What lessons have you learned from 2021 that you will apply to 2022 and/or what processes and practices necessitated by the pandemic will continue even when the pandemic is (hopefully) over? (Remote work, use of Zoom enabling more people to be involved in the creative approval process, etc.)
Both 2020 and 2021 really helped to remind us how much we truly value and rely on in-person collaboration. While we’ve always been fully capable of creating at a distance, it’s always been more rewarding to do it under the same roof. So we spent the better part of last year re-evaluating exactly what a SOUTH studio in 2021 should look like. And then we build it in the Larchmont Village area of Los Angeles. In the short time that we’ve been back to work fully in person, it’s become this great creative hub for all types of cool projects in both the advertising and entertainment spaces. We’re so excited to have more friends, artists, and clients spend some time with us here!
How do new technologies, markets and platforms figure in your creative/business plans in 2022? For example, with NFTs gaining momentum, do you foresee related sound and music work resulting? Same for VR/AR? Will increased content spurred on by the emergence of additional streaming platforms open up music and sound opportunities for you? Any growth prospects in the advertising and/or entertainment industry?
While we always keep our eye on emerging technologies and new platforms, we’ve found that the best way to forge creative growth for us is through a never ending quest to expand our talent pool. There is absolutely no shortage of artistry in the world of music, and the biggest challenge is keeping up with it: with finding the talent who is able to bring a fresh perspective to all kinds of work. Every 6 months or so we have a new artist move into a designated studio at SOUTH, offering them a creative space to work on their own projects as well as an opportunity to mix and mingle creatively with us. First we had Johanna Crantich (recording artist from White Prism, formally of the Cranberries and Cardigans) This year, young superstar artist and Berklee School of Music grad, Kate Diaz has joined us, balancing composing projects for SOUTH with completing a collaboration with Idina Menzel, among many other cool endeavors.
How has your role–or that of your business or company–evolved in recent years? What do you like most about that evolution? What do you like least?
I think a demand for more “album quality” music started years ago and that trend gets stronger to this day. Everyone wants tracks that sound like they are pulled off a record, not created specifically for an ad. SOUTH was founded by recording artists so that has been our ethos from day one. We didn’t have to evolve into that. Our composers are all doing outside record projects, and therefore we have a deep well from which to choose from orchestral to indie. So we feel very well suited to meet this demand for authenticity. We have always been music and sound problem solvers. We love the challenge of finding the best solution based on creative brief, budget and timing. As I’m sure many other people would agree, the thing we’ve liked least about the last couple years is the increased separation from our clients and collaborators. It’s just less fun. We are so happy that we are beginning to get more opportunities to get back into the studio with folks again!
What was the biggest creative challenge posed to you by a recent project? Tell us about that project, why the challenge was particularly noteworthy or gratifying to overcome, or what valuable lesson you learned from it.
We just finished up a spot for Two Lane Beer, which is owned by country-star, Luke Bryan, and this project posed an interesting challenge. The client wanted to celebrate the long-standing marriage between country music and beer, and show how many different eras of country music have showcased lyrics about the classic beverage. Rather than finding pre-existing popular songs with lyrics about Beer, they had us write a number of authentic sounding original songs that they were then able to splice together to make a montage of scenes where the characters were listening and enjoying Two Lane. And while they only needed a few seconds per song (the part where the word “Beer” was sung) we were adamant that we wrote fully realized songs, so they would not lose any of their authenticity. We were able to tap some great artists that we know, who write and record country music for a living and absolutely blew away the client with the 9 original songs they wrote. They only wished they could have used more of them. The lesson here of course was that you can’t “short cut” authenticity.
What recent work are you most proud of and why? Or what recent work (advertising or entertainment)–your own or that of others–has struck a responsive chord with you?
Over the years SOUTH has made quite a name for ourselves forging tight partnerships with brands to help develop a musical aesthetic or sound specifically for them. This goes beyond a mnemonic or sonic identity into more thematic music to be used across all campaigns. In years past, we had great success doing this with Samsung and then again with Coors Light. in 2021, we took it a step further with Lowes. This time, not only did we help them develop a single piece of music to be used thematically, but we helped them discover and develop a genre of music they could identify their brand with. In fact, this became so successful that we developed some short hand terminology specifically for what this music is that the brand, the agency and we use exclusively. This collaboration has led us to provide original music for large brand campaigns, smaller retail spots, and even a custom library specifically for the brand. It’s these types of deep collaborations that reflect a trust and connection that are as rewarding as anything we get to do.
A growing number of superstar artists and songwriters have been selling their music rights/catalogs in megabuck deals. What will be the ripple effect of this on music creatively and from a business standpoint relative to the advertising, film, TV and streaming platform markets?
This is really just a continuation of a trend that has been happening for 2+ decades. When I started my career in this space, there were certain songs and artist that were either completely off limits for advertising or just too expensive to be realistic for most brands. Original music or “up and coming” artists become the more affordable alternative and quite a lot of pressure was put on these two sources to become as creatively valuable as ultra popular music. That’s way there’s so much damn talent today. But, time marches on, and eventually even the biggest artists began to see that selling their catalogs and eventually allowing these classics to be available to advertisers is “good business” and maybe not as taboo as they once thought. This is ultimately good news, especially for companies and collaborators like SOUTH