Speaker 1: 0:00

You know, I feel that trying to just crank stuff out, that's great if the brief calls for it and the situation calls for it. But if you're going to build something for yourself, if you're going to build your own brand, if you're going to build your own catalog, do something that's unique. Find a voice that might not be out there. You know, combine, you know Latin nylon string guitar with, like you know, nine inch nails, beats, or something that just opens up and look, will it maybe get licensed as much as your typical top 40 hip hop? Maybe not, but I want to see something fresh and different.

Speaker 2: 0:50

What is happening. Everybody, this is Dave Kroff, and welcome back to another episode of the 52Q's podcast, a weekly podcast dedicated to all things production and library music, where we talk about industry topics and take deep dives into the different aspects of being a working production music composer. If this is your first time here, welcome, whether you're watching on YouTube or listening to the audio podcast on the go. I just want to thank you for joining me today, and this episode is made possible thanks to the support of the family, friends and patron subscribers of 52Q's, who help keep the podcast, the channel and everything running. We are 100% community supported, so you're not going to hear any sponsored segments for mattresses or meal plans. But if you want to learn more about how you can help support 52Q's while also unlocking extra perks like live streams, workshops, zoom coaching sessions and a ton more, then be sure to click on the links in the description for more information.

Speaker 2: 1:46

You know, one of the things we really like doing here on the channel is bringing you industry professionals those decision makers who help get our music on TV. It's one thing to talk about the industry from a composer's perspective, but I think it's super valuable to hear from the publisher's perspective. So I'm really excited to welcome to the show Jason Moss, co-founder of Bulletproof Bear. I am so glad to be joined on the podcast by Jason Moss, partner and founder of Bulletproof Bear. Is that right, founder?

Speaker 1: 2:22

Yeah, One of the fun One of three slash four.

Speaker 2: 2:28

We have three other partners in Bullet it is so good to have you on the show we zoomed before earlier and I don't know, you just meet people and you're like, ah, he's my people. And so I feel and it's not just a beard thing either, right, it's just really I don't know. There are people out in the industry that you just kind of resonate with, which I think is it's the currency in the industry, is relationship, and this is how it looks. It's not super formal and you know hello, mr Moss Esquire, nice to meet you.

Speaker 2: 3:04

Right exactly Robot, I am professional. It's all about being real and being authentic, and I really enjoyed our chat that we had, and so I had to bring you on the show to give the library's perspective, and that's what I really want to talk about today. But first, man, how are you doing? Welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Thank you. I'm good, you know, monday getting my ducks in a row. I appreciate you, dave. I appreciate what you're doing. You know I saw some of your YouTube videos and you know I wanted to connect with you because I was just kind of. You know, look, there's a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of guys selling stuff and, you know, throwing down the philosophy, and then there's the guys that really know what they're talking about and I felt, when I heard you and there's other YouTube, you know composer guys out there too that I like and respect. But I just connected with you. I felt like, ok, beard, no hair, you know click and you know just the message and the way you were delivering your message was really authentic and came from a lot of heart, I could tell, and so I'm honored to, you know, be included in your channel.

Speaker 2: 4:21

Well, thank you. Thank you so much for the kind words and it's all about just sharing the love. You know it's like there's so much music that needs to get made and, as I mentioned, relationship is still the currency of the industry. Being good is just a small part of a career, and so being able to meet new people to kind of welcome them into your circle and then to have you onto the show to share, like I said, the library's perspective and so really, really valuable and so. But before we get into that, like most publishers I know you didn't, you know graduate or you didn't come out, you know of school or whatever going. I want to publish your path, you know, as a composer and a songwriter and all of that. Before we get into you know the business of being a publisher. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got there.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Yeah, you know, I used to have hair and I want to be a rock star like all of us and just did the whole band thing and the songwriting thing and move around a lot and was trying to find my footing. When I was in college I started interning in New York City at music houses and so that was the first step was getting into these commercial music houses and learning about, you know, tv commercials and I always love TV commercials and I love the short form format and so I interned. I was like a junior peon. Then I became a peon, you know. You kind of got higher and higher. The abuse was beautiful, thick skin. I mean. The horrible, verbally abusive stories are all true that you've heard, you know.

Speaker 2: 6:11

It could be a bumpy ride up to the top.

Speaker 1: 6:13

It was a bumpy ride. I'm still climbing and yeah, so you know was doing that. I started singing on some jingles and then pitching for demos. Then my path took me to Phoenix, arizona. I figured big fish, small pond, because I was in New York and you know doing the gigs at night. You know it was just very exhausting. I wasn't, wasn't moving as fast as I was hoping and I also thought, well, if I went to Nashville or Phoenix, maybe big fish, small pond theory. And it helped, it worked.

