Recording - May 2011 - 52

Continued from page 51 quirkiness, simplicity, beauty, and creativity, all wrapped up in one, and it was basically two tracks. It was beautiful. There was no sophistication in it. The sophistication was in the execution, the way it was recorded and presented. It was just a beautiful piece of music. Let’s talk about the S-word—sound-alikes. You guys [in the audience] have seen listings that talk about sound-alikes. It’s a really touchy subject, and it’s important to understand the ramifications. Let’s hypothetically say there’s a 35-year-old female creative director who is in charge of conceptualizing the campaign, and she’s working with a team of junior people under her, and they’re all bouncing ideas around, and finally they hit on an idea and they love it. And she instantly gravitates to an artist that she happens to personally love for the music for the spot. And because of her attachment to that artist, and she locks onto that like an octopus to your face. She won’t let go of that idea because she loves the artist so much—sometimes whether it’s right or wrong—and she wants that artist. Now, let’s say that they contact that artist— who is a lower-to-mid-level artist on a fairly small label, but has some attention—and they say, “We’ll give you”—and tell me if my numbers are wrong Peter—“$200,000 to $400,000 to license the master and the copyright.” Peter: It could be five bucks. The dollar amount is immaterial. It’s the contact that has been established that has now placed a huge red flag on the project. Very key point. Because now that the contact has been made from the agency to the label, then the artist/writer. And if they then call Peter or Stephan and say, “You guys find us a piece of music that sounds like this,” because they want to make that 35-year-old female creative head happy. Because the contact has been made now, there’s a legal case that, “Oh, we wouldn’t license our music, so you guys are trying to copy it.” Peter: I can tell you this because it’s public. It happened with the United States Air Force. They contacted Snow Patrol. They wanted to license a Snow Patrol song, and Snow Patrol said it’s gonna cost X amount of dollars. The Air Force said, “Oh, we can’t pay that.” The Air Force and their ad agency—whoever represented them— went to composers and said, “Here’s where our commercial’s at: it’s this kind of vibe, and we’d really like it to be a Snow Patrol kind of track.” So they went and they did a track—a really good track—that sounded like Snow Patrol. They ran it on the air and the label said, “Wait a minute, you just ripped off Snow Patrol,” and they instituted a lawsuit.

So when you see an ad agency listing that comes through TAXI, you know it’s been vetted and the question has been asked, “Have you contacted the label, the artist, or the publisher?” Because if that happened, then we all know to do something completely unlike that artist. You cannot go on the air after contacting that artist and try and do something like them, because then you’re fried. You have basically sent up a red flag, and record labels are in a very litigious state

“With music for advertising, the trickle-down is: the art director, the writer, the TV producer, the music producer, the account guy, the middle-level client, the head client, and so on.” – Peter Greco
right now. That’s how they’re making money; they’re not making money by selling records, they’re making money suing people. It’s really true. That brings up and interesting point. As many of you know—but maybe not everybody —TAXI started the whole trend of bringing independent musicians and composers to film and TV back in 1992. It happened on occasion because somebody knew somebody who was making a TV show or a movie knew a band, but nobody had ever done it in mass numbers. No libraries were working with Indie artists or Indie composers. We really got the ball rolling, and, of course, many other companies out there have copied us to one degree or another. I have little doubt that in the coming months you will see some of the smaller libraries or other music services start to run listings for advertising music opportunities. How can I say this delicately? If, and you see opportunities that are for a sound-alike or a replacement, you really need to know that the company that’s running that listing is a company that has guys like this that are vetting it to make sure you’re not gonna be part of a $2.5 million lawsuit. I’m not trying to dissuade you from going after every opportunity you can; just be really careful. Stephan: The best thing is to create original music. It’s the safest way to go. Even if you ask the question, “Has anybody contacted the artist to try to license that version?” They may not know the answer. Or, they may not tell you the truth. That’s happened. Peter: You guys have now just been given a piece of knowledge that a lot of people out on the street, in the libraries, in the agencies and a lot of others don’t even know. There is such a naiveté about that, and a lot of it is generational. Because of file-sharing, there is this sort of absence of acceptance that this piece of music is a property that it is owned by somebody. There’s a generational thing that’s

happened where people don’t really understand the notion of copyright infringement, or that you can rip something off, or can’t rip something off. You know, you could do a track that sounds like John Mayer, and if you’re an artist who happens to sound like John Mayer, it’s cool. You put the record out, that’s great. But if you’re selling a piece of cheese, if you’re selling a car, that car company is now buying that artist’s persona, because that artist’s persona is selling that car. You can’t take John Mayer’s persona or Mary J. Blige’s persona, rip it off and now infer that artist has now given that car company the right to use her likeness to sell the car. It’s really that simple. You are selling something with someone else’s persona. That’s why there’s big money involved. How about a case where somebody asks for a Tom Petty-ish-type artist, and a guy has a Rickenbacker 12-string and a twangy…? Peter: You could say that Roger McGuinn plays the Rickenbacker 12-string electric. That gets a little esoteric. If somebody gives you a temp track, look at what that temp track is telling you. It’s telling you tempo, attitude, it’s telling you genre. It may be giving you a lyric framework, telling you whether it’s sexy or playful or whatever. Grab all of those adjectives, take the MP3, throw it away and now look at those adjectives and write a song based… If someone said they want you to write a cool groove with a kind of urban loop with a male R&B voice, and it’s got to be sexy up front and playful in the back. It would almost be like if Michael [TAXI] gave you a generic Listing with a list of those descriptors, that’s what you’re writing. You can use that temp track to glean all that information. Just don’t go in there and write a John Legend sound-alike. I’m gonna take a couple of audience questions. You guys have a couple of questions out there? Audience member: Thank you so much for all this information. As I was listening to you, I was trying to understand how much of this could I have figured out from the process itself. I’ve submitted to a couple of TAXI advertising listings, and I think it’s a great opportunity. But, at least in my experience—and correct me if I’m wrong—there is far less feedback and critique offered on these opportunities, and I feel like we could all learn so much from genuine, real feedback, just like we get on other stuff. I’m gonna go to Peter on this one. How much time do we get from when you call us up? Peter: Here’s the advertising framework. Sometimes I get a call at one o’clock in the afternoon and they need music by four. I’m not kidding you. And a project has blown up, they hate the music that they had, it’s shipping in five hours, I need music. Sometimes it’s 24 hours, sometimes it’s three days, sometimes there’s two weeks. It Continued on page 55

Recording - May 2011

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