May 2, 2023 • 18 mins
This month in Ampel's series Hear the Experts Here, we interviewed co-founders Evan Buist and Andy Wilson from the Aussie tech-music start-up Melodie. Melodie is the music behind many of Australia’s best marketing, podcasts and more. Melodie provides unlimited access to high-quality stock music for storytellers. With an exclusive catalogue featuring 20,000+ tracks & stems from award-winning composers (updated weekly), simple licensing & intuitive search functions featuring AI-powered 'reverse-audio' search tools. Discover why this exciting Aussie-based start-up just completed a successful funding round of $1m+ and is about to take the US market by storm.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:01):
Ample. He is this thing on?
S2 (00:04):
Get that on. Don't hurt her. Hi, I'm Josh Bart,
CEO and founder of Ampol. Welcome to here the experts here,
which is where we talk to experts in the audio
world to find out more about how they do things
and what they think about what's coming today. We're really
excited to be talking to guys from Melody Music Evan Boost,
(00:26):
who's the managing director, and Andy Wilson, head of A&R. Guys,
thanks so much for coming in and joining us in
the studio. A pleasure.
S3 (00:35):
Thanks for having us. Josh, do you.
S2 (00:36):
Want to tell us a bit about Melody and how
you got started and why you got started?
S3 (00:41):
Yeah, absolutely. So Melody's just turned five last November. We're
an Australian independent music licensing platform, and you and I
have been friends and collaborators for a good, good part
of a decade now at least. And we created melody
really as an opportunity to get Australian music on the
world stage and also to hear more Australian music and
(01:02):
Australian productions. So we built Melody, the platform from the
ground up. We recruited all of the amazing composers that
we had within our network and started to work with
TV producers, content creators and creative platforms in Australia and
all around the world, providing them with access to amazing music.
S2 (01:20):
You know, at Apple we use melody music pretty much exclusively.
I don't think we've had another track for a good
couple of years. So, you know, you really are our
music library. Yes. Andy, you're head of A&R. What the
fuck is A&R?
S4 (01:34):
It's a great question. It's a funny old title, isn't it?
It's a head of artisan repertoire. So in the old days,
it was there were people who would go out and
hunt down, you know, great artists, performers, bands, whatever, and
then work with them on getting a set of songs
that they would go and record. And to be honest,
it's essentially what I do now. So I try and
(01:54):
find composers or composers come to us and then we
work with them and I work with them specifically making
sure that what they're supplying is going to work for
the clients that we have on the other side. So really,
I'm kind of the linchpin between the music that comes
in and making sure that it's road fit for the
clients on the other side. My background is both in
(02:15):
music and in television. I've made music since I was
in my teens and had some success and was a
was a rock star flash in the pan for a moment.
S2 (02:23):
Right. Where were you, a rock star?
S4 (02:26):
I was a rock star in New Zealand in the
early 90s. It sounds like such a wank, doesn't it?
I was a rock star in the 90s.
S2 (02:33):
You look like a rock star now. But it's.
S4 (02:34):
True. But it was a short period time and at
the same time I always did TV and wrote music
for TV and that was kind of my bread and butter.
That's what paid the bills when I wasn't gigging or
doing other things.
S2 (02:45):
Well, what was the what's the biggest bill payer that
you've ever had?
S4 (02:48):
I did a global launch for National Geographic Channel, well
worked collaboratively with an existing theme, and then built on
it and built a whole suite of tracks for it. Yeah.
S2 (02:58):
Because that's that's a is it?
S4 (03:00):
Copeland No, it's no, no, it's even older than that.
Like the original ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
ba ba ba ba ba ba. No, it's one of
the old kind of old school New York Jewish composers.
I can't remember, like one of the Bernsteins or something
like that.
S1 (03:13):
Oh, wow.
S4 (03:14):
Yeah. But the reality is we only used three notes
of it at the end, and then the rest of
it was built around that. So.
S2 (03:20):
So it sounds the same, but it's not quite a
sound a lot. It's an inspired by it.
S4 (03:23):
It's just, it's just the, it's just the mnemonic really.
But mnemonics can carry on for centuries. In fact.
S3 (03:29):
Prior to Melody, when I met Andy, you had just
done the theme for lifestyle channels and Star network stars.
S4 (03:37):
Yeah, Star News in Asia.
S3 (03:39):
And he's done a lot of that and we've worked together.
I was working in post-production when Andy had the accounts
for most of the Foxtel channels, so doing a lot
of work with promos and branding for TV channels in
Australia and Asia Pacific.
S2 (03:51):
Why was Melody set up? I mean, it was was
it because, you know, being imposed and music libraries that
just shit and have been shit for a very long
time and now they're not. Was it because of frustration
around how bad some stock music was?
