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BPS 369: Music Licensing for Film Demystified with Chris Small · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast,
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Episode number three sixty nine. Not all storms come to disrupt your life,
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some come to clear your path. Anonymous broadcasting from a dark, windowless
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room in Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft. It's
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the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching
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you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
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Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am
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your humble host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script
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guys, I have a question for you. Have you ever been making
1:37
a movie or a video or some you know, some sort of video content
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and you're like, man, I wish I could get some good music.
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God, I wish I could find something that's not going to be super expensive,
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or I just want that one song, or I can't really afford a
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composer for this. What am I gonna do? And then you have to
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end up going to some like really bad sound library or something like that that
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doesn't have anything really that great. I've had that experience myself, and it's
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horrible. It's absolutely horrible. The process of music licensing and getting the rights
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to music not only for like your film, just for film festivals, but
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then there's you know, rights for theatrical there's rights for television and network and
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all this kind of stuff. And it's really just this hodgepodge of stuff,
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and not many people have talked about it. So I wanted to bring a
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specialist on, someone who deals with this on a daily basis, someone who
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could demystify the process of licensing music properly for films and what other options there
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might be out there for filmmakers. So today's guest is Chris small from soundstripe
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dot com. Now, Chris has been in the business for a while and
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he is very well versed on music licensing, specifically for films and other kind
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of video content. And Chris really kind of breaks everything down and we go,
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we get into the weeds a little bit about music licensing. But it
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is so important to understand this because it could it could hurt your sales.
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You can probably I've seen movies not even get distributed because they didn't have the
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proper music licensing for certain things, and then it just draw it just just
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throws everything out of whack. So, without any further ado, please enjoy
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my conversation with Chris small from sound Stripe. I like to welcome the show,
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Chris small Man. How are you doing, brother, Hey, I'm
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doing great, Alex, Thanks so much, for for having me. I've
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been looking forward to this for for a while. So absolutely are things on
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the on the West coast. The cold, but not cold like you're cold,
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but cold like are cold. So like we're like like forty with sun
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is like, oh you know it's it's yeah, it's rough. That's cold
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forties and fifty. No, it's actually been a really cold winter for us.
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But again, everybody in the in the north are going just shut up,
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Alex, just shut right, exactly exactly. So we're gonna talk to
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a bunch about the wonderful world of music licensing and how how interesting of a
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process that is. But before we get into it, you are you come
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to us from more of the music side as opposed to the film side.
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So how did you even start going down the road of being in the music
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side of the business. Yeah, yeah, so I I actually I've been
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a musician pretty much my entire life. I started playing guitar when I was
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eight years old, and grew up playing in bands, you know, doing
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the the rock thing, and uh and I I you know, I think
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probably it was around tenth grade really started thinking, all right, somehow I
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have to turn this in this passion into like a career, so I kind
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of knew that that was the direction I wanted to head down. So I
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ended up going to school here in Nashville. There was a there's a school
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called Belmont University, and I still the music business there, and as as
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are probably like ninety nine percent of the hopeful artists that go to school at
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Belmont to get involved in the music industry. You know, you come in
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pretty naive and have no idea what you're doing. But I was fortunate enough
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after school to get a job at a record label, and as one of
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the one of the record labels in town is actually a Christian subsidiary of Warner
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Music Group called Word Entertainment, and I kind of cut my teeth there for
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the three years, doing really not sexy things in the business, like making
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sales phone calls and working spreadsheets and doing really not fun things. But I
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learned a lot and and that was kind of my first, you know,
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my first foray into the business of music. And you know, one thing
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led to another through my own personal music pursuits and through connections that I had
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gotten vault in the music licensing space, and eventually through my own music actually
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wound up it sounds stripe, So that was that was in twenty sixteen,
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and I was originally a composer on the site, and that eventually led to
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an opportunity for me to exercise the other part of my brain and work on
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the business that sounds stripe. So that's what I've been doing since twenty sixteen.
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Yeah, a lot of even artists in general, they always look at
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the sexy part of the business and they never really look at there's a lot
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more unsexy stuff in the film business, in the music industry, and whatever
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artistic endeavor you have, there's always a business side to it. There's always
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grunt work, there's always stuff that is just not what they show on TV.
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Oh one hundred per sat Man, that's exactly right, that's exactly right.
