Years with Company: 8
Address: Los Angeles, CA
Web: chordal.com
Email: hello@chordal.com
BACKGROUND
Chordal is helping make it easier than ever for music makers and rights holders to clear their catalogs for synchronization. A graduate of NYU, Grayson Sanders helped build the company after experiencing success as a classical composer.
Syncing Up
I thought I was heading towards a film music career, so I was focused on film scoring and doing things in the experimental classical scene. A former roommate had moved to Los Angeles and started working for a publishing company. He got in touch and asked if I wanted to get involved in sync. That wasn’t something I’d really heard of; surprisingly, I didn’t learn about it in my overpriced music degree.
After getting involved in the sync world, I landed a placement for Coca Cola. I was like, “Wow, this is significant income for an artist.” I decided to move to Los Angeles and ended up co-founding a licensing agency with that same colleague. We grew that for about 10 years. We were representing our own work but also a lot of different artists and record labels.
Striking a Chord
Chordal came out of the experience of licensing the traditional way and seeing how the pace of producing content was accelerating. And fees were going down for individual syncs, but the number of possible syncs was going up. Something’s got to budge if deals are falling through because those old practices are too slow.
Who Are the Deciders?
Sync licensing requires all parties who share ownership of a song to approve a license and be involved in that transaction. If there’s a song that a band of four members writes and there’s a label, you have five stakeholders. So, if you’re going to get a license from that band or the people that represent that band, there are sophisticated teams dedicated to surfacing those owners, contacting them, negotiating with them individually, contracting with them, and paying them out. Historically, a lot of focus in sync licensing has been how do we get in front of those decision makers?
Streamlining
Our goal was to bring all the parties under one roof so they can have a more streamlined way of clearing songs so that transactions can be expedited. And when that buyer needs to pay those parties, they’re not getting five invoices. They’re getting a single payment experience.
The Rise of Royalty-Free Music
Think about where content is with everything taking place on social media, UGC [user generated content] gaming platforms, and creator marketplaces. Everything has gotten much higher volume and faster, and also much lower value in terms of per license fees. As the music industry stayed in the old model of finding out who owns what, calling them, and doing the contracts, this other industry of royalty-free music rose up to fill that void.
Coexisting With Artificial Intelligence
Right now, licensing generative A.I. music is legally fraught. Those licenses aren’t properly in place yet with all the big rights holders. There’s no attribution model for royalty payments that’s scalable or frankly suitable for the industry. But I believe it will get there. And when it does, you’re going to have these two hemispheres of music, one that is high-volume and fully democratized, and then another that has cultural value attached.
Finding What You’re Looking For
We have a department that builds A.I. analysis tools—analyzing music for its lyrical content and how it sounds so you can search by describing what you’re looking for. This is quickly becoming the expectation for any music platform. We’re always finding ways to use emerging A.I. tools to help people get to the source faster and give them better insights.
Applications and Referrals
Music companies must go through an application process just to confirm they are a legitimate business. You wouldn’t believe how many bots are trying to sign up every day. And we take referrals. Let’s say you’re a record label and the platform has 200 songs in your catalog controlled by a publisher. If that publisher is not on the platform, you have the ability to refer out to them. They can then create a free account and see the music that’s already connected to them in the system.
Multiple Tiers
We wanted a free tier because we didn’t want a barrier to entry for people claiming their rights on songs and being active. That account is limited to one user and has some other limitations, but you can still monetize and make money through the platform. Then we have a subscription tier where you can have unlimited seats and access to some other functionality. You also have a lower revenue share rate on transactions. And the third tier is Enterprise. That’s for large organizations with detailed and custom setups.
Pushing Change
Any tech startup is a challenge. Throw on top of that trying to innovate in a system that has done things a certain way for decades, and you’re going to encounter friction. In the early days, the industry was skeptical, so we had to take the long road. We built brick-by-brick with small businesses that were willing to take a chance.
What Works for Sync
Music full of curse words probably won’t get licensed often. Anything that’s extremely experimental, aggressive, or noisy—not to say it will never find a home, it’s just going to find a home in a really specific way. Think about music complementing a visual and what someone is trying to achieve. That’s the thing that musicians and rights holders often forget. When you’re creating a release, you’re thinking about a music listener. In sync, you’re complementing someone else’s vision. So, think about your music through the lens of what type of content would this supplement? “This is great for this app.” Well, is it? Maybe think about other stuff that this brand has used and see if anything in your catalog would fit.
There’s also nuance between media. What works on socials for micro-licensing is different than what’s being licensed for big, broadcast ads. And that’s great, because it means the opportunity is spread out. Electronic, hip-hop, lo-fi, Latin pop, and mainstream Latin genres are killing it right now on our micro-licensing stuff. But some genres barely see any traction on the traditional licensing side.
Social Media and Courtroom Drama
In UGC, users signing into Instagram can post a video and search through music of well-known artists to add to it. The music industry negotiates large deals so the user can pull a song and use it in their video. But that doesn’t cover branded use. And the platforms don’t have any information about the difference, or if they do it’s buried under three menus. As a result, you have a lot of infringement lawsuits, recognizable brands getting sued for large sums.
Customizing Contracts
If you are a less experienced licensor or rights holder, you may not have licensing agreements to work off. We have a suite of boilerplate agreements. They’re automatically loaded when there’s a license. They’re industry-standard forms that are fair to both licensor and licensee. If you are a large rights holder, a name brand label, or publisher, you have sophisticated contracts. In some cases, you’ve negotiated specific deals with buyers. So, we have a sort of shorthand on the agreements that we use to manage those relationships.