S3 (04:04):
Absolutely. I mean, working on both sides of the fence,
having both been composers and both been working in audio
post environments with editors and producers. Like we knew the
pain points and the frustrations of the end users, both
in terms of like consistent high quality of music, which
wasn't always the case. Simple licensing, you know, being able
to know what your rights were so that you wouldn't
be sued down the track and having some kind of,
(04:26):
you know, relatively intuitive search interface so that you could
find the music that you needed. So those three things
together we knew were problematic and there wasn't really a
solution at the time. And particularly there wasn't a voice
for Australian music in the global production music space. So
that's what we wanted to try to put together. We've
been kind of iterating the tech since the beginning. So
(04:47):
you know, every other month we're putting in a new
feature or, you know, adjusting something based on user feedback.
And now we're at the point where it works really well. It's,
you know, there are many ways to search from, you know,
the standard menus, genre, mood, instrument, you know, key BPM,
all of that stuff. We have AI search tools where
you can drop a YouTube link or an MP3 in
there and it'll analyze the reference. File and kind of
(05:08):
extract keywords from that analysis and then search for those keywords.
In our database, we've got find similar functionality that works
with AI. We've got all sorts of ways to to
find music, but most recently we've introduced what is maybe
the most exciting feature for an Australian music company, which
is the Aussie button, the Australia button, which allows our
users in Australia. So just those users with an Australian
(05:30):
IP address to filter the artists on the platform to
only show music by Australian artists, which we all know
is important to support our very small industry in Australia.
But it directly allows Australian businesses, produces TV production companies
if they want to, to be able to find music
exclusively by Australian artists. So it empowers our clients to
be able to directly support Aussie music.
S2 (05:52):
We're so lucky. We've got so many great musicians, I guess,
I guess where it comes into play for me, where
I'm looking for First Nations Australian music. Typically I've just
called you and asked you to look for and so
you've just told me you have. I mean, I'm really annoying,
I must say. So hopefully you don't have to hear
from me. So all love it.
S3 (06:10):
No, we love to do music searches and acquire music
for you. And you know what you need is what
everyone needs at the end of the day. So it's
great to have that level of communication.
S2 (06:18):
Yeah, well, you guys are so responsive. It's unbelievable. And,
you know, we've ended up working with James Henry a lot,
who's one of who's one of my go tos, I guess,
on the on the platform. He's a very talented indigenous musician.
When you're looking for an Indigenous led music track, typically
it's didgeridoo or sticks. James Henry's, for example, is not that,
(06:41):
not always that it's got those instruments, but not necessarily
in what would be a cliche way. He's really got
a great vibe.
S4 (06:48):
There is no one sound. And in fact the didgeridoo
only comes from a very small section of Australia up
in north Queensland. Yeah. So, you know, although that's distinctive
and signifies Australia, it's not descriptive of Indigenous music as
a whole. And James has done a fabulous job of
when he does use it, he uses it in such
a way that it doesn't feel like it's a cliche,
it feels like it has, it sits up space. He
(07:12):
uses all sorts of other things in terms of voice, etcetera,
that sound uniquely of this country. He's he's a real
talent is a multi-skilled guy and he he does music
for installations. He's a go to photographer as well. His
styles are quite broad. Like he will do kind of
(07:32):
electronic music and he will do kind of almost traditional
kind of rock and roll a little bit. But somehow
he just makes it all fit together and it doesn't
feel awkward. He's a real talent.
S2 (07:44):
Yeah, I know. We can't name everyone, obviously. 115 currently. 115. Wow.
That's the thing with a library, right? Like, you find
a few composers that you like and you kind of
gravitate towards them. I mean, some of the people we've
worked with is cookie cartel is one that springs to mind.
Really funky bunch But, but who are some of the
other go tos for?
S4 (08:04):
You know, the nature of having a production music library
means you need to have a broad range of music.
So we that's kind of where we have a lot
of composers and they all have strengths in different areas.
So some of them can be broader than others. Cookies
A cookie cartel is an interesting one to bring up.
They are extremely prolific, but they can do a bunch
of different things, which is kind of why they can
(08:25):
be prolific. We have got stacks of local composers that
sit in particular areas as well. Not always what you
might expect. In fact, Helena Chaika and Yuka Snell are
a duo, in fact UK's most times in Berlin these days.
But she's an extraordinary violin player and Helena is a
(08:47):
fantastic composer who's been in our midst for ages.
S2 (08:50):
It sounds like a leading question, but it's not. A
few months ago, we needed some classical music and there
wasn't something that just sort of was sitting there. And
I mentioned that to Evan. And a couple of months
later the duo sent us a couple of classical tracks,
which are pretty unbelievable coincidence.