Speaker 1: 6:50

I went to Phoenix. Nashville felt more crowded, the gym blossoms were breaking that whole desert indie rock scene was kind of coming out of there and I was like cool, let's do that. I had a friend that went to school out there and things started to develop, started doing a lot of TV commercials I became. I started working for an educational broadcast network doing a lot of kids songs and documentary music and just grew and hone my skills and, you know, fell down, got back up, fell down again and then in 2000, I decided to move to LA and I've been here ever since. First gig was pretty much pitching for the NFL Open on Fox Sports. I wanted, and things started climbing from there and I got in with Fox Sports and you know just the tenacity and the drive and the fire to meet and communicate with people and network and you know that was my path and now I'm here with no hair.

Speaker 2: 7:57

And probably more gray in your beard. You know, Boy, do I understand?

Speaker 1: 7:59

that.

Speaker 2: 8:02

So so what was the transition like from composer pitching, you know, over and over, to now, you know, being a partner in an up and coming library.

Speaker 1: 8:12

Well, in about, in about 2003, I partnered up with some other folks and we started a company called Supersonic. It was like Supersonic Studios, supersonic Media Group. Those partners ended up leaving. A few years later I took it over and rebranded it Supersonic Noise and I made that my production company and you know where I funneled my work through During that time.

Speaker 1: 8:38

We did some shows and they were custom music shows but we were licensing the music back to the show. They weren't owning the publishing, it wasn't a work for hire. So I started building a library and a couple of years later I started freelancing in the LA area for jingle houses and I started working for this one specific jingle house called Machine Head and I ended up being uh, ended up getting signed as a composer, an in-house. You know staff or what we call the permanent composer and I, through the years before you have these tracks, you know we got dead tracks. We got 30s, we got 60s in the commercial world or maybe there's a license back with a show or opportunities that you're doing an indie film. They don't have money, so you own them the music and you get a little fee for doing it, but you retain the ownership. So through that I met some people and I got educated on the music library world.

Speaker 1: 9:38

Before that, even back in Phoenix, I was writing music for network music and I did some stuff for First Com and so I actually was familiar with it, but as a composer. So I started, you know, and then building the catalog. I just realized over the time I'm like, oh, I have 50 tracks, so I have 100 tracks, so I ended up making that, the supersonic noise catalog, and that was the beginning of developing this library and then learning the business, learning the metadata side, learning some of the format, the fun part yeah, the fun part. I mean it's more enjoyable to watch paint dry and do metadata, but it's really important, as you know, because your music's not going to get found if you don't have any. So through that whole process I built this little library and when I over the years, after Machine Head I left Machine Head that sort of folded and went away I got more involved in TV instead of the commercial world and I'd come in as like composer, I'd bring my catalog in and I'd be like use my catalog, I'd be a music supervisor as well. I'd do like everything as a music department would do, and I did many, many shows in that format Grew.

Speaker 1: 11:00

The catalog brought in composers to write. I'm like, well, if I pay somebody a couple hundred bucks, that's a work for hire. I mean, it's not amazing money, but now it, these days it's better than free. So I started bringing in other talent because I didn't want the catalog to be one note you know me and my production style, whatever that is. So that's how Supersonic Noise grew. And then 2014,. I met one of my other, one of my business partners, a gentleman by the name of Andrew Gross. There's Andrew Gross, there's John LaCroix, chris Davies and myself. John and Andrew. Andrew brought us together. I met Andrew at NAB and he was involved at the PMA. I'm sure a lot of your folks know that.

Speaker 1: 11:54

Oh yeah, we are very familiar with PMA and he brought us. I met him and I liked him and I went up to him and I started, just you know, talking to him and we kind of had he kind of had this idea or and I had this idea. I don't know exactly how it happened, but it's like how do you compete with a few thousand tracks in a catalog, two thousand tracks, a thousand tracks with the killer tracks and APM and you know jingle punks at the time? And you can't. You know you're small, you don't have the amount of music to go into a network and service a network. Maybe you can service a show, but really you can't because you need so much, especially reality TV.

Speaker 2: 12:37

There's a hundred tracks and you know a one hour 45 minute show and they're not even going to talk to you unless you have tens of thousand tracks in the catalog. Is that right?