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To get that artist on the stage singing, there's an army of people
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doing sexy stuff. Oh yeah, and months of work and failures upon failures
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upon failures that just add up to the that moment, you know, Yeah,
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for sure, no question. Sure. So let's talk about the sexy
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world of music licensing, all right. Can you discuss how a filmmaker normally
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has to license music for film or video because I know, me being a
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filmmaker, I've tried to license film music for films, and you know,
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even if I go after an obscure song where it's it was like it was
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a hit back in the fifties and nobody really knows about it, and my
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last name is in Tarantino, so it's it's just a convoluted process. So
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please explain to the audience what that process is. Oh man, that is
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a that's a all right. So this is a very complex answer or it's
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a really difficult thing, and I think that's why there there's so much like
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disruption happening in that space right now. But usually they're traditionally, there are
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a few different ways that a filmmaker would go about licensing a song, and
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you know, you may do it by connecting directly with a composer, and
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this is still, I think, like a really viable, solid way,
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especially for those kind of like a narrative base people that are creating films that
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are you know, maybe more dramatic or documentary or you know, anything like
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that. We're working directly with a composer to kind of score your piece,
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and that that usually I think would be everybody's choice, right, Like,
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they have an awesome friend who's an amazing musician who understands the story and is
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super talented, all self contained, sits down next to them and just writes
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for the piece. But very few people know that friend or have that connection
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or have the budget to hire a composer a team to sit down and do
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it. So that would be that would be step one. But outside of
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that, you know, you if you're trying to license a song that's like
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a top forty track, like a Katie Perry tune or something, the challenge
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is that not only is that like just super expensive, but it's very complicated
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to acquire the license for that. Youve got to contact a publisher negotiate a
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deal. Half the time that publisher does not care who you are, and
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if you're you know, if you're an independent or somebody that's like just now
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working on your craft, like forget it, that's going to be that's going
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to be a tough game. So what most filmmakers do that have any type
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of budget, as they hire a music supervisor, and this is somebody who
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kind of already has those connections. This is somebody who can tap into their
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network of publishers or their network of libraries and actually negotiate those fees, negotiate
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the licenses. It's a very arduous and frankly not sexy job, and these
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music supervisors are really difficult to find and kind of expensive. We'll be right
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back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
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So there's that. That's the that's the way it's operated traditionally, and I
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think up until recently, maybe twenty ten twenty twelve, we started seeing really
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high quality music being licensed online for the first time. And you know,
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stock music or music libraries kind of have this this reputation of just being terrible
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quality music music. It's just so, and rightly so, because most of
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them were and most of them still are. Unfortunately, because it's very difficult
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to kind of curate a library of music that is that actually has heart,
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that is actually real, that's made by artists who are like passionate about what
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they're doing and not just trying to make money. So there were a couple
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of companies that kind of jumped into that, since you know, you can
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music online and be highly curated for intentional you know, quality control, but
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also it's accessible to filmmakers, and you know, I think what happened in
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that time period was the model what that looked like, and how relationship between
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the company and the artist and the company and the filmmaker was still getting ironed
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out. And Soundstripe entered the picture in twenty sixteen and really said, you
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know, with a lot of this content being produced, people need access to
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high quality music and they need access to it in volume. And so that's
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really kind of where I think things are headed now. Is the paradise shifted
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to be able to provide affordable quality music for film. Yeah, it's I've
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noticed that myself just trying to get songs and I have that. I have
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that relationship with a composer who I do call, and every time I call,
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he's just like, oh god, it's Alex again. He's gonna want
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me to do something for like next to nothing. But he is a friend
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that I do call, uh, and I do. I have occasionally been
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able to license a song by calling the artist directly, Like for my latest
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film, I called an artist directly because it was a very very specific kind
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of song. But uh, it's you know, it's still a process and
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it took me weeks to hunt people down and get it. It is a
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complex process. Can you also talk a little bit about the different rights that
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filmmakers need, because a lot of filmmakers just think, oh, I'll just
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get the rights, you know, I'll just license something and I'm good forever
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and whatever I want to do with it. Like, No, it doesn't
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technically work that way, correct, this is it? Yeah, So it's
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a complex scenario. But you know, when you need a piece of music,
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what you actually what you need is a synchronization license and that allows you
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to take that piece of music and associate it with film, with video,
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and that license, you know, grants you the right to to to marry
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that piece of music, that that composition to picture and and that's that's really,
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you know, the most important license that you need, and it's it's
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required for every piece of music that you want to put in your film that's
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not in public domain. And then the public domains a whole other bag of
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tricks that we don't want to get into at the moment. That's a whole
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other world of craft that we don't want to jump into. But but the
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synchronized license for a film, it works. I completely understand what you're saying,
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but there's also different styles, like different levels of licensing. So like
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you can get the film festival rights, you can get theatrical rights, you
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can get VOD rights, you can get trailer rights to use it for the
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trailer, and and then how long are those rights associated with it? Sometimes
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you know, I'm actually talking, I'm actually trying to license something for if
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HTV and it's an old show and the and the guys are like, look,
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when we did this back in the nineties, we didn't think about VOD,
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so we technically don't have the music rights for that. I'm like,
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we'll pull the damn music off, man. But yeah, so it is
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a complex thing, but that's something that the filmmaker shouldn't should really look after,
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Like, don't just get the film festival rights, I think, do
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you agree, Like that's kind of foolish. If you're going to get them,
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get them for a whole thing at least. Yeah, got man.