S3 (09:06):
Josh You decide. Yeah, well, I mean, Helena was already
an artist with us and we've known Helena for years
and she teamed up with Yuko, who is in the
Berlin Philharmonic, and she is an extraordinary violinist. And Helena
herself is an extraordinary composer, writes for Bluey and wins
awards here and there. Yeah. And they got together and
they did create these songs. And to be honest, I
(09:27):
can't tell you whether that was your spark or whether
that was a spark that was already ignited. The way
we acquire music often is for actual broadcast productions, so
we work with some of the bigger production companies in Australia.
They come to us with a show like Real Housewives
or Bondi Rescue or whatever it.
S2 (09:42):
Happens to be.
S3 (09:43):
Waltzing German Yeah, we have this one client. Josh That's right.
And we'll, we'll brief the show out to our composers.
Maybe 20, 30 of them will submit music. If the
music's good, we acquire it and it'll end up being curated,
put into playlists and sent back to that client. However,
unlike Bespoke music, which is typically going to be commissioned
and exclusive to that project, it ends up in our library, not.
(10:06):
Available to other users, but it's created with a specific
production in mind. So it's about as perfect as it
could possibly be for that show, if maybe not written
to picture.
S2 (10:17):
One of the things I really like about the service
that you provide is that you give us the the
tracks and you split the instruments up so that we
don't necessarily have to use all of the instruments every
single time. Sometimes it might just be the piano or
that without percussion or yeah.
S3 (10:33):
Subtractive stems as opposed to giving you a high hat
and a snare and yeah, because it makes it back together.
S4 (10:38):
You mean this is why the search functionality is the
way that it is. This is why the music is
the way that it is. We don't have stems insofar
as we don't split everything up, although we will do
some individual instruments. What we do do a lot of
is subtractive mixes. So we'll take things out of a
mix because that may be the difference between it being
used in a production or not. It might be that
there's a guitar track that's just sitting over and right
(11:00):
in the vocal space, and that means that the audio
post producer or the offline editor is going, I just
can't get this to work. And then they find the
mix it has. There's no guitar, which is great because
they occupy a similar frequency space, so then they can
work around, then they can have the music kind of
envelop the narrative that's going on, whether that be dialogue
or voiceover or whatever. Again, just how quickly can we
(11:22):
get a piece of music into a production? How quickly
can we solve a problem for an editor or an
audio post producer?
S2 (11:29):
What are some of the typical challenges that producers throw
your way that now just become kind of your standard response?
S4 (11:36):
The stems is really the the well, the alternate mixes
is the is the the one that comes up most often.
S3 (11:41):
We're not providing different interpretations of a song. So we
won't have a, you know, a poker version of a
rock song. It's going to be the rock song and
we're going to break it out. So you've got drums
and bass, you've got the full mix, you've got a version,
an instrumental version with no vocal. And we'll have all
of these subtractive mixers that by themself can work in
an edit. So you could line up, you know, nine
of these versions beside each other and just cut between
(12:01):
them and you'll have a seamless mix with different vibes.
So we all of our versions are like that. They're not,
which is what you've actually requested before.
S2 (12:09):
Josh I haven't requested a polka version of something, but
I may, you know, give me time.
S3 (12:14):
We've had occasionally, you know, extended tracks that we've broken
down into into different versions and they've been retitled.
S2 (12:20):
But the collaborative nature of melody, if someone really did
want to poke a version of a song, could they
reach out and just say, Can I get a polka
version of this song?
S4 (12:29):
And most of our composers are receptive to these sorts
of requests too, so there's no conversation that we won't have,
that's for sure.
S3 (12:37):
We do commissioned works. Obviously we do bespoke music. We'll
do themes and ads and whatever's required. We're doing something
for Heineken at the moment out of the Netherlands, we
did a rerecord of George Michael's Careless Whisper a couple
of months ago. And yeah, so we absolutely do that.
And if someone has a specific request, we can create
a piece of music that's exclusive to that client that
(12:58):
won't appear in the Melody Library. And they could actually
have exclusive use to that as a pneumonic like we
did for labs. We do anything music and you know,
in doing so we provide opportunities for our for our writers.
So we'll never say no to an opportunity.
S2 (13:13):
On the mnemonics and the ads. And obviously sonic branding
is becoming a much bigger thing. Yeah. Now, although I
imagine it's going to be a much bigger thing than
it is even in 2023.
S3 (13:23):
Yeah, 100%. We do it. We did it for Levi's
a couple of weeks ago where we put together a
set of tracks like you often do. In this case,
they were non-exclusive tracks available in the Melody catalog, but
they wanted a specific sound for a specific piece of
content that they had, and it transitioned across different parts
of the content, and the team went through and curated
playlists for different parts of this and they had an
(13:44):
amazing outcome. But equally, if they wanted a unique piece
of music, we could actually create that, score it to picture.