Speaker 1: 12:47

Yeah, I mean they'll talk to you if, let's say, you have a real specialty catalog and you specialize in, like you know, you know Latin music or jazz, sure they'll talk to you, but it's like you can't. You can't cover everything. You need drama and tension and indie rock and quirky, this and you know TikTok that. So we came together as a group to say let's bring our catalogs together and form a company and the company will be the tree trunk, essentially bulletproof tree trunk and the labels are the other tree branches and like APM or like other catalogs that represent other labels. So bulletproof bear is a production music catalog we represent exclusively.

Speaker 1: 13:34

We don't retitle, we don't do any shady, we don't, we don't give half of the production company, half of our publishing. You know we are transparent and authentic composer centric. We have a couple of other little specialty things we've built into our deals that are exclusive or special to us, that even help compensate our labels and composers, even more so than your traditional 50 50 type of label representation deal, because we're all composers. You know, andrew is a film composer Now he's more of a music supervisor. John is a composer and was a touring musician and John's expertise is licensing and international. He's just, he's brilliant with that side of things. Our other partner, chris, came from more of the record label world and is just a great business guy. So that's how bulletproof bear got started.

Speaker 2: 14:35

So so you know. So if, if I'm hearing this and I imagine there are other folks out there hearing this and and you say you have a catalog, nearly every cue I've ever written has gone out to a publisher or so for a library. So if somebody's listening right now and they don't have anything that's not placed, should they look at like creating a catalog of their own stuff or is that just? Is that kind of not really how it can be done now, or you kind of see, kind of understand?

Speaker 1: 15:10

what.

Speaker 2: 15:10

I'm saying Because I don't have. I can count on one hand the number of cues that that don't have a home somewhere because I'm in such a order comes in, I fill the order and ship it out, right.

Speaker 1: 15:22

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question because I mean there's two ways of doing this. And I have a very close friend and collaborator that co-writes with me. He writes for my catalog and I'm on a TV shit series. I ask him to come in and write some cues for me or with me. He writes for everybody. He writes for. You know, universal mega tracks does very well. I've asked him, and do your own catalog. Like come on, man, and he's got stuff on the side. But that's that's what I encourage.

Speaker 1: 15:54

I mean, look, if you have these connections with the top tier catalogs and you're getting paid really well, you're getting paid a good. You know, let's just say five hundred, two, a thousand dollars a queue and and you know, for these big catalogs like the BMGs and the universals, they could afford that. I personally can't. But I don't have those budgets and I'm not. You know I don't have millions of dollars invested in us and you know we're a scrappy little independent company. Then you're gonna just you're looking for that upfront money and you know their distribution is amazing. They got a sales team of 20 30 people.

Speaker 1: 16:29

It's kind of hard for you to say, well, I'm gonna build my own catalog when you're busy and you're working and you're making decent money yeah, but I think those composers are the tip of the iceberg. There's maybe 1% of the guys that are making a great living at production music, making 500 to a thousand a queue and or 750 to a thousand a queue or maybe more. If it's an orchestral queue and you have a great reputation and you're a big, big shot, you can command maybe 15. So it getting in there is hard and, and let's face it, our, our industry is overpopulated. Right now. Everybody's composing amazing music in their bathroom and it's like there's there's just there's a lot of stuff coming at us. So if you're one of those guys, it's hard for you to be like well, I'm gonna take the time to build a catalog. That's gonna take a year or two or three to really start seeing any profit.

Speaker 2: 17:25

Yeah, you got bills to pay now.

Speaker 1: 17:27

I've got bills to pay now. But if you can kind of do it at the same time, because the fact that you said that I've actually encouraged and I have guys in bulletproof bear that have started to build their own catalog because they sent me music and I'm like this is really good, but I'm not gonna sign one album because we represent Catalogs. We're not really. We will bring in an album if it's an exceptional, will bring an artist album, vocal material, stuff, but if I get another tension hip-hop album, I don't need that. Yeah, if you, if you sent me the most amazing live, you know Cuban Latin jazz album, I'd sign that in a minute, a minute. You know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 18:07

So I have encouraged and I have had. I have guys that started with four albums, then every quarter we ingest new music, so maybe they'll do another album then by the end of the year Maybe they got eight or ten albums and to me you're building a future for yourself that you own the publishing, you own that IP, you can control it, you can After, if you're not happy with our services, after a few years, you can go to another Library and say would you rep my catalog? I just feel that's another Avenue of the pie. That is great for composers if they have the time and the wherewithal to do that.

Speaker 2: 18:43

It's a lot of work. So so just to your point. So if you bring you know a composer along with a catalog and you rep their catalog, even though it's exclusive, there's, there's, you know, verbs in the paperwork that if, after X number of time, x amount of time or X number of sales or whatever, the Composer can can kind of carry that with them along the way, you're not assuming copyright on those tracks.

