew it was something I wanted to do.
Musician Coaching: What attracts you to an artist that makes you consider putting their records out on either of the labels you work with? What do you look for in an artist?
JC: It’s a mixture of things that makes an artist attractive. The gateway is the music, and it has to be unanimous that we’re feeling the same about the music. There are times where someone is on the fence or didn’t like it, but there’s a due process for any band that someone really likes. We all have to connect on it. The magic combo is artists that make great music, aren’t afraid to work, achieve the things they want and just aren’t assholes. That’s kind of the way we look at it. We’ve been pretty fortunate with finding artists who have these qualities.
The way we look at it is we’re not in the business to release one record by a band and then try to cash in and walk away from it. There are a lot of labels that do that, and that’s not what we’re about. It’s a partnership. “We’ll bust our ass for you and this is what we can offer.” We don’t tell them this, but it’s an understanding, “We hope that you’ll bust your ass and do such and such thing. Don’t be afraid to tour, connect with your fans with your website or MySpace. Do things that bands should be doing if they want to get heard.” I think symbiotic relationships are ultimately the most successful.
How are you finding the role of being a label now that there are so many tools are in artists’ hands?
JC:
There are definitely bands that I don’t know why they come to us because they act like they don’t need us or necessarily want us, and that’s fine. There are plenty of bands that can do that. We’re really transparent and say, “This is who we are, this is what we offer, this is what we think we can do.”
In your particular case that’s your licensing and PR relationships. What do the others focus on?
JC:
We have robust and timely accounting. We’re very transparent. The steps we take can be seen by our artists. They get their statements from us, and they know what we spent and where we spent it and the money they made, where it’s all going. That’s a big thing. I think there are labels that don’t do well with accounting. We have in-house manufacturing and distribution, so we know they’ll get a quality product; their albums are going to look good and sound great. We also have a network to get their CD’s in stores or onto digital service providers.
I would guess you are getting good placement in the indie retailers that matter.
JC:
I think so. We’ve had relationships with these stores for over a decade now. That’s particularly good for us, because all members of the label are also project managers. We all have our own bands that we work with. If they have any questions or there’s any problem with the distribution, we can just walk over there and ask why there aren’t CD’s in a particular store, etc.
What advice would you give for artists looking to get more press and looking to get their material licensed?
JC:
I think for press, it’s easier now than ever. The whole blog explosion has definitely leveled the playing field a bit. First of all, I think it’s good for a band to be very realistic. If you think you recorded an album and now you’re going to be on the cover of Alternative Press, it doesn’t work that way. I personally think it’s easy for bands – especially unsigned bands – to create a ground swell that will attract the attention of labels, booking agents, promoters, bigger publications. I think that’s been the big revolution in media recently.
Do you think by going after enough attainable periodicals and blogs, someone can snowball that into getting bigger and better press and opportunities?
JC:
I think so. Especially f a band can couple that with being on the road a lot. It’s always good for a band to tour as much as they can and as much as they can afford. That’s where you’re going to connect with your audience. That’s what I want. If I hear a record I really like, I want to go see them and see how they do it live and get a sense of their personality. I think that’s what drives fans and what being a fan is. That’s how you attract them – by creating an attention. Blogs can do that, and if you have some blog in Minneapolis talking about your band and show up in a week or a couple days, it starts to connect. People remember your name and they tell their friends. I think the whole grassroots thing is incredibly important and very strong.
What about on the licensing front?
JC:
That’s a different beast. There are plenty of success stories of unknown bands getting key placements. With bigger magazines – if you’re shooting for Rolling Stone – you’re someone at the mercy of the editor. If the editor likes it, then he assigns it to a writer. I think it’s the same way with licensing to film and TV. You have to find the right music supervisor. They either have to really like it, or it just has to be the perfect song for the perfect scene. That’s the wild card with film and TV. It has to be right for the scene. It’s hard for some bands to understand that, and they ask, “How come we’re not on Grey’s Anatomy?”
I would imagine it’s a lot easier for you than for an artist doing this on their own, because you’re calling constantly and not just with one band’s worth of material.