S2 (13:50):
Even so, you can be the music library as a company,
but you can also be the music supervisors.
S4 (13:55):
Certainly these conversations are starting to happen and we're already
the go to company for music, for for production music.
It kind of makes sense to have the chat with
us in the first place and with, you know, the
amount of composers that we can call on. And also
in multiple territories, which really helps to in fact, one
of the ones we did recently, we needed to have
it done in 24 hours. So we were able to call,
(14:15):
you know, people in other time zones to get stuff
happening and we got it done. And, you know, in
20 hours, which is extraordinary.
S3 (14:22):
Yeah. Client UK composer and we're squashed in the middle
and it worked perfect.
S2 (14:28):
And what about for emerging musicians who want to get
their music onto a site like yours? Like, how does
that work?
S4 (14:35):
It's a really good way to to make an income.
If you're a composer, it's a good way to cut
your teeth to skill up because you need to, to
a degree, work at pace. The more tracks you have
in the game, the more likely you are to going
to get picked up. And certainly we've had conversations with
people who are kind of fresh out of the Conservatorium
or they're fresh out of other, you know, tertiary institutions
(14:56):
and they suddenly realize that there's an option for them.
S2 (14:58):
So it kind of feels like a faux pas even
mentioning that. But one of the things that I noticed
about that AI generated music is just how boring it is.
Is and how it all just sounds the same.
S4 (15:08):
You need a human in it. You still need a human.
And we know this from firsthand experience. And we've we've
worked in and around, you know, development in this area.
It needs to resonate with human, otherwise it won't work.
I mean, music is is communication, right? Yeah. Our whole
business is built on trying to make people feel something. Right.
And that's a choice of notes, a choice of rhythms,
harmonic interplay. If you're not a human, you won't understand it.
(15:31):
You know, you can feed an AI machine with billions
of pieces of data, but it still won't kind of
resonate the same way.
S3 (15:37):
It's only creating based on its data set. And you
can have a broad data set that will allow it
to create things that seem new, but it's never going
to be, you know, that real cut through sound.
S2 (15:49):
Yeah, well, I mean, you're not hearing much in 17,
8 or 5 four. You're not hearing, you know, interesting scales.
You know, for example, you're not hearing the E-flat pentatonic scale,
you know, underneath. Thanks. It's my favorite scale, you know,
that I kind of.
S4 (16:04):
For me, I mean, music is, you know, I'm, you know,
a few decades old now. Music is still such a
joy for me, right? Like, working in it is still
such a joy. I don't get tired of it. I
don't know why anyone would try and seek to find
an alternative to being immersed in the joy like it's
such a cool thing. Magical frequencies that somehow make us
feel differently. It's weird. It's like alchemy, you know? So
(16:26):
I'm all about trying to continue. I got all these
composers that I work with and all these people on
the other side who want to hear great music.
S2 (16:32):
You guys have an API who like who uses the API.
S3 (16:36):
How does it work? Yeah, I mean, I didn't really
touch on this in the beginning, but we have three markets.
We have the content creator market, so people making digital
content for social media, YouTube, Facebook, etcetera, those people. Then
we have our B2B film, TV, broadcast realm advertising. And
then lastly, we have our B2B to creative platform market,
which is often accessed through our API. So these are
(16:57):
creative technology platforms with users making user generated content. So
they might be online video editing platforms, they might be
online podcast editing platforms, text to speech, all of these
AI things that are popping up, any kind of digital
content creation platform. We pipe our music in, they get
access to our database so that their users can search
and integrate our music into their content for use online.
(17:20):
And that's that's that entire realm for us. And it's exploded. Interestingly,
since GPT came along, especially one of the users, we
went from several hundred thousand calls to now it's more,
now it's in the millions of API calls per day.
So every day we're getting literally millions of pings on
(17:41):
our database by humans all around the world searching for
and downloading music for their digital content. It's super.
S4 (17:47):
Exciting. Melody only exists because of the composers. So, you know,
everything's cut down the middle, 50 over 50. We understand
that they make a leap of faith to, you know,
to put their music with us. And we take that
really seriously and we work really hard on their behalf.
S2 (18:01):
Awesome, Guys, thanks so much for for coming in. Where
do we where where can we download it?
S3 (18:07):
We're called melody music. And you can go to Melody
Dot I we're pretty new to Spotify, but if you
look up melody, music will pop up and there'll be
a few playlists for your listening pleasure.
S2 (18:18):
Josh Matthew, thanks guys.