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And this is where it's so complicated, because you know, as a filmmaker
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sometimes you don't even know what the end use is going to be, So
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basing the rights of that license on its end use is becoming more and more
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complicated as distribution channels continue to scale. So you have Facebook and you may
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create something that you know, you think, okay, this is going to
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be just distributed online to some friends. But then later on down the road,
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you know, you want to go to a film fester, or you
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want to do broadcast, and having to get different licenses rights for each one
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of those end uses is extremely complicated, without question. And then sometimes you
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know, filmmakers are like, you said, we'll just put something up on
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Facebook or on YouTube, and all of a sudden it's got twenty billion downloads,
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and all of a sudden you're like, I can't monetize this because now
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the right holders of the music is coming after me. And oh, if
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you would have just licensed it, you would have had you know, I'm
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seeing amount of money. Yeah, so true. Now, what are some
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other pitfalls that you can think of the filmmakers fall into when licensing music?
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You know, I think we talked a little bit about not just getting one
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license for one kind of like film festival rights with theatrical rights, but trying
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to get as broad of a license as possible for your music. Well,
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what are some other things you should look out for? Well, you mentioned
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one that's that's still I think a huge it's still getting worked out. Like
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YouTube content ideas another thing that's like incredibly complex and it's honestly broken to an
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ID situation. You know, We've been in constant communication with YouTube, talking
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to them, trying to give them ideas, and also you know, trying
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to work out deals for our members and you know, and our our artist
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community. And it's just a really just it's based on an algorithm. Sometimes
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a piece of music that's one hundred percent cleared, one hundred percent legally licensed
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will get flag based on a sample that somebody used and that sample was registered
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with some other you know, third party content ID. It's just a just
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an absolute mess right now. And so that's something to keep in mind.
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You know, sometimes, like I said, if you you could do everything
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right and then you go to YouTube and it's just it's just terrible. Oh
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no, no, trust me. I deal with it on a daily basis.
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I put movie trailers up or I'll you know, I'll put up a
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Oh. The best is the the commentary. Like videos that have a clip
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of a music or a clip of a movie in it. Yeah, and
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the clip is five seconds in an hour long piece and I get flagged and
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I'm like, your sons, this is fair use exactly. Uh, let's
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talk about fair use for a second. Yeah, what is fair use?
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And is it a myth? I I don't think it's a myth, but
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I do think that people misuse it. So that technically any type of music
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that's put into a piece of film that's not for educational purposes, uh,
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is you know, requires a license and fair use. You know. One
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thing to just keep in mind about fair use is it's really kind of a
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defense. You know, I would be I'll put it to you this way.
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I would be worried or nervous, or I would make sure to to
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really really do before putting a piece of music film that's going to be distributed
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and not having a license, because you're putting yourself in a position of liability.
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And if you're having to exercise a fair use argument in a situation where
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you're getting a takedown notice or you are getting confronted by a rights holder,
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I mean like, obviously you don't want something like that to get in the
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way of you pursuing your art and releasing your product. So, so you
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know, fair use in my opinion is really not a good, not a
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good argument to just use even just a couple seconds of a piece of music
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in your film, you know, without actually securing those those rights in that
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license. Now, there is something that's always been very interesting. I've always
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found very interesting in the music business because, believe it or not, I
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actually dabbled in the music business early, early, early in my career.
18:57
We will discuss my sick career. But are you for us? No,
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absolutely not. I am a horrible Now. We were just singing. We
19:07
were saying puddle of mud before you jumped on here. For some reason,
19:11
that song blurry just came into our brain and we just started saying. But
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I actually played around in the music business and hung out and recorded and all
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that stuff when I was younger. And the concept of publishing versus performance of
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a song is a mystery. And people don't understand how important publishing is,
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first of all, because you know, like the Beatles didn't own their publishing
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rights, you know, and Michael Jackson bought it out from Paul McCartney when
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it went up for sam And people are like, but that's the Beatles music,
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Like, how can they not own it? Please explain that a little
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bit. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back
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to the show. Oh man, what's time do we have? Okay?