Speaker 1: 19:08

The way we work in most of the traditional bigger libraries work is we sign it exclusively for three years. Okay, now I've seen, I've heard you talk on your channel. Guys, you get the music. It takes a A month or two to get it digested on your local source audio site. It takes another month or two to get it distributed here. You know you got international clients. I have, you know, sound mouse harvest source audio, individual network sites, international partners.

Speaker 1: 19:39

It takes almost six months to eight months to get that new music, especially for us if we're ingesting three to eight thousand tracks, a Quarter out. Then they got to get it into their system, yeah. Then they got to check it out and then they got to get a brief. And then they got to send a playlist, a hundred playlists. Then somebody has to like that one track of yours. Then it has to go on a cue sheet. You're talking two years, yeah, most guys. I mean you know, hey, three months after I've ingested the album, hey, any, any hits, it's like I Love you. I know these are your babies. You know this is important to everybody. Whether you got one track or ten thousand tracks, these are your babies. You're sitting there with your dream and your studio, just you know, I mean, there is no better high than hearing a track of yours on a TV, yep or a film or whatever never gets old.

Speaker 1: 20:35

Yeah, I don't care if it's a freaking food network show or it's, you know, major, major stuff. It's amazing and it's really a sent, a source of pride for us. So, but it just takes a long time. So it really so for us. We, some catalogs will be like if we don't license it within a certain period, you get it back. We don't, we don't do those kinds of things. It's three years, usually a year post collection. You know, which is like, you know something a lot of catalogs do and and yeah, we just go out there and get it out there. We all are hustling, we are knocking on doors, we get showslates, we have relationships, we work in advertising, we work in TV documentary. You know, I mean, look, it could be the guys cat video on YouTube. Well, we'll license. Yeah, we're not going. We're not the royalty-free, which I personally feel is crap and I feel is, you know, disrespectful to most composers.

Speaker 2: 21:38

It can be a little bit of a race to the bottom.

Speaker 1: 21:40

Some of those marketplaces yeah you know, and that's my opinion, and let me just preface, these are my opinions. I am not a doctor necessarily represent those of Dave. I Want to treat my music with respect. One title you know it stays in one place and I'm not retitling it. Plus, you know we're also getting on the retitling thing in the royalty-free thing. We're getting info and contracts from our networks that they don't they won't accept these music.

Speaker 2: 22:11

Oh yeah, content ID and everything is about to make. I mean, it's already kind of a problem and it's only gonna get as the the algorithms get more and more sophisticated. And yeah, I don't personally, this is my crystal ball. I don't see like non-exclusive, retitling type libraries lasting like 10 years. That would be, I'd be really happy. I just don't know how they can not not in the in the current, the way that collections and royalties are going. I don't see how they can survive in the AI algorithm sound Toon Sat era. You know, yeah, we have a lot of.

Speaker 1: 22:50

We have a lot of daggers being thrown at us as composers. It's challenging and AI is. You know that's. That's a whole nother Talk it top titling. You know a lack of any sort of real organized union, union and representation. You know there's, there's a lot of talk about that and there's. You know, right now we're having this strike in Hollywood with the writers, directors and actors could be next things. I had lunch Friday with a head of music for a big production company. They're got like a couple of shows, yeah, and there there's crickets, and so things are very challenging right now and budgets are tighter. You know everybody's squeezing us. We have to do gratis deals with a lot of networks to represent the bulk of our blanket deals because they don't want to pay. Yeah, and how are we gonna make any money for our composers if we say no to those? We have to be open to that. I mean, we still always lead with hey, what do you have, right budget?

Speaker 2: 23:55

And we're not, yeah, we're not even talking about, you know, hiring musicians to play on your tracks. And you know there's a reason that all these sample libraries are so Profitables because us composers we can't afford At least us picking the lowest hanging fruit, right, we can't afford to just go hire a bunch of string players. You know, we don't have the luxury of being even in the town where that's even feasible. I Orlando has some really talented people, but it's not LA.