S4 (18:20):
My pleasure. Thanks.
S3 (18:20):
Josh Thanks, Josh, Thanks for being an awesome customer.
S2 (18:23):
It's easy.
S1 (18:28):
Ample. Here he is.
S2 (18:31):
This thing on? Get that on. Don't touch her.
Ample. He is this thing on?
S2 (00:04):
Get that on. Don't hurt her. Hi, I'm Josh Bart,
CEO and founder of Ampol. Welcome to here the experts here,
which is where we talk to experts in the audio
world to find out more about how they do things
and what they think about what's coming today. We're really
excited to be talking to guys from Melody Music Evan Boost,
(00:26):
who's the managing director, and Andy Wilson, head of A&R. Guys,
thanks so much for coming in and joining us in
the studio. A pleasure.
S3 (00:35):
Thanks for having us. Josh, do you.
S2 (00:36):
Want to tell us a bit about Melody and how
you got started and why you got started?
S3 (00:41):
Yeah, absolutely. So Melody's just turned five last November. We're
an Australian independent music licensing platform, and you and I
have been friends and collaborators for a good, good part
of a decade now at least. And we created melody
really as an opportunity to get Australian music on the
world stage and also to hear more Australian music and
(01:02):
Australian productions. So we built Melody, the platform from the
ground up. We recruited all of the amazing composers that
we had within our network and started to work with
TV producers, content creators and creative platforms in Australia and
all around the world, providing them with access to amazing music.
S2 (01:20):
You know, at Apple we use melody music pretty much exclusively.
I don't think we've had another track for a good
couple of years. So, you know, you really are our
music library. Yes. Andy, you're head of A&R. What the
fuck is A&R?
S4 (01:34):
It's a great question. It's a funny old title, isn't it?
It's a head of artisan repertoire. So in the old days,
it was there were people who would go out and
hunt down, you know, great artists, performers, bands, whatever, and
then work with them on getting a set of songs
that they would go and record. And to be honest,
it's essentially what I do now. So I try and
(01:54):
find composers or composers come to us and then we
work with them and I work with them specifically making
sure that what they're supplying is going to work for
the clients that we have on the other side. So really,
I'm kind of the linchpin between the music that comes
in and making sure that it's road fit for the
clients on the other side. My background is both in
(02:15):
music and in television. I've made music since I was
in my teens and had some success and was a
was a rock star flash in the pan for a moment.
S2 (02:23):
Right. Where were you, a rock star?
S4 (02:26):
I was a rock star in New Zealand in the
early 90s. It sounds like such a wank, doesn't it?
I was a rock star in the 90s.
S2 (02:33):
You look like a rock star now. But it's.
S4 (02:34):
True. But it was a short period time and at
the same time I always did TV and wrote music
for TV and that was kind of my bread and butter.
That's what paid the bills when I wasn't gigging or
doing other things.
S2 (02:45):
Well, what was the what's the biggest bill payer that
you've ever had?
S4 (02:48):
I did a global launch for National Geographic Channel, well
worked collaboratively with an existing theme, and then built on
it and built a whole suite of tracks for it. Yeah.
S2 (02:58):
Because that's that's a is it?
S4 (03:00):
Copeland No, it's no, no, it's even older than that.
Like the original ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
ba ba ba ba ba ba. No, it's one of
the old kind of old school New York Jewish composers.
I can't remember, like one of the Bernsteins or something
like that.
S1 (03:13):
Oh, wow.
S4 (03:14):
Yeah. But the reality is we only used three notes
of it at the end, and then the rest of
it was built around that. So.
S2 (03:20):
So it sounds the same, but it's not quite a
sound a lot. It's an inspired by it.
S4 (03:23):
It's just, it's just the, it's just the mnemonic really.
But mnemonics can carry on for centuries. In fact.
S3 (03:29):
Prior to Melody, when I met Andy, you had just
done the theme for lifestyle channels and Star network stars.
S4 (03:37):
Yeah, Star News in Asia.
S3 (03:39):
And he's done a lot of that and we've worked together.
I was working in post-production when Andy had the accounts
for most of the Foxtel channels, so doing a lot
of work with promos and branding for TV channels in
Australia and Asia Pacific.
S2 (03:51):
Why was Melody set up? I mean, it was was
it because, you know, being imposed and music libraries that
just shit and have been shit for a very long
time and now they're not. Was it because of frustration
around how bad some stock music was?