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So I'm not trying simply. I think it often actually is confusing and actually
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even even trying to delineate or to differentiate, like you know, a performance
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royalty, because technically a performance royalty falls undershing right the publishing realm. So
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in publishing, there are a few different types of royalties that can be collected
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and kind of like managed by the publishing side of the deal. And whenever
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a piece of music is is is written and then recorded, there are really
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two different types of intellectual property that are created. It's the it's the composition,
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right like the actual notes that make up the song, and then it's
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the recording of that song. And so because you have the composition and then
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the recording, there are all these different royalties and organizations and you know,
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publishers and record labels and people that kind of like manage royalty collection and distribution
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back to rights holders for each of these type of these type of things.
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So when it comes to performance it's really interesting because there are a few organizations
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that that actually monitor venues and monitor you know even like uh, you know,
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theaters and bars and restaurants and and track every single time a song is
21:30
played in a public arena and a royalty is generated then paid out to the
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rights holders a publisher at that at that that GA and so yeah, then
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of course, like like we mentioned synchronization licensing, that's kind of handled on
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their publishing. Print is another thing too that's handled under publishing. And that's
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really like the traditional publishing if you think about what publishing was back in the
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day with print. So so that exists as well. And then there's the
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macha anical royalties that are generated from that, which actually have to do with
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the amount of times a song is downloaded or streamed online or anything like that.
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There's a there's a royalty and mechanical royalty that's generated in that case.
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I remember hearing the story of I think it was Bruce Springsteen, who like
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early on did not own his own publishing. Yeah, like and he finally
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said, uh, he talked to his manager. He's like, well,
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why don't I just open up a publishing company of my own and I'll just
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publish my own stuff. And now he owns and now he owns it all.
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Yeah, you're right, and it's such a weird game in the music
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industry, and most most artists actually do that. They create their own publishing
22:40
companies so that they can actually collect that piece of the pie as well,
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because it's a fairly big piece if you go, like if you're licensing well,
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like a perfect example was that Beatles song Revolution, which Nike licensed when
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I think Michael Jackson owned it and Paul McCartney and the Beatles were bi oh
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yeah, man, they were pissed, but man, Mike, Mike pulled
23:00
in a few few mill off that at least, uh, just because you
23:04
own the rights to it. Uh. It's always fascinating, But I wanted
23:08
to I want filmmakers to kind of understand a little bit of the back drop
23:12
of how musicians get paid and what the world is. And can you also
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tell me the average cost in your in your experience of what like a film
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festival rights for a song is, because a lot of times filmmakers won't get
23:26
the whole you know thing, and they're like, look, we just want
23:30
the film festival rights for it, just to let us get it into Sundance.
23:33
Let us just let us watch it. There, you know, what's
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the average cost? I mean, because I know I have a number in
23:40
my head. I want to hear what you thought. So I feel like
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every single answer that I'm giving here is so ambiguous. I want to try
23:49
and be clear, but I will say I will say I am not an
23:53
expert when it comes to when it comes to this, like there are and
24:00
I think one of the things that that sound stripe kind of aim to do
24:03
is take all of these what we would consider to be very non universal or
24:11
even take it as far as sometimes arbitrary fees on some of these licenses based
24:17
on end use and make it as simple as possible. So the simple answer
24:22
to your is it's a wide spectrum. So depending on the amount of people
24:29
that attend the film festival, the amount I mean, like, there's several
24:33
different factors that kind of play into these fees, and there's not really one
24:38
solid answer to the question, unfortunately. Yeah, from my experience and from
24:45
what I've seen, you know, again, it so varies. And by
24:48
the way, everything we're talking about is not a Katie Perry song. It
24:52
is not a very popular song. These songs are from independence or just songs
24:56
that are not as well known, but it ranges from five hundred to one
25:00
thousand bucks. I've seen it all go all the way up to ten thousand,
25:03
right, but it all depends on the kind of song and who you're
25:07
talking to exactly. And then it also is true though, and please confirm
25:11
this or not, it doesn't matter if you use five seconds or the full
25:15
song, it's still the same amount of money. Is that correct? Yeah?