JC:
Right. I also get a lot of searches for supervisors that will call looking for the perfect cue for a scene, and it’s incredibly specific. A lot of times, I just don’t have anything for that. 90% of the time it’s that way. That could be anything. But that connection is, you just have to get you music heard by the right people. Because when the right scene comes up and you have the perfect song for it, it’s going to happen. You just have to make sure they know to look for your song.
Any advice on doing that? Get your music heard in a way that’s not obtrusive?
JC:
Finding these people is not that hard – that’s what Google is for. There are hundreds of people selling mailing lists. I don’t know the validity of those places, but when I started, I went online and for $30 bought a mailing list that had music contacts of film production and TV production companies, or directly to music supervisors and just started sending them music. Sending the CD in the mail is not obtrusive at all because that’s these people’s job. Their job is to absorb as much music as they can so they can find a perfect home for it. They are actually seeking music, you just have to meet their demand. It’s obtrusive if you’re calling them every day saying, “Hey – place my music in Grey’s Anatomy.”
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Check out what Jonathan and his partners are up to at Jagjaguwar, Secretly Canadian, Dead Oceans, Bellwether Manufacturing and SC Distribution
Larry Mills is the director of music products for Getty Images – the parent company of Pump Audio.
What is it that you do for Getty / Pump Audio?
LM: I am the director of Music Products for Getty Images. My job entails helping to develop our current catalogue of music, which include Pump Audio, our premium playlist catalogue and Royalty Free Music, which came over in the Getty Images acquisition of Jupiter Images. Those three current products and then developing any products or catalogues from a content standpoint are some of my responsibilities, as is bringing in partners such as record labels, digital distributors, publishing companies and aggregators of content, whoever they may be. I also work on developing strategies from a sales standpoint and rolling that out on a global level to educate, train and support our sales teams around the world. These strategies help them sell more music into their current sales clients, which range from everyone from advertising agencies, digital content creators, publishers, corporations and every major media company in the world. I also develop an online strategy to get the freelance and small online one- and two-person shops to come in and have an easy way to get music for their individual and small business projects.
For the purposes of this discussion let’s talk about Pump Audio as that is the company that would be most valuable to an independent artist. How much independent music are you placing on an annual basis with Pump Audio?
LM: In our current catalogue we’ve had over 40,000 artists submit music to us in the nine or ten years we’ve been around. Every song is listened to by our team of classifiers to separate the good from the bad. We currently have over 125,000 songs that have been classified as “good enough” to make our catalogue. We have 40,000 of those tracks online and two delivery methods: our online soundtrack tool and our Pump Box, which is a hard drive for more professional, high-volume users – the major production companies and broadcasters like the MTVs and NBCs of the world. The hard drive has 35,000 tracks, and the remaining tracks are used as the on-deck circle and put online. We put anywhere 3,000-4,000 new tracks per month into the online tool. Those tracks are used for research or are potentially songs that fall into categories where we already have a lot of music. We don’t want to overwhelm the person searching and listening. A search return of 6,000 songs is not going to be in anyone’s interest. We pay out anywhere from 5,000-10,000 artists every six months. We license hundreds of thousands of tracks in a given year.
What are some of the qualities of the type of music that you license and that gets placed? What tips would you give to someone that wants to work with Pump Audio?
LM: I think initially it’s very important to know that if you are going to submit music to any licensing service, the majority of the volume licensers like us look for instrumental music. I would recommend that any artist who submits to always make an instrumental version of every track. So if you’re going to put a song on your record with lyrics, you should spin off another copy that’s an instrumental version. That is the majority of music that is used in big-blanket deals. If you watch television and movies, most of the music that is background music is instrumental. That’s the high-volume music. If you go online and listen to the music that’s being played on videos or on Web sites, more often than not that music is instrumental. A lot of people miss this. Following this tip will also give you a greater chance on an international level. The second tip is, we find that stylistically it really is a mixed bag, but it’s usually what’s popular in the day that is popular in licensing. For background music electronic, moody stuff – whether that mood be positive, negative, upbeat, downbeat – is very popular. Depending on the time, we’ve seen an uptick in hip hop or teen pop or country or harder rock. It crosses all genres.