S3 (04:04):
Absolutely. I mean, working on both sides of the fence,
having both been composers and both been working in audio
post environments with editors and producers. Like we knew the
pain points and the frustrations of the end users, both
in terms of like consistent high quality of music, which
wasn't always the case. Simple licensing, you know, being able
to know what your rights were so that you wouldn't
be sued down the track and having some kind of,
(04:26):
you know, relatively intuitive search interface so that you could
find the music that you needed. So those three things
together we knew were problematic and there wasn't really a
solution at the time. And particularly there wasn't a voice
for Australian music in the global production music space. So
that's what we wanted to try to put together. We've
been kind of iterating the tech since the beginning. So
(04:47):
you know, every other month we're putting in a new
feature or, you know, adjusting something based on user feedback.
And now we're at the point where it works really well. It's,
you know, there are many ways to search from, you know,
the standard menus, genre, mood, instrument, you know, key BPM,
all of that stuff. We have AI search tools where
you can drop a YouTube link or an MP3 in
there and it'll analyze the reference. File and kind of
(05:08):
extract keywords from that analysis and then search for those keywords.
In our database, we've got find similar functionality that works
with AI. We've got all sorts of ways to to
find music, but most recently we've introduced what is maybe
the most exciting feature for an Australian music company, which
is the Aussie button, the Australia button, which allows our
users in Australia. So just those users with an Australian
(05:30):
IP address to filter the artists on the platform to
only show music by Australian artists, which we all know
is important to support our very small industry in Australia.
But it directly allows Australian businesses, produces TV production companies
if they want to, to be able to find music
exclusively by Australian artists. So it empowers our clients to
be able to directly support Aussie music.
S2 (05:52):
We're so lucky. We've got so many great musicians, I guess,
I guess where it comes into play for me, where
I'm looking for First Nations Australian music. Typically I've just
called you and asked you to look for and so
you've just told me you have. I mean, I'm really annoying,
I must say. So hopefully you don't have to hear
from me. So all love it.
S3 (06:10):
No, we love to do music searches and acquire music
for you. And you know what you need is what
everyone needs at the end of the day. So it's
great to have that level of communication.
S2 (06:18):
Yeah, well, you guys are so responsive. It's unbelievable. And,
you know, we've ended up working with James Henry a lot,
who's one of who's one of my go tos, I guess,
on the on the platform. He's a very talented indigenous musician.
When you're looking for an Indigenous led music track, typically
it's didgeridoo or sticks. James Henry's, for example, is not that,
(06:41):
not always that it's got those instruments, but not necessarily
in what would be a cliche way. He's really got
a great vibe.
S4 (06:48):
There is no one sound. And in fact the didgeridoo
only comes from a very small section of Australia up
in north Queensland. Yeah. So, you know, although that's distinctive
and signifies Australia, it's not descriptive of Indigenous music as
a whole. And James has done a fabulous job of
when he does use it, he uses it in such
a way that it doesn't feel like it's a cliche,
it feels like it has, it sits up space. He
(07:12):
uses all sorts of other things in terms of voice, etcetera,
that sound uniquely of this country. He's he's a real
talent is a multi-skilled guy and he he does music
for installations. He's a go to photographer as well. His
styles are quite broad. Like he will do kind of
(07:32):
electronic music and he will do kind of almost traditional
kind of rock and roll a little bit. But somehow
he just makes it all fit together and it doesn't
feel awkward. He's a real talent.
S2 (07:44):
Yeah, I know. We can't name everyone, obviously. 115 currently. 115. Wow.
That's the thing with a library, right? Like, you find
a few composers that you like and you kind of
gravitate towards them. I mean, some of the people we've
worked with is cookie cartel is one that springs to mind.
Really funky bunch But, but who are some of the
other go tos for?
S4 (08:04):
You know, the nature of having a production music library
means you need to have a broad range of music.
So we that's kind of where we have a lot
of composers and they all have strengths in different areas.
So some of them can be broader than others. Cookies
A cookie cartel is an interesting one to bring up.
They are extremely prolific, but they can do a bunch
of different things, which is kind of why they can
(08:25):
be prolific. We have got stacks of local composers that
sit in particular areas as well. Not always what you
might expect. In fact, Helena Chaika and Yuka Snell are
a duo, in fact UK's most times in Berlin these days.
But she's an extraordinary violin player and Helena is a
(08:47):
fantastic composer who's been in our midst for ages.
S2 (08:50):
It sounds like a leading question, but it's not. A
few months ago, we needed some classical music and there
wasn't something that just sort of was sitting there. And
I mentioned that to Evan. And a couple of months
later the duo sent us a couple of classical tracks,
which are pretty unbelievable coincidence.