25:19
Absolutely don't and don't you know put and I will say, on broadcast,
25:23
there are certain you know, if you're talking about a broadcast situation,
25:29
there are actually different fees that will be negotiated based on the length of the
25:34
amount or if it's a feature film. I know that that's definitely always a
25:37
good point. So there's these all these arbitrary little like you know, things
25:41
that have been placed on to kind of really really control I guess the amount
25:49
that that publishers and companies are able to charge for particular use, and that
25:56
I think was a really solid way to kind of do it for a while.
26:00
But now we have so much content being produced in the distribution channels have
26:06
changed to where broadcast is no longer really king, you know, and so
26:11
so it doesn't really make sense now. So now you try to put that
26:15
on the distribution system now, and you have situations where, Okay, if
26:19
your YouTube channel has a thousand subscribers, it's this amount, but if you
26:23
have ten thousand subscribers, it's this amount, and it just doesn't make sense
26:27
in my opinion, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't make sense in
26:30
the least. So, I mean, we've just talked for a little while
26:34
about the horrors of music licensing and how complicated and ridiculous it is to even
26:41
get so basically, now I'm telling everybody listening, just don't use music.
26:45
Just don't use music at all in any of your projects. It is just
26:48
just shoot yourself. Just shoot yourself. Now I'm joking. But so we've
26:52
mentioned we've mentioned soundstripe a little bit, and I want to talk a little
26:55
bit about Soundstripe because when I discovered soundstripe, I was I was like,
27:02
oh, finally, finally something that makes sense. Can you explain what soundstripe
27:08
is and how your model differs from everything we've just been talking about. Yeah,
27:14
well, I appreciate the compliment, and you know, thankfully soundstripe.
27:21
So we're advocates of the creatives like our mission is to keep creatives creating.
27:25
And you know what, we as musicians. You know, most of like
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I said, the leadership team and the founders all come from the music world,
27:33
and so we have a heart for musicians and keeping them creating and providing
27:38
a consistent, stable income for music producers. And then on the flip side
27:45
of that, we noticed this what we've been talking about for the past I
27:48
even know how long thirty minutes or so, the complexities in the content and
27:52
licensing space, and so Soundstripe, you know what we what we decided to
27:57
do was it's arted honestly with a group of probably fifteen or so of our
28:03
friends here in Music City in Nashville who were all producers and composers and writers
28:10
and just kind of doing the traditional licensing game, pitching songs to brands like
28:15
Coke and Cawog and you know, landing maybe one percent of those pitches.
28:19
And we decided to take all of these songs that were just collecting dusts on
28:23
hard drives and heart, blood, soul, sweat, tears went into these
28:27
things and provide a no frills, simple, easy solution for content creators to
28:34
use the songs in their films and what we didn't realize at the time is
28:40
that was something that people really wanted. Yes, So all of a sudden,
28:48
I mean, within a year, it was very clear, Okay,
28:51
this is this is you know, not just a side project thing, like
28:56
we need to really figure this out and create a resource that actually, you
29:00
know, is valuable and helps carry out this mission, both for filmmakers and
29:07
for musicians. And so Soundstripe offers unlimited music for video for any use for
29:15
fifteen dollars a month or one hundred and thirty five years. Stop it and
29:19
just stop it. And yeah, and we just introduced sound effects too,
29:23
so a lot of our independent filmmaking community is very happy with that. So
29:29
in fact, I could probably tell you at the time of this video releasing,
29:33
we're adding ten thousand additional sound effects. So now our total library would
29:36
be about twenty thousand sound effects as a part of our premium Plan two.
29:41
That's two hundred and forty five a year. But that's nothing though, I
29:44
mean for two hundred fourty five twenty like less than twenty bucks a month or
29:47
something like that. Whatever the math is, the amount of stuff that you
29:52
get is pretty pretty insane. We'll be right back after a word from our
29:57
sponsor, and now back to the show. I actually have experience with filmmakers
30:08
who found Soundstripe and decided to score their film based on the music, because
30:15
you arguably could score your film with the music that you find on the service.
30:21
I mean, you've got to work around it. It's not scored for
30:23
the actual image, but if the images match the music, you could find
30:29
a composer on there and grab certain themes and literally score your music not only
30:33
with just music, but actual songs with lyrics and people singing, you know,
30:40
for that funny scene, that romantic comedy scene, or that love scene
30:45
or that action sequence. It is pretty remarkable what you guys were able to
30:51
do, and that is one of the reasons why I wanted to partner with
30:53
you guys, and I'm so proud to be a partner with Soundstripe to spread
31:00
to know it's seriously, because I look, Indie Film Muscle is all about
31:03
providing value to my tribe and to any filmmaker or screenwriter or any content creator
31:10
that happens to come across my little world in the on the Internet or on
31:15
a podcast, or wherever they decide to find or wherever they find us.