Speaker 1: 24:24

I Mean you could even hire them over zoom or through, you know, collaborative. But the thing is is you're right, because these budgets and the time frames are like you know I need something in three or four days. Yeah, like a TV commercial. It's like you know they want a few demos. You don't know if, if who you're competing against, you got a few days to do it. The tools are amazing and the tools are for us. And let's not forget these tools, the end client doesn't know you're using native instruments or spectrasonics, or you know if you can take those tools and make them your own and use them with authenticity and and heart. And you know, try your best to to play and understand chords and melody and not just do wallpaper. I mean, look, at the end of the day, that client just wants something that emotes what they're looking for for their product project and they don't care if you're using I mean you'd be hard-pressed, in my opinion, to tell if I'm using fake drums or real drums, but that's, you know, I've honed my skills, yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:35

And what you said kind of brings up another point, and that is the concept of originality versus uniqueness in a production music space, when so much of the time we'll see a brief and a library is putting an album together of dramedy cues or tension cues or percolating investigation cues or whatever, and by definition each cue has to fit within a mood or motion mold, and so my theory and you can tell me if I'm right or wrong here is that libraries aren't necessarily looking for mold breaking originality as much as they're looking for composers with a more unique voice. I could be off base there, but can you speak a little bit to that.

Speaker 1: 26:22

Well, okay, and I can only speak for what I like. I hate boring wallpaper, you know, production music. To me this is music and this should be as creatively diverse and deep and artistic as anything you hear on the radio or you see on a film. So you know, I, yes, I have enough hip hop, tension and comedy pits, cicada strings, acoustic, sunny stomp-ish yeah, shake it. I mean you know your head's going to explode.

Speaker 1: 26:57

I want to hear an artist. I mean I want to hear things that are out of the box and quirky, especially in the advertising world. They are, you know, they are very progressive in the sense of their tastes, of what they're looking for for ads. They're usually very, you know, eccentric and Indian, underground and interesting noises and textures and percussions. It's just not so I. So I agree. I think I agree with you is what you're saying is I want to hear more soul and heart and originality than I want to hear this brief we don't put out briefs that we're looking for albums like that, I'm sure a lot of catalogs, and I can't speak for how any of these other folks do it. Maybe they're looking for real basic, stylist style stuff, wallpaper, of course. My thought is, too, is, you can make this track as quirky and big and amazing as possible and then you could always strip it down in your alt mixes so you can take out that melody. You can just do the drum and bass which half the time they're going to want to use anyway.

Speaker 2: 28:03

It begs the question that I'm just going to play devil's advocate and as a from a composing standpoint, you know I'm looking at needing to have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cues in play. You know, a thousand cues is my personal goal. I'm up to about 700. And the difference between the artist making an album is they might, you know, they might crank out one or two albums maybe a year and they're going to pour their creative soul into that. But we're not asking, you know, david Bowie, if we're going, you know, if you want to go top, top shelf of popular artists.

Speaker 2: 28:42

You know we're not asking David Bowie to crank out, you know 700 tracks or 300 songs a year. So how, how, how, how do you balance that? How do you balance originality, uniqueness, with still? There is a part of this which is a factory job.

Speaker 1: 29:00

So I always so. I, my philosophy is always less is more and my, my, I would rather have quality over quantity, like for supersonic noise. When I was growing this and building that, I was always looking for an angle from. I want to make my song titles as outrageous and great as possible to the music that was in there, that it was quirky and funny music if I'm doing ukulele music. But I just wanted to. I wanted to have personality. I want, I want sprinkles client used to term sprinkles with me once and I it's stuck.

Speaker 1: 29:36

I want to hear your candy come in and out. I want to hear dynamics. I want to hear beats that might not be associated with, you know, ukulele music. I want to just hear somebody push the, the, the envelope a little bit, but then you can take all that stuff out and just have the couple of ukuleles and it's just traditional ukulele music. So you know, I feel that trying to just crank stuff out, that's great if the brief calls for it and the situation calls for it.

Speaker 1: 30:05

But if you're going to build something for yourself, if you're going to build your own brand, if you're going to build your own catalog, do something that's unique, find a voice that might not be out there. You know, combine, you know Latin nylon string guitar with, like you know, nine inch nails beats or something that just opens up and look, will it maybe get licensed as much as your typical top four, top 40 hip hop? Maybe not, but I want to see something fresh and different and you know, some of our catalogs are really unique and fresh and different and some of them are meat and potatoes catalog. Some of them specialize more in documentary underscore, some just do mostly orchestral, but they do it really well, yeah no, that makes perfect sense and I think that's you know.

Speaker 2: 30:58

The production music gig is squarely at the intersection of art and commerce, you know.

Speaker 1: 31:04

And so balancing that.

Speaker 2: 31:06

it's a real balancing act that I have find and I still like almost daily struggle with it, and so I love getting different perspectives of it. I've talked on the show how you know this isn't art with a capital A, you know, because I don't think anything that I can do in my studio should be even whispered in the same breath as like David Bowie.