S3 (09:06):
Josh You decide. Yeah, well, I mean, Helena was already
an artist with us and we've known Helena for years
and she teamed up with Yuko, who is in the
Berlin Philharmonic, and she is an extraordinary violinist. And Helena
herself is an extraordinary composer, writes for Bluey and wins
awards here and there. Yeah. And they got together and
they did create these songs. And to be honest, I
(09:27):
can't tell you whether that was your spark or whether
that was a spark that was already ignited. The way
we acquire music often is for actual broadcast productions, so
we work with some of the bigger production companies in Australia.
They come to us with a show like Real Housewives
or Bondi Rescue or whatever it.
S2 (09:42):
Happens to be.
S3 (09:43):
Waltzing German Yeah, we have this one client. Josh That's right.
And we'll, we'll brief the show out to our composers.
Maybe 20, 30 of them will submit music. If the
music's good, we acquire it and it'll end up being curated,
put into playlists and sent back to that client. However,
unlike Bespoke music, which is typically going to be commissioned
and exclusive to that project, it ends up in our library, not.
(10:06):
Available to other users, but it's created with a specific
production in mind. So it's about as perfect as it
could possibly be for that show, if maybe not written
to picture.
S2 (10:17):
One of the things I really like about the service
that you provide is that you give us the the
tracks and you split the instruments up so that we
don't necessarily have to use all of the instruments every
single time. Sometimes it might just be the piano or
that without percussion or yeah.
S3 (10:33):
Subtractive stems as opposed to giving you a high hat
and a snare and yeah, because it makes it back together.
S4 (10:38):
You mean this is why the search functionality is the
way that it is. This is why the music is
the way that it is. We don't have stems insofar
as we don't split everything up, although we will do
some individual instruments. What we do do a lot of
is subtractive mixes. So we'll take things out of a
mix because that may be the difference between it being
used in a production or not. It might be that
there's a guitar track that's just sitting over and right
(11:00):
in the vocal space, and that means that the audio
post producer or the offline editor is going, I just
can't get this to work. And then they find the
mix it has. There's no guitar, which is great because
they occupy a similar frequency space, so then they can
work around, then they can have the music kind of
envelop the narrative that's going on, whether that be dialogue
or voiceover or whatever. Again, just how quickly can we
(11:22):
get a piece of music into a production? How quickly
can we solve a problem for an editor or an
audio post producer?
S2 (11:29):
What are some of the typical challenges that producers throw
your way that now just become kind of your standard response?
S4 (11:36):
The stems is really the the well, the alternate mixes
is the is the the one that comes up most often.
S3 (11:41):
We're not providing different interpretations of a song. So we
won't have a, you know, a poker version of a
rock song. It's going to be the rock song and
we're going to break it out. So you've got drums
and bass, you've got the full mix, you've got a version,
an instrumental version with no vocal. And we'll have all
of these subtractive mixers that by themself can work in
an edit. So you could line up, you know, nine
of these versions beside each other and just cut between
(12:01):
them and you'll have a seamless mix with different vibes.
So we all of our versions are like that. They're not,
which is what you've actually requested before.
S2 (12:09):
Josh I haven't requested a polka version of something, but
I may, you know, give me time.
S3 (12:14):
We've had occasionally, you know, extended tracks that we've broken
down into into different versions and they've been retitled.
S2 (12:20):
But the collaborative nature of melody, if someone really did
want to poke a version of a song, could they
reach out and just say, Can I get a polka
version of this song?
S4 (12:29):
And most of our composers are receptive to these sorts
of requests too, so there's no conversation that we won't have,
that's for sure.
S3 (12:37):
We do commissioned works. Obviously we do bespoke music. We'll
do themes and ads and whatever's required. We're doing something
for Heineken at the moment out of the Netherlands, we
did a rerecord of George Michael's Careless Whisper a couple
of months ago. And yeah, so we absolutely do that.
And if someone has a specific request, we can create
a piece of music that's exclusive to that client that
(12:58):
won't appear in the Melody Library. And they could actually
have exclusive use to that as a pneumonic like we
did for labs. We do anything music and you know,
in doing so we provide opportunities for our for our writers.
So we'll never say no to an opportunity.
S2 (13:13):
On the mnemonics and the ads. And obviously sonic branding
is becoming a much bigger thing. Yeah. Now, although I
imagine it's going to be a much bigger thing than
it is even in 2023.
S3 (13:23):
Yeah, 100%. We do it. We did it for Levi's
a couple of weeks ago where we put together a
set of tracks like you often do. In this case,
they were non-exclusive tracks available in the Melody catalog, but
they wanted a specific sound for a specific piece of
content that they had, and it transitioned across different parts
of the content, and the team went through and curated
playlists for different parts of this and they had an
(13:44):
amazing outcome. But equally, if they wanted a unique piece
of music, we could actually create that, score it to picture.
S2 (13:50):
Even so, you can be the music library as a company,
but you can also be the music supervisors.