31:18
So that's my mission. That is my mission in what I'm doing with indie
31:22
film Muscle. And you fell right into that because it's a value. I
31:26
mean, look for one hundred and thirty five bucks a year, you can
31:30
score whatever. You can use music for YouTube videos, movies, music,
31:37
you know, you know, promos, commercials, whatever you want. So
31:41
if you have a small production company in wherever in the middle of Kansas somewhere,
31:47
you can now provide high end quality music for your projects to your clients.
31:53
And now you look like your daddy Warbucks. That's a really rough reference
31:57
and old reference. But hope some people will understand what I mean. You're
32:01
like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos in the sense that you they feel like you
32:07
have all Wow, look at this guy, they look at the kind of
32:08
production it is. I and I can never tell, never underestimate the power
32:14
of good music matched with good visuals. It adds so much value, so
32:21
much production value there, so uh good. Oh. I was gonna say,
32:24
Alex, like, man, I super appreciate you saying all that,
32:29
and one thing I just I would I just feel compelled to kind of address.
32:32
And this is something that often comes up when you juxtapose Soundstripes model against
32:37
what we've been talking about earlier, and that is, well, what what
32:42
about the musician? What about the money that's coming that that they're used to
32:46
getting. So and I just want to reiterate that Soundstrip's mission, our purpose
32:52
is to keep them creating too. So you know, we just we feel
32:57
that in order to do that, what we have to do is actually place
33:00
the value of what we're doing on on the serving our members well and answering
33:07
a really significant market need, and then finding really talented artists and really talented
33:15
musicians who actually want to be a part of Soundstripe's culture and creating a community
33:21
for them and paying them salaries consistent w two on payroll salaries to it in
33:27
order to write music for Soundstripe. So that's that's the model and kind of
33:31
the mode that we've taken in order to kind of really put our money where
33:36
our mouth is, so to speak, and invest in the artists in the
33:39
musician community, allow them to go get mortgages and pay their bills and not
33:45
have to worry about when they're going to land the next coke commercial. So
33:49
that's that's kind of the way that we've decided we're going to do it,
33:52
and I know that that's controversial sometimes, but it's the it's honestly the fruit
33:59
of that and what we've been able to kind of see happen out of the
34:02
artist community that have kind of surrounded you know, sound Stripe and its mission
34:07
has been amazing. You know, it is It is fascinating to think about,
34:15
you know, artists actually making a living, isn't that fact. It's
34:16
just like a wonderful idea of artists getting paid to do what they love to
34:22
do. And I do love the model. I love what you guys are
34:24
doing in regards to how you're taking care of your your musicians and also taking
34:29
care of your members. And it's a win win for everybody, you know,
34:32
it really is a win win for everybody. And again, I'm very
34:37
proud to be a partner with you guys, and you know, everybody listening.
34:39
There's going to be a lot more content on IFH TV about music and
34:45
sound effects and all other kind of stuff that we're going to be doing together
34:47
with Soundstripe and all sorts of cool stuff and things that we're going to be
34:53
bringing to the tribe as well. So I'm very happy to be a part
34:58
of being partner ship with you guys. I really am and and I really
35:02
hope that, like you know, my next like all the videos I create,
35:07
all the content I create, will be using your music. Any films
35:10
or anything else that I do from this point on will have some music.
35:15
I do have my composer friend, but other than that, who will probably
35:20
who'll probably just say dude, just youse soundstrap and stop calling me. But
35:27
but but again, thanks for thanks for shining a light a little bit on
35:31
the ridiculousness of music licensing and how complex it is. And hopefully we could
35:37
do some good out there with with Soundstripe and what we're doing at any film
35:39
hustle. Now, I'm gonna ask you for a few questions ask all of
35:43
my guests. Okay, and I'm gonna change it a little bit because you're
35:45
not a filmmaker. But what advice would you give an artist trying to break
35:51
in whatever business they're trying to get in, whether that be a musician,
35:53
whether it be a writer, will that be a filmmaker? Yeah, this
35:58
is a good one, So I would say, Uh, it's really about
36:02
I think like there's this really amazing thing happening with with telling compelling stories.
36:08
And I think in the artist community, uh, it's it's predominantly through content.
36:14
And so I have lots of friends who are doing the hustle see your
36:19
hat, by the way, hustle. I see lots of lots of friends
36:22
that are doing that thing, trying to make ends meet as an artist.