Can you point to any particular long-term success stories in the Pump Catalogue?
LM: We have some of those stories, and we can point to some people who have had more success outside the U.S. that have opened up some touring opportunities for themselves. We had one artist that placed a song on a Portuguese soap opera and was actually able to tour Europe with it because the person was able to get fans through the Web. I think a company like ours is less about getting an artist to get a song in a big commercial or on a TV show and more about being the bank. We are about making you money on your music. Any of those things that help you with promotion your career are positive bi-products but I don’t think very often you’re going to see companies like ours breaking bands. It’s not what we’re built for. It does happen, but it’s more about artists that came with us and were able to become professional musicians. We’ve had people that have been able to take the money they make with us and buy a van so they were able to tour better. I think a lot of people looked at the licensing landscape as, “I don’t mind giving it for free if I think I’m going to get promotion.” I don’t think that’s the case anymore. The “Grey’s Anatomy”s of the world helping with Snow Patrol or the Fray, those were bands on major labels to begin with. I don’t think that’s necessarily the best way to do it. The goal should be when you come to people like us is to look at us as a volume play to make you money to then invest in your career. I think other people dangle the carrot and say, “If you do it for free, we’ll get you this or that,” but 90% of the time, that’s not how it plays out. I think the reality of what a company like Pump does is important. As the guy who founded the company said, “The only thing I can promise is, if I get paid, you get paid. I don’t promise that you’re going to become a star because of this.”
Tell me about the splits.
LM: Artists get 35% of the sync license and we administer the publishing for the uses that we place. We re-register the tracks so we know if we placed it or the artist placed it. If we get something in a show, we share in that revenue, and if the artist gets something in a show, we don’t touch it. This isn’t a publishing deal. If we place it, we take 50% of the publisher’s share. So basically 25 cents on the dollar of the entire performing rights revenue. We actually collect that around the world because we place things globally. We have a deal with Kobalt Music Publishing, and they help us register and collect the money around the world. We’re seeing performance revenue from Singapore, Australia, Romania, Turkey, South America, etc.
So artists don’t have to go to the P.R.O.s (Performance Royalties Organizations) in other countries to get that revenue. How do you respond to concerns from artists who are interested in signing up with Pump but are also interested in getting publishing deals in the future?
LM: Our deals are totally non-exclusive, and there’s just a period of time it takes us to get tracks off the system. It’s very easy to get them off our online system, but more difficult to get them off our Pump Box that sits on people’s desktops all over the world. So there’s a certain period of time in our contract that allows us to continue licensing that track for ease of use by our clients. But you can pull out of this deal at any time. We are big supporters of the independent music scene and have paid out millions upon millions of dollars to independent artists in the last ten years. You could say that next to record labels we support the independent music community more than anyone. We hope the money people are making with us is some leverage into dealing with a publishing company. My opinion would be that if I was a publishing company looking at an artist working with Pump, taking it out of our library does you a disservice. You should be able to negotiate with that publishing company and say, “I’m making $50,000 per year with Pump, so pulling me off that catalogue is in no one’s best interest.”
What percentage of people that apply get into the Pump catalogue?
LM: My guess is that we get anywhere from 5,000-10,000 new tracks submitted to us on a monthly basis and we average 2,000-2500 new tracks making it in to the syste,. So, I guess about 25-50% of new music gets accepted. Once an artist in our system and gets placed we tend to accept their new tracks faster.
Any advice for artists about things to be wary with services like Pump?
LM: I think an artist should be in as many of these as possible. There are a lot of very good ones out there that have been very successful. I don’t care if someone makes you $100 per year. Your songs should be earning for you wherever possible. I think the two key things you should be wary of is exclusivity if you don’t want it and how the service claims to be or not be royalty free. Royalty free is a term that is being misused and is confusing to clients who believe when they buy music from these sites that there are no performance royalties due, and that is not true for affiliated artists. I think they need to be very careful when they are signing up or they may get caught in a situation where the client is buying something that is different from expected and might put the artist in a funny situation.
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If you are interested in licensing your music check out Pump Audio