Speaker 1: 31:26

But on the other hand, I agree it has to be. I mean, this is the thing too. It's like you know, yeah, I feel like we have to push the boundaries of our music and we have, and we are as much artists, you know. I mean, the thing that's crazy is who gets asked to write a comedy cue, an orchestral cue, a thrash metal cue in the same week. I mean us to do that and do that. Well, and I'm not saying I do, but you know, some people can and some people are like, look man, I'm only playing guitar.

Speaker 2: 32:00

You're right. But you know you, you don't a ton of sports stuff, and so you know it's like that's an insatiable beast and they want everything. They want it, they want, always, want something new, but yet it still has to, has to live in the world that they're already super familiar with. And so you, as a sports somebody who's done a bunch of sports cues, you know the dichotomy. This is yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:25

Yeah, it look. This is the craziest beautiful business. It's unlike anything else in the music industry and that's why it's like. You know my little corner of the world opinion. You know you're out there and more. I get hit up a lot, but you're you're communicating even more so with composers and stuff even than I am, and you're also working actively with other. You know catalogs I'm. You know I can't. The last time I wrote for another cattle, why would you do that?

Speaker 2: 32:57

Yeah, and to that let's let's change gears a little bit, because I do know that people will submit their music to you and you've gotten composer submissions. I'm sure you probably deal with them on the daily and so you've seen a lot of submissions come, come your way. So I want to spend a little bit of time talking about that, giving us the library perspective, and let's talk about pitches. Do you have any pet peeves or some things that you're just like chef's kiss when a, when an email comes in or pitch comes in, what do you see composers doing consistently right and maybe consistently wrong in the pitches that come across your desk?

Speaker 1: 33:40

Okay, let's go with wrong first. Okay, yo check out my beats. Yeah, there's a link and I go and it's like beat for nine, nine to nine.

Speaker 1: 33:50

Oh that I'd turn a set like that's the they're showing me their beats, but it's they're trying to license and you know they're bringing me to a website that people pay for it. It's like let's communicate effectively, do a little research on us, I mean, you know. Just no contact information. One of my pet peeves on websites for music industry is like let's go to a website no human face, no bio, no heart, no soul. Here's some sample of music. Here's our clients. I want to know who I'm doing business with and I want to know who I'm doing business with as a composer. Some of the things that people do right is like hey, I've checked out your library. Look, our bulletproof bear is open. You can check it out.

Speaker 2: 34:35

You know we'll have links to that in the description and everything.

Speaker 1: 34:37

You know it's an open site. I think that's just easy for people to check out. Some of the music's exceptional, some of it's not that good. I mean some of my stuff that I did 20 years ago downright sucks. Put it in there. You know why not? I mean, look, I had a cue used for an NBC promo. That was okay, literally one of the first cues I wrote back when I started doing TV commercials. I just had a track licensed in some sort of film or documentary. That was the first piece of music I think I ever wrote back in Arizona. I mean, it got licensed. Are you kidding me? I'm like I can't even listen to it myself without cringing.

Speaker 2: 35:22

But somebody liked it and you don't know what sort of alchemy they put into the metadata to pop it up. And then that yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:29

We don't wait any of our catalogs and we don't wait any of our metadata. What you find is what you get when you do a search based on well, based on metadata, not based on. We want to wait one catalog over another.

Speaker 2: 35:43

We don't do that.

Speaker 1: 35:44

When I'm pitching for my client, I don't care if it's my music or anybody's music and bullet, I just want it to be the best music, because that's the way you keep clients. It's not Get rid of the ego man. It's like it's about the music and the client and if they're happy, I'm happy, all right, so so so unprofessional communication.

Speaker 1: 36:06

Yeah, I think, um, yeah, it's like you know, the good emails are like hey, I've done some research. I think maybe your catalog isn't lacking and some and some of it's a little typical and a little like you know it could be. You know, ai email or letter or something. Yeah, but but hey, okay, fine, I'll check it out. It's it's just, you know. Again, what I'm hearing mostly is music. That's just Very basic and the production is okay, it stays in. It's it's you know, is it all splice? Is it splice? Is the the?

Speaker 2: 36:42

sample yeah it's just.

Speaker 1: 36:44

You know, pretty it's, it's. There's no chord changes and and there doesn't have to be.

Speaker 2: 36:48

I have plenty of music that stays in E minor, but is that a choice, or is that just because you lack the Skills to do any harmonic movement right?

Speaker 1: 36:57

Well, I lack the skills for any harm. I mean me, my skills are rocked it from Jersey Right. In general, it's like you know, if I'm staying in a key for a one-minute cue, there's gonna it's. I'm taking you on a roller coaster ride on the production side. It might, you know, and there's gonna be things that come in and out, but a lot of the music that I hear is very wallpaper, very basic.