36:25
And really, you know, the best piece of advice I can give them
36:29
is to keep building your tribe by producing content. Doesn't have to be super
36:34
high production value, even if you just went live on Facebook every once in
36:37
a while and showed them your writing process something like that. Just keep them
36:42
engaged and don't let months go by before you say, oh, I'm here
36:45
and I have a I have a song, a single I'd like done out
36:49
like done, You're done, You're done. You can't do that. You
36:51
got to build that community, isn't it? Isn't that true? Like with
36:53
filmmakers and with musicians and with writers, they're quiet, quite quiet. Quiet.
36:58
Hey guys, it just made this movie that costs me two hundred and
37:00
fifty thousand dollars? Can you buy it? As opposed to like putting out
37:04
content just non stop and getting in people's faces and people understanding like, hey,
37:09
oh, Alex is doing something or Chris is writing. You know,
37:14
wouldn't it be cool for musicians just to like be just get a video camera
37:19
and show the process of Hey, I'm making this new song. Here's a
37:22
little behind the scenes boom, and just keep keep pounding it like that,
37:25
and all of a sudden people want to hear about about what you're doing.
37:29
It's kind of like almost a little reality show in a sense, using social
37:31
media instead. Absolutely, it's hard work, but it's well worth it.
37:36
Absolutely. Now, can you tell me what book had the biggest impact on
37:39
your life or career? Oh? Man, So there's several, but the
37:44
one I've read most recently that that I can't stop thinking about is, Uh,
37:50
there's a there's an author. Her name is Kim Scott and she is
37:53
a business author. She worked at Google and also Facebook, No, not
37:59
Facebook, Apple rather, and she wrote a book called Radical Candor And it's
38:05
been kind of floating around in the in the software as a service and like
38:09
a tech entrepreneur space. But it's really relevant, I feel for life in
38:15
general. It's a relationship advice book. Honestly, a relationship with your customer
38:22
or relationship with like a significant other. These would be things like people that
38:27
you interface with on a daily basis that you want to establish meaningful connection to.
38:34
So it could be an employee, It could be an employer. It
38:37
could be a peer. It could be somebody you're working with on set.
38:39
It could be a spouse, It could be a brother or sister, anybody
38:43
that you have a meaningful relationship or want a meaningful relationship with. It teaches
38:46
you how to be honest with them and how to how to have a framework
38:52
of communication and trust and transparency that that builds relational value. I am.
38:59
I'm putting it on my audible list as we speak. It's called Radical,
39:02
Radical Candor, Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Radical Candor. Okay, sorry,
39:09
guys, I just you know, want to hear a good book.
39:10
I have to have to write it down. Next, what is the lesson
39:15
that took the longest to learn, whether in the film business, or in
39:19
the music business or in life. Oh man, uh, that's like my
39:25
Oprah question, like what if you were a tree, what kind of tree
39:28
would you be? H? Well, I don't know if this is necessarily
39:32
a lesson or a revelation, but you know, I think, I think
39:37
what what's been beautiful about Sound Stripe and its culture is that we really kind
39:44
of have that. We have one of our core values is keep it light.
39:46
And and it took us, it took me anyway a while to understand
39:51
what the hell that meant. But but I think, like what it what
39:55
it actually means, is just being real, being off. We'll be right
40:01
back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. And
40:10
so there was a couple of and we actually practiced that in our culture tremendously
40:15
with one another, but also to our customers, like we don't take ourselves
40:19
too super seriously. But but you know, there's a this is probably like
40:23
a really specific answer. Okay, but I took a personality test called the
40:30
Enneagram test. I don't know if you're familiar with ever heard of it ever?
40:35
Okay, well, it's just based on certain personality types and that that
40:39
test actually like when I took it and my wife took it, and we
40:44
and then you can read kind of the relationship dynamic and what to things to
40:47
look out for and things to you know, you know, you know,
40:52
celebrate about each other. It was one of the most life changing and kind
40:55
of one of the most revealing things about myself that I had ever experienced.
41:01
And I think we so we take it collectively. We took it collectively as
41:05
a company and and and that was something that I think from a self awareness
41:10
side, was super super empowering and uh and really really interesting, very cool,
41:16
very very specific, but very good answer, sir. Now, three
41:22
of your favorite films of all time? Oh man, Well, definitely,
41:27
I'm a huge I love No Country for Old Men. It's made the list
41:30
a few times on the show, which, by the way, is it
41:34
has like very little music, like and I think that is one of the
41:38
creepiest things about the film is that there is like hardly any score. There's
41:43
things just like it's barely it's all sound design and him just walking around.