S4 (13:55):
Certainly these conversations are starting to happen and we're already
the go to company for music, for for production music.
It kind of makes sense to have the chat with
us in the first place and with, you know, the
amount of composers that we can call on. And also
in multiple territories, which really helps to in fact, one
of the ones we did recently, we needed to have
it done in 24 hours. So we were able to call,
(14:15):
you know, people in other time zones to get stuff
happening and we got it done. And, you know, in
20 hours, which is extraordinary.
S3 (14:22):
Yeah. Client UK composer and we're squashed in the middle
and it worked perfect.
S2 (14:28):
And what about for emerging musicians who want to get
their music onto a site like yours? Like, how does
that work?
S4 (14:35):
It's a really good way to to make an income.
If you're a composer, it's a good way to cut
your teeth to skill up because you need to, to
a degree, work at pace. The more tracks you have
in the game, the more likely you are to going
to get picked up. And certainly we've had conversations with
people who are kind of fresh out of the Conservatorium
or they're fresh out of other, you know, tertiary institutions
(14:56):
and they suddenly realize that there's an option for them.
S2 (14:58):
So it kind of feels like a faux pas even
mentioning that. But one of the things that I noticed
about that AI generated music is just how boring it is.
Is and how it all just sounds the same.
S4 (15:08):
You need a human in it. You still need a human.
And we know this from firsthand experience. And we've we've
worked in and around, you know, development in this area.
It needs to resonate with human, otherwise it won't work.
I mean, music is is communication, right? Yeah. Our whole
business is built on trying to make people feel something. Right.
And that's a choice of notes, a choice of rhythms,
harmonic interplay. If you're not a human, you won't understand it.
(15:31):
You know, you can feed an AI machine with billions
of pieces of data, but it still won't kind of
resonate the same way.
S3 (15:37):
It's only creating based on its data set. And you
can have a broad data set that will allow it
to create things that seem new, but it's never going
to be, you know, that real cut through sound.
S2 (15:49):
Yeah, well, I mean, you're not hearing much in 17,
8 or 5 four. You're not hearing, you know, interesting scales.
You know, for example, you're not hearing the E-flat pentatonic scale,
you know, underneath. Thanks. It's my favorite scale, you know,
that I kind of.
S4 (16:04):
For me, I mean, music is, you know, I'm, you know,
a few decades old now. Music is still such a
joy for me, right? Like, working in it is still
such a joy. I don't get tired of it. I
don't know why anyone would try and seek to find
an alternative to being immersed in the joy like it's
such a cool thing. Magical frequencies that somehow make us
feel differently. It's weird. It's like alchemy, you know? So
(16:26):
I'm all about trying to continue. I got all these
composers that I work with and all these people on
the other side who want to hear great music.
S2 (16:32):
You guys have an API who like who uses the API.
S3 (16:36):
How does it work? Yeah, I mean, I didn't really
touch on this in the beginning, but we have three markets.
We have the content creator market, so people making digital
content for social media, YouTube, Facebook, etcetera, those people. Then
we have our B2B film, TV, broadcast realm advertising. And
then lastly, we have our B2B to creative platform market,
which is often accessed through our API. So these are
(16:57):
creative technology platforms with users making user generated content. So
they might be online video editing platforms, they might be
online podcast editing platforms, text to speech, all of these
AI things that are popping up, any kind of digital
content creation platform. We pipe our music in, they get
access to our database so that their users can search
and integrate our music into their content for use online.
(17:20):
And that's that's that entire realm for us. And it's exploded. Interestingly,
since GPT came along, especially one of the users, we
went from several hundred thousand calls to now it's more,
now it's in the millions of API calls per day.
So every day we're getting literally millions of pings on
(17:41):
our database by humans all around the world searching for
and downloading music for their digital content. It's super.
S4 (17:47):
Exciting. Melody only exists because of the composers. So, you know,
everything's cut down the middle, 50 over 50. We understand
that they make a leap of faith to, you know,
to put their music with us. And we take that
really seriously and we work really hard on their behalf.
S2 (18:01):
Awesome, Guys, thanks so much for for coming in. Where
do we where where can we download it?
S3 (18:07):
We're called melody music. And you can go to Melody
Dot I we're pretty new to Spotify, but if you
look up melody, music will pop up and there'll be
a few playlists for your listening pleasure.
S2 (18:18):
Josh Matthew, thanks guys.
S4 (18:20):
My pleasure. Thanks.
S3 (18:20):
Josh Thanks, Josh, Thanks for being an awesome customer.
S2 (18:23):
It's easy.
S1 (18:28):
Ample. Here he is.
S2 (18:31):
This thing on? Get that on. Don't touch her.
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