Speaker 1: 37:24

Choice of samples are always, you know, I always say spend money on the best stuff because this is, you know, taste and Production. It for me, it's all about the mood. See, it's not really about the melody or the chord changes. Good music's music, it's about the vibe and the mood and that's what I feel for me is gonna sell better to the client. And well, why did you go from that chord to that chord? You don't care about that, right, you want the energy. So I'm always listening to quality of production, the solicitation. It's like just give me a little information about yourself. Be, be open, don't be cool. We don't need to be cool. All music Geeks, don't be like yo-yo. Check out my beads. Yeah, hey, you know, tell me something that I can connect with on a heart level.

Speaker 2: 38:15

Yeah, like a level of professionalism without being like stuffy. That that's what. That's the line I try to. I try to write.

Speaker 1: 38:22

You know I'm just a dude. You know I'm just a composer like everybody else, Hustling like everybody else. It doesn't get any easier. I think in some ways it gets harder when you get to positions that you know you and I are in, when you're able to make a living off this and and I think it's just just be real, yeah and and be put a little information in there so I can connect with you.

Speaker 2: 38:48

Yeah, yeah, realizing that it's a real human being on the other side of this email. You know, especially a company like bulletproof. You know it's. If you were to send an email to one of the big libraries like Warner Chapel you know those, I'm not sure you know they get so many submissions. But if you're, if you're going to a really laser focused boutique library, if you will, then then you can expect, I think, a human being to open it. You know, open that email.

Speaker 1: 39:15

Yeah, we, I check everything out. Sometimes I can't respond, sometimes I forget, I get overwhelmed or I get, you know, my head's in a million different things happening. I usually say, hey, we'll check it out, the team will check it out. If we somebody gets back to you, great. If nobody gets back to you, we're obviously not interested. You know I'm being we're not signing as much stuff right this minute because we've just done some big, big, big signings with a big and German catalog that just had, you know, almost three albums. 300 albums are coming into us. I just signed a hip-hop vocal label. So we have a lot of stuff and we're probably gonna be between a hundred and sixty and two hundred thousand overall cues. That's bigger than a lot of the big guys. Yeah, and again, this is Exclusive internationally, just, just, you know, goes to our sub publishers.

Speaker 1: 40:11

So it's like, unless this album is gonna be amazing or it's a great artist album with amazing vocals, it's hard for me to want to bring in another Tension album. Yeah, if it's an exceptional trailer album. And again, we don't do singles. So I need eight to ten tracks, eight to fifteen tracks as an album If you don't have that. And again, a lot of these catalogs too. They have briefs that they sent out to their composers. They're not taking a new material. They have a whiteboard. We're gonna do trailer epic, one trailer epic vocal, you know, and they probably set a budget for the year. We don't really operate like that. Um, also, where are the ladies? We need more ladies and women and Of, and, and we need the rainbow. Yeah, I'm, I. It's such a dude fest. It's like there's no diversity and for us, as a catalog, we need to represent Everybody and all different perspectives. Yeah, every about every, all the difference perspectives, and I'm not seeing enough of that and that's important to me. Yeah, you know, I think it's.

Speaker 2: 41:22

I think it's absolutely yeah, and we've had, you know, uh, uh women on on the podcast before and Catherine Dern, you know, really spoke to that. She's out in LA like speaking truth to power and fighting the good fight, you know, against uh, myriad issues, and so I know, I know, that she would agree with you on that, yeah. So, um, before I let you go, if there is a one thing that you wish composers kind of new, from from being a composer To to running a library and dealing with submissions and maybe we've touched on it before, um, what would that be? Would would it be the? Um, don't, don't be basic, I do this, it's like a slang, you know, yeah, basic, but uh, and if, if, the if, so, what are some of the ways that composers can, can, really kind of elevate? They're trying?

Speaker 2: 42:16

I realized I started asking you one question and then pivoted to another question.

Speaker 1: 42:19

Yeah, I mean, as far as the music's concerned, just find your own voice, do something, just try, and you know well, like anything, because you know Production music composers probably are also wanting to be artists in some way. Right, or maybe they are. I mean, half of my buddies that are artists or touring musicians. They want to do production music, they want to Get stuff licensed. Right, they're on the road being rock stars, doing major albums, and I'm just like, wow, how freaking amazing. And they're like, hey, dude, uh, what can I write?

Speaker 2: 42:52

They want some mailbox money.