41:46
Hey friend, do yes exactly. This one may be controversial, but I
41:54
love Lord of the Rings the whole the whole first trilogy. Honestly, I
42:00
love the first film the best. I think most people would say that.
42:01
Well, I don't know if most people. I like the third film the
42:05
best. I like, okay, right, yeah, And I mean I
42:07
think I don't know people either love or hate that. Oh no, yeah,
42:10
yeah, there's no gray in the Lord of the Yes, you either
42:13
love it or you hate it it. What's the third one? Probably Jurassic
42:17
Park. Yeah, another one that makes the list quite often, of course,
42:22
Yeah, I man, that was well, of course that one.
42:24
The score and just the whole thing. It's just classic. But Jurassic Parks
42:28
like, it's like when you first saw Indiana Jones, when you first saw
42:31
e t when you first saw Jaws. Mind you, all those films were
42:35
directed by the same man, so there's something to be said about that.
42:38
Mister Spielberg, thank you, But no, it's one of those movies.
42:42
It's just just like, holy cow, like, how is that a dinosaur?
42:45
People forget and now they take it for granted. But back in ninety
42:50
three, I think you're right. Yeah, ninety three seeing a t rex
42:55
runner around, man, that was just so killer, And you want to
43:00
say, on an inside, on the inside. If you notice in Jurassic
43:02
Park there's never aerials of any dinosaurs. Interesting you know why because I LM
43:12
did not have the technology to do so wow, they couldn't. There was
43:16
the camera couldn't go up and they couldn't do it. So that's why everything's
43:21
always from ground level looking up or looking over, but you never see it
43:24
from the air, so that stylistically it panned out. I guess it's I
43:29
mean it worked, it did okay in the box office. And then where
43:34
can people find you if they want to connect with you? And of course
43:37
in the Soundstripe Oh man, Yeah, so I'll I'll give soundstripes. I
43:42
am terrible at keeping up with like Twitter and Instagram, although you can find
43:45
me. I think small Chris is my handle small like the pizza. Yeah,
43:52
you use that. You use that quite often, don't you, sir.
43:54
You know I have to. I have to get my wife credit because
43:57
she's the one who always uses it. And now I just have to music
44:00
because it's so funny and she's also like really short too. Now you know
44:02
how many people call me like, hey, Alex Porscha, how you doing.
44:05
I'm like, oh, dude, seriously, just come up with something
44:07
original. Yeah that you can find Soundstripe. Our Instagram is Soundstripe Music,
44:17
and our Twitter is Soundstripe app. And you can find us on soundstripe dot
44:22
com and browse our library totally free, awesome man, and we will have
44:25
I'll put links to that in the show notes. As well. Thank you
44:30
Chris again for dropping some music licensing knowledge bombs on the tribe today. My
44:36
friend, I really appreciate you taking up time. Alex are too kind.
44:38
Thanks for having me man, this was a blast. I want to thank
44:42
Chris so much for coming on the show and really educating not only you guys
44:47
but me as well on music licensing and the new options at Soundstripe that really
44:54
helps get filmmakers such really high quality music for a very very little cost.
45:01
Now, I also want to announce that Soundstripe and I are partnering up and
45:07
they will become the official sound library of Indie Film Hustle dot com. So
45:14
if you want or need any music, any sound effects, definitely check out
45:20
soundstripe dot com. I'm gonna put a link to them in the description,
45:23
and they're going to be throughout the site, especially in my resources page and
45:28
things like that, and they are an amazing resource. I've been using all
45:31
their music on any videos that I make from this point on, and have
45:37
been actually for a little while in my podcast, in my videos on YouTube
45:42
or anything I'm doing with Indie Film Muscle TV, I am using Soundstripe music
45:46
and for one hundred and thirty five dollars for an entire year. That is
45:51
insane, And you can use that music for whatever you want, for however
45:55
long you want. It's yours for life, as long as you do it
45:59
per project, and it's a pretty insane value. And that's why I decided
46:02
to partner up with Soundstripe, because my mission for Indie Film Hustle is to
46:07
help filmmakers get their movies made, help them build their brands, help them
46:12
just survive and thrive in the film business. And Soundstripe is completely in alignment
46:16
with that message and that mission of mind because they are giving resources, giving
46:22
access to things that generally and historically were not available to independent filmmakers, and
46:28
it takes their projects up a notch or two, to say the least.
46:32
Now, if you want to get links to anything we discussed in this episode,
46:35
please head over to you Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv Forward Slash three sixty nine.
46:39
Thank you so much for listening, guys, As always, keep on
46:43
writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to
46:45
the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.