by Dov Kornits
Australian owned music licensing company, Melodie is ramping up their offering to the local film, television and content-creator industry, as well as giving the global market a nudge.
“We’ve had a lot of success in Australia since we founded the company six years ago,” says Evan Buist from France, where he is setting up a European office for Melodie. “We work with most of the production companies and broadcasters. But Australia is less than 3% of the global industry when it comes to performing rights opportunities. We’ve done business in America, which has been good. However, three of the four biggest territories in the world when it comes to broadcast royalties are France, UK, and Germany.
“I’ve landed in France, and I have the UK and Germany on either side, and we’re exhibiting at [leading broadcasting conference] IBC in Amsterdam this year. And we’ll be at [content market] MIPCOM in France.
“We’re looking to replicate what we’ve done in Australia over here, where the opportunities are greater, but we’ll always be Australian and we’re still representing a majority Australian artist roster and we’re exporting that music to the rest of the world and we’re really proud to do so.
“We would love to be well known in other parts of the world where people don’t know what Melodie is. We’ve created a really benevolent model that’s been very successful in Australia; 95% instrumental music that’s very international, and there’s no reason why we couldn’t be soundtracking the same kinds of content internationally that we’re doing here in Australia.
“We do have competitors all over the world. We’ve raised something like $2.8 million in the last six years since founding the company. Our competitors have raised $500 million, so we’re not competitive in terms of paying for pay-per-click advertising to target the creator economy in the same way. But we are competitive when it comes to consistently high-quality music and intuitive search technology. We just won product of the year at NAB. So, it’s just a matter of finding ways to expand into these different parts of the market where we can expose Melodie to the clients that will see that our offering is actually competitive.”
The enterprising Evan Buist [pictured left with the NAB award] has a background in music, which informs the approach of music licensing platform, melod.ie, when it comes to rewarding artists.
“I studied music all through school and went on to become a sound engineer and then moved back into music and started writing jingles for TV and advertising radio whilst doing audio post production; mixing movie trailers and ads and films.
“I’ve been dabbling in startups the whole way through. Straight out of school, I started an on-hold music business, basically writing music for on-hold, because at the time that was a big thing. And then I went on to do pre-school entertainment. I started a band called The Moogies that was a little bit like a Hi5 or Wiggles, wrote all the music and created a 65-episode pre-school format that we sold to Screentime and almost made it to children’s entertainment stardom…
“I travelled all around the world on the royalties that I earned from writing these kind of B-grade shampoo commercials, and I thought, ‘wow, this is a considerable opportunity.’ And it just seemed like there was a gap in the market in terms of libraries that had what I would call consistently high-quality music, really intuitive search functionality, and most importantly, simplicity in the licensing side of things,” he says, referring to what he and his team have created with Melodie.
“Working as a composer, but also in audio, I had the benefit of seeing both sides of the market, understanding how editors and producers feel about music libraries, and also, from a musical point of view, looking at it from that side as well.”
Music streaming sites famously pay peanuts to artists. How does Melodie fare when it comes to their music being used to score visual content of all shapes and sizes? “Making sure that artists actually get paid for their work is something that we don’t take for granted,” answers Buist. “It’s absolutely not the status quo in many parts of the world. Buyout deals are quite common in music licensing, where you’ll pay the composer an upfront fee in exchange for an acquisition of the work, and then whenever that work generates income, be that through royalties or through synchronization, through license fees, the fees don’t go to the composer in many cases.
“There’s been pushback against that from the composer community that, especially those that are a little older or more established and savvy, and that have an understanding about this kind of residual income stream that’s being left on the table or taken away from you. Composers are not necessarily happy with that. Performing rights royalties – income that composers get whenever their music is played in a TV or radio show or advertising – is worth USD$4.38 billion per year. So, to sign a deal with the company that will not share the backend with you, it’s madness. We share all of our revenues, 50/50 with the composers and very much invest in the next generation of composers because it’s absolutely mandatory to keep the industry going.”
With 135+ composers and their work featured on the platform, what are Evan Buist’s thoughts on the AI disruption that is about to take place? “I look at AI as an amazing collaborative tool that’s going to aid with efficiency. It’s a new technology in terms of creating music and discovering new ideas and inspiration, and all of that is great. I also think every kind of technological democratization, it provides access to those that wouldn’t otherwise have access to do this – to create music. So, the risk is, we’re going to have this huge saturation of music being produced, and it’s definitely not as good as human music at the moment. But watch this space.
“We’ve become accustomed to accepting things that are slightly lower quality if they get the job done. And if you step away from professional industries and you are making a makeup tutorial on Instagram and there’s something in the background that just kind of tinkles along and it’s AI, maybe if you’re not a musical person, it serves a purpose; but this would take away from a license fee that would go to a human composer. I think we all have to be really aware of that. The fundamentals of AI and seeking permission to be able to use human music to train algorithms, is essential. Paying humans transparently as to what is AI, I think is really key. And the downside and the risk is, if we don’t get this right, is there’ll be no reason for kids of the next generation to go into music. I’ve got a three-year-old daughter. Do I encourage her to go into music or do I think that might be a risky industry? I think we need to move the dialogue in a way that makes sure that there are future generations of kids that are really keen to get into the creative industries, because a world without creativity is incredibly dystopian and boring.”
But at least with Evan Buist and Melodie around, it’ll feature “consistently high-quality music, really intuitive search functionality, and most importantly, simplicity in the licensing side of things.”