Speaker 1: 42:54

You want to write? Okay, you want to write for me. So I think it's like find your voice, finds things that are interesting, try and just be a little experimental when it comes to things that you think are pretty basic, like Tension hip-hop and how can we do tension hip-hop differently? That's really interesting. And production quality to me is is is more important than the court choices. So that's one thing on the musical side, but on the business side I mean this is, this is huge, because it's like understand what exclusive and non exclusive is, understand the, the, the repercussions of what going non exclusive is with catalogs and what the benefits are going exclusive with a catalog.

Speaker 1: 43:39

You can only get your music through me and I want to rep this Authentically and be like dude my music that you get through us is special. I got great artists, I got great libraries and you can only get it through me. And if you want some badass stuff, stuff that's not overplayed and over abused, I mean don't forget the big catalogs out there. That stuff gets used and abused. We're a small guy, so I think we have a fresher take on some things, but I feel like understanding what you're publishing and your writers, understanding these contracts, understanding what a work for hire agreement is, understanding how metadata works and how the international sub-publishing system works, because if I'm representing your music I'm taking a little piece and then if it goes overseas they're gonna take a little piece. You're not gonna make as big a piece of pie, but understand 25% or 50% or whatever that is is better than 0%.

Speaker 2: 44:42

Right, yeah, having a small slice of pie is better than being without pie.

Speaker 1: 44:47

And everything you know. Well, I don't wanna give my publishing way. Well then there's like I'm a publisher, how am I gonna make money if everybody is doing gratis deals? Or, instead of $1,000 a drop for a cue, it's now 200. And so our business, by the way, is a term. We represent that music. We don't own the music that we represent. It's with a letter of redirection, a letter of direction, that we work with the PRO that that publishing will come to us and then we distribute the money out to our clients. They have to understand what a letter of direction is.

Speaker 2: 45:26

Yeah, so much of this is our topics we've talked about. So if you're curious, just go to the 52 cues, youtube, paid Google or search for any of these topics. We've talked metadata, we've talked contract, we've worked for hire, but you've given me I've actually made some notes, doing a show on exclusive versus non-exclusive and what that means, and so this is all super, super, super helpful. Well, jason, I'm really really excited. And listeners and viewers if you really like, you know Jason's vibe and if you're like me, you're not, you know he's just like. He's our people, right? If this is feeling like something that maybe you want to check out, then head over to bulletproofbearcom, but just know that she's not looking for one or two at a time or he's you know, they're looking for professional folks who are ready, who have music and can produce. So just be honest with yourself. If you're not there yet, that's fine, that's totally cool. Let's work towards getting there.

Speaker 2: 46:26

And speaking of working towards getting there, I'm really thrilled that Jason has agreed to be our workshop for the month of August, and so this is coming up in just a couple of weeks, august 28th, jason is going to be joining us over for the Friends and Family of 52 cues and he's going to be doing a cue review. So he's going to be reviewing your cues, not to sign them to the library or anything, but just to give a music library a publishing perspective on your cues. So if you're a member of 52 Cudes family or friends that is going to be for you and that is on August 28th, and Jason is going to be listening to your cues and giving candid, unfiltered responses from the library perspectives. But, jason, thank you so much for joining me today. My man, it was so good to hang out and looking forward to seeing whatever comes next for you, man. Once again, a huge word of thanks to Jason for joining me on today's podcast and, like we said, we're going to have a link to Bulletproof Bear in the description or you can go to bulletproofbearcom and, like he mentioned, they do take submissions. So if you think you're a fit, then yeah, go pitch your music, Go pitch your music. So that's going to do it for us today.

Speaker 2: 47:46

Again, a huge word of thanks to the family, friends and patron subscribers of 52 Cudes who help keep all of this going. If you want to join us, then click on the links in the description or head over to 52Cusecom. You definitely want to tune in next week where we are doing our first live Q&A. That is next week, that is, august 24th 2023, at 4 pm Eastern. That will be right here, live and open to all of YouTube. And so if you have questions about the industry and want to join me, then that is next Thursday at 4 pm Eastern for 52 Cuse Q&A live and hope to see you, but again, that's going to do it for me. I hope you've had a fantastic week and just know, friends, that I believe and trust that the universe has amazing plans just for you. Until next time, peace.

Speaker 2: 48:44

The 52 Cuse podcast is copyright 2023 at 18 Studios. All rights reserved. The music played on the podcast is copyright of their respective owners and is used with permission and for educational purposes only. For more information and including joining the community and submitting your cue for consideration on the podcast, head over to 52Cusecom.