Featured Track: “Brief Pause” by Solxis Music For the first time in his life, my 16-year old son is experiencing the intricacies of being – and having – a “wing-man”. He recently updated me on his social life and, while he spoke, I wished Solxis Music’s “Brief Pause” was playing in the background. That’s because […]

Our Clash of The Music Titans series has been documenting the ongoing drama between ASCAP, BMI, SoundExchange, record labels and the U.S. Government; in their efforts to pay fair royalty rates to musicians. In today’s installment, we’ll answer the question: “How exactly do I get paid if my music is streamed on Pandora?” The short answer is…SoundExchange, […]

This week, we continue our feature of music created by musicians who are NOT members of Performing Rights Organizations such as ASCAP & PRS. You can subscribe to any of these streams here. 1) Retail Dreams When you wander into a trendy clothing store, you don’t recognize every song lulling you to the cash register. […]

A push back we sometimes get from business owners when discussing NonPRO music for their retail locations is their concern about quality. “If these musicians don’t belong to a union, are they any good?” they say. Background music is a business market like any other. And currently it’s over regulated; which creates opportunities. Like the […]

1) Monster, Inc – “Getting Started” What’s most remarkable about the first three spots on our list is that they were created by NBC’s in-house agency. That’s crazy because a TV network’s role is normally just to host the game and collect the checks. But at a time when NBC shareholders demand revenue growth in […]

As music publishers, our job is to help musicians make money. As such, we’ve never steered musicians one way or another in terms of which performing rights organization is best for them to join. When we launched years ago, our assumption was that ASCAP and BMI were basically equal; in terms of responsiveness and in […]

1) Genesis – “We Don’t Ask” The sheer might of Audra Mae’s vocals is what drives this spot. For years, Mae has been a contributing writer and vocalist for The All-American Rejects, Sons of Anarchy (TV Show) and Avicii. Nice to finally see her name on the marquis. Agency: Innocean USA – Huntington Beach Music: […]

In the late 90’s, whenever clients asked me to compose electronica tracks, I would secretly roll my eyes. To me, the music of Kraftwerk and Vangelis lacked warmth. Sure, techno was easy enough to create in a home studio and it was lucrative to do projects without musician costs. But I didn’t get the genre. […]

In 1975, a young untested film director wrapped production on his first major studio film. He was feeling hopeless because although the script called for several shots of a giant shark, the mechanical creature created by his art department failed through most of the shoot. And because most of the principal photography was done on […]

TunesMap is an app you can run simultaneously with Apple Music to see visuals that correspond to whatever song you’re listening to. It was recently featured in the New York Times. This is an open letter to founder/creators G. Marc Roswell, Erik Loyer, Jon Blaufard, Nigel Grainge: Gentlemen, as a person who’s built and managed […]