Audio Naked is a music licensing company that stands by the principle, “Artists are the most important part of the music industry.” TOWERMIX had the opportunity to speak with Brian further about his company and how it started. For more information please visit Audio Naked.
Matthew: With many paths to pursue in the music industry, what influenced you to become involved in music licensing?
Brian: Well, Audio Naked had an interesting start, I am a composer / music producer on the side and I wanted to create a website where I could draw industry people to my site and get my music into TV shows and movies. I have extensive knowledge in online promotion from a previous project and figured I could use my skills to to get people to my site and get songs licensed.
I quickly realized that in order for the site to be successful, it needed to be opened to the public, most music coordinators/supervisors don’t want to go to just one person’s page. It takes too much time to go through artists individually. Having a catalog to sift through with a search feature and an easy way to license music is a big plus for them. This is where I provide 2 services. One service to the artist, to get their music heard and hopefully placed, and one for music supervisors to provide them with quality independent music to add to their productions. Everybody wins
Matthew: What were some important steps you had to consider when bringing a music licensing company to life?
Brian: There are almost too many to count. I’ve learned more in these past 5 months on my own then all of Belmont and most of high school combined.
Just to name a few of the steps I had to consider:
- Getting a functional website that is on the same level if not better than my competitors: with a music supervisor/coordinator friendly music player and shopping cart, which was hell – I don’t have a huge budget so all technical features were done by russian and indian programmers. But for a shockingly small fee and many many hours of communicational mishaps we achieved it.
- Going through all the legal work: setting up an LLC and getting a license agreement together.
- Creating a business plan with goals that have to be strictly followed in order to measure success
- Learning the trade: lots of research about how licensing companies operate, the prices to charge, royalties, how cue sheets work, who to pitch to, what kind of songs are placed, various paper work procedures
- Creating a marketing / promotional plan that outlays the “launch” of the company. I am happy at what has been achieved in a 5 month period with less than 2 hours of promotion and $0 spent on advertisement. All traffic to my website is word of mouth and I’ve received over 1,000 visitors in that 5 month period and have 30 artists from 11 countries.
Matthew: Your company is operated by a small group of independent artists. How did you meet these individuals? How are tasks divided?
Brian: When I wrote that I was working with one other person and two others expressed interest but never followed through, so its a very small group of 2 people. And that even dropped down to just me when school started up. However, I believe in January two new people will join (for real this time). The one that was working with me and then got to busy is a talented music based journalist that I’ve known since high school. She worked with me over the summer with many aspects of the start up process.
Matthew: Is there a formula for song placement, or does it vary from artist to artist?
Brian: Song placements definitely vary from artist to artist, and frankly its amazing how many artists don’t think they’re music could be placed. This is a very interesting industry and in some ways it’s a lot easier for artists to get placements then one would think. I know that many times, especially in the TV and FIlm sector that a song of a certain style is needed and its as simple as that, it doesn’t have to be an amazing song or even a good song, but just a piece of music that fits the production and is good background noise.
From my point of view, finding placements requires an outside of the box approach. There are virtually limitless opportunities out there, and its a matter of using your imagination to find the right production for the right song.
Matthew: When starting a new company, how do you build relationships with music supervisors and directors?
Brian: I have a 3 fold approach:
1. Meeting them personally through film festivals.
2. Contacting supervisors over the internet and showing them what Audio Naked has to offer as well as suggested songs for their production. I have researching music supervisors for certain TV shows and movies I am looking to get placements in as well as researching past selections they’ve made for productions. I do this to get a feel for who they are and their style, and believe it will help procure placements.
3. My main goal, however, is to focus on site promotion and marketing in order to drive supervisors to the site. From there they can choose whatever songs they’re interested in. I am just trying to give them a “store” for which they can get what they need. I’ve heard that music supervisors really like sites like this, so in a way relationships aren’t as imperative to me as traffic and just getting the word out and focusing on good music. I was told by a very reputable individual in the music industry that placements aren’t the issue, its finding good music. Thankfully I’ve been able to attract very talented artists and so I feel that Audio Naked’s future is very bright.
Matthew: Who are some artists that you are currently working with at Audio Naked?
Brian: Currently there are about 30 artists signed up with Audio Naked. I’ll stress that the goal is to work with independent artists so no one will know these artists, and we’ll most likely never have mainstream artists because that’s not the goal. I think its interesting that at the beginning of this company I considered just being open to the US, I am glad I changed my mind, some of my best artists are from abroad. I’ll just mention a couple of artists that really stand out to me:
Justin Nihiser - Amazing variety of styles and great songs, already has placements in Mastercard and Wii commercials and was very enthusiastic about joining Audio Naked.
Canty & Orest Productions: very talented US / Sweden duo - of which I am currently working on landing them a spot for a popular TV show
Clive Richardson - Incredible instrumentalist / beat maker from the UK that, I’ll be pitching some of his songs to video game producers personally in the near future.
Esselfortium - Belmont’s very own Michael Mancuso, great instrumentalist, happy to have him
Florian - Incredibly talented Austrian instrumentalist
Landon Austin & Colorfire - great music, happy to have them in the catalog
I’ve got some really great acts in the process of signing up, the artist roster looks like it will double by the end of January.
