Ugh. I wasn't happy that Epic owned it, but they didn't seem to be doing anything to harm it yet. I don't know much about Songtradr, but I don't trust a company that is focused on licensing and not creation.
SongTradr's main business focuses on earning money for musicians. We aren't in the business of owning music and then licensing it, we're in the business of connecting musicians with companies that want music. some of it is advertising, some is YouTube/content creation, and some is for streaming (https://pretzel.rocks, which is how I joined the company).
We support the artists by finding diverse ways for them to monetize their music. I've purchased a dozen albums on Bandcamp. All of the artists are already on pretzel (our content acquisition team works hard, especially on internal referrals), but I look forward to simplifying the process down to a simple click (right now it's DDEX and spreadsheets)
I'm not a fan of our marketing, but it's more aimed at content licensees, not licensors.
My buddies and I did a project for them a few years back working on a song discovery mechanism (which they patented) for use when finding songs to pitch for things like ads and tv shows that might be of interest to your company.
Every company has rationalizations about how they are helping their customers, and one can hardly blame artists for doing what they need to do in order to survive, but I doubt most of them dream of having their work used by big shitty brands.
I know a few that have recognized how hard it is to make a living as a musician and, as an adaptation of sorts, wholeheartedly jumped into the world of “sync licensing” (or is it synch?), where they are actually focusing on writing music specifically to appeal to the commercial needs of “big shitty brands.” It makes perfect sense to me. It’s a way to use your skills to help someone else do what they want to do. It’s not like I’ve had the luxury of building whatever software I want for most of my career. It usuall comes down to what some product marketing douche is convinced will make money.
I really like your comment. I don't understand why it's OK to shit on artists/musicians for selling their music to "big shitty brands" when I've written a ton of code for "big shitty brands" most of my career.
I meant that all of the artists that I purchased music from. When I like a band, I make sure to tell my buddy over in the group that signs artists. Pretzel has great terms that are non-exclusive, so it's easy to get a 'yes'.
You don't trust a company that is trusted by Heineken?
But for real. What kind of company needs to list a bunch of random companies and say they are "trusted by" them. If you need to tell me how trusted you are then I really don't trust you.
