Recording - May 2011 - 55

Continued from page 52 depends on where it is in the process. So far, I don’t think we’ve seen a two-week turn around yet. Stephan: It used to be worse. It’s getting a little tiny bit better. But, you know, these are people at these agencies who don’t know anything about the process of making music. It’s “add water and mix”—instant music. Peter: A lot of it is driven by the approval process. When you’re dealing with TV and film and video games or whatever, you generally have one or two people who are the arbiters of what they like. You play it for music supervisors, “That’s great. It fits the bill”—boom. They throw it in and then move on to the next. With music for advertising— I’m not kidding—the trickle-down is: the art director, the writer, the TV producer, the music producer, the account guy, the middlelevel client, the head client, and so on. They once killed my Xerox campaign—the 12-yearold daughter of the Xerox client didn’t like the track. So, it’s high agita, higher reward, but there’s no question that the agita factor is many times deeper than it is working in regular TV and film music. It’s a different process because it’s a different medium. When you’re selling a product, now you’ve got all of these people who are involved in “OK, does this fit the product? Does this fit the demographic?” It’s all of that stuff. So you’ve gotta be great, and you’ve gotta be fast! We have literally had to make the decision: Do we bring you the opportunities and not provide critiques, or do we not bring you the opportunities? So I made the decision to bring you the opportunities knowing that we’d have to sacrifice the critiques. Do I think that we’re gonna get as many advertising placements for our members as we do TV placements? No, but when you do get one… Peter: You’ll be happy. Just go with the opportunities because everybody really wants to get into that game. It’s really about the opportunities and executing—that’s how you get better. The more you do, the better you understand it. You could almost self-critique in a way, but certainly, whatever feedback the guys like Steve give you at TAXI, you can go to the bank with. All right, one last question. Audience member: Roughly, in what percentage of cases are the songs that get placed full-band productions versus guitar/vocal or piano/vocal?

Great question. Peter: You know, I think it’s a very bandcentric percentage right now. The ad industry is reflective of what’s going on. It’s kind of an Indie-band scene. All you have to do is turn on the TV and spend an hour or two hours watching TV and listen to what you hear. They want your cool; they want this generation’s cool. They know what people are listening to, and that’s what they want on their advertising. You know, it’s everybody from Vampire Weekend to the Fratellis, to even more obscure Indie bands. They want that. It’s very cool; it’s a great place for them to be. The singer/songwriter stuff is actually making a very strong foray lately. I’ve seen real melodic tunes, very simply put—Feist. When Apple ran Feist, that was a real signal

for singer/songwriters—especially females— to have a real huge place in this market. Again, it’s just reflective of… You turn on the radio; whatever is happening there is what the ad industry wants to do. Stephan: And you can count on inevitable change. In fashion, for instance, when the fashion is to wear long skirts, and everyone is wearing long skirts, somebody’s gonna come along and do an above-the-knee, and everybody’s gonna say, “Oh, well, I’ve got to have that.” I want to thank you two guys. Did you [the audience] find this helpful? [enthusiastic applause] Peter Greco, Stephan Goldman, two of the greats. Thank you, guys.

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Recording - May 2011

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