Recording - November 2014 - 51

NOVEMBER 2014
TAXI Road Rally 2013

Making Money from Old Recordings, Part Three
Interview with Jeff Freundlich, COO of Wild Whirled, Fervor Records, and Vintage Masters.
Moderator, Michael Laskow
Jeff: I want to play one more thing, because part
of what you had asked me to touch on was retroinfluenced music as well. You know, it's funny; I
had dinner last night with a music supervisor
who's like 24 years old. He's probably never
bought a CD in his life, right? To him it's like
the Black Keys are like the coolest thing ever,
and when I listen to the Black Keys I'm really
hearing like 1970s rock, or maybe there's some
late-'60s rock in there. And, you know, things
just come around in cycles. Electro-Pop which is
so popular right now, I really hear like the early
and mid '80s. It's contemporized, but... There
are artists that break through who do a really
good job kind of blending a retro sound with
something contemporary. Amy Winehouse is
probably the best example of that. I don't need
to sit here and play Amy Winehouse; you can
just go on iTunes and check it out. We've had
some writers we work with who have taken
some stabs at doing things that they thought
were modern that were retro-tinged, and I
wanted to play you some failures. I wanted to
play you some things that we didn't really think
that did it in a meaningful way, and we signed it
because we already had a contract. And ironically, every now and then, somebody will come
to us and say, "Do you have something that's a
little off?" Sometimes there's a call for that. This
song is called "Surf Betty," and you'll kind of
hear... You'll get where he's trying to go with
this, but don't do this...I think.
[Music plays]
You know, production-wise, sonically, it sounds
good! But to me, this song is like probably the
best side of bad, I would say. There are a lot of
things that work about this too. But the problem is that, to me, it still feels stuck. It doesn't
really feel like it's an old song, and it's like it's
referencing the Beach Boys, or something from
the early '60s, but it just sounds hokey; it doesn't have a cool factor; it doesn't have that magic

Jeff Freundlich answers a question during the 2013 TAXI Road Rally. (Photo by James DiModica)

sprinkle dust that makes it really... So I don't
know, it's not that it's that awful, but it's not
great. And there's one more, which I think this is
supposed to be Neil Diamond-ish. If you could
play track #10, please...
[Music plays]
I don't know, maybe you like it. To me, there's
something about it that just didn't work.
I'm glad you're saying this stuff, because I know
you people in the audience, and our members as a
whole get frustrated with our screeners. Ironically,
our screeners get frustrated too! They hear stuff...
I mean, that song Jeff just played is pretty darn
good, right? It certainly didn't suck. But Jeff's
points are all very valid, that it's walking a fine
line. And our members frequently say, "If
something is walking a fine line, why don't you
forward it to Jeff or whoever the listing company is
and let them make the call? If something is walking the fine line, forward it to the music supervisor
and let them make the call."
Can I answer why not to do that? This is important. You know, the thing is that it takes a
lifetime to build trust, and it takes a second to
destroy it. So I've worked with Michael for, liter-

ally, eight or nine years, and sometimes Michael
will just call me out of the blue and say, "Hey,
you need to hear this," and I'm gonna stop what
I'm doing and listen to it. And we've gone on to
sign some of that stuff. Rusty Evans would be a
really good example of that, right? But the problem is if Michael keeps lowering the bar, I'm
gonna stop taking the phone call, because I've
got to go out and make money on all these songs
that I just acquired, right? It's the same thing, if
I start sending mediocre music to my clients; I'm
not going to be the first call on those TV shows
anymore. And it's so high stakes, there's so
much competition coming from all over the
place-and it's international. There are tons of
libraries in the U.K. and Italy that are doing this,
and we are all vying for a piece of the same pie.
So we have to keep the bar high. So if it's walking the line, and it's kind of teetering to the side
of mediocrity, there's no way that Michael can
forward it, because it'll break the trust, and
when something good comes along, I'm not
going to listen, right? It's so, so hard. Twelve
years ago I would have been sitting where you
guys are sitting right now before I started this
company, and I think the thing that is so hard is,
I don't want to live my life playing by other peoContinued on page 52
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Recording - November 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2014

Contents
Recording - November 2014 - Cover1
Recording - November 2014 - Cover2
Recording - November 2014 - 1
Recording - November 2014 - 2
Recording - November 2014 - 3
Recording - November 2014 - 4
Recording - November 2014 - 5
Recording - November 2014 - Contents
Recording - November 2014 - 7
Recording - November 2014 - 8
Recording - November 2014 - 9
Recording - November 2014 - 10
Recording - November 2014 - 11
Recording - November 2014 - 12
Recording - November 2014 - 13
Recording - November 2014 - 14
Recording - November 2014 - 15
Recording - November 2014 - 16
Recording - November 2014 - 17
Recording - November 2014 - 18
Recording - November 2014 - 19
Recording - November 2014 - 20
Recording - November 2014 - 21
Recording - November 2014 - 22
Recording - November 2014 - 23
Recording - November 2014 - 24
Recording - November 2014 - 25
Recording - November 2014 - 26
Recording - November 2014 - 27
Recording - November 2014 - 28
Recording - November 2014 - 29
Recording - November 2014 - 30
Recording - November 2014 - 31
Recording - November 2014 - 32
Recording - November 2014 - 33
Recording - November 2014 - 34
Recording - November 2014 - 35
Recording - November 2014 - 36
Recording - November 2014 - 37
Recording - November 2014 - 38
Recording - November 2014 - 39
Recording - November 2014 - 40
Recording - November 2014 - 41
Recording - November 2014 - 42
Recording - November 2014 - 43
Recording - November 2014 - 44
Recording - November 2014 - 45
Recording - November 2014 - 46
Recording - November 2014 - 47
Recording - November 2014 - 48
Recording - November 2014 - 49
Recording - November 2014 - 50
Recording - November 2014 - 51
Recording - November 2014 - 52
Recording - November 2014 - 53
Recording - November 2014 - 54
Recording - November 2014 - 55
Recording - November 2014 - 56
Recording - November 2014 - 57
Recording - November 2014 - 58
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Recording - November 2014 - 60
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Recording - November 2014 - Cover3
Recording - November 2014 - Cover4
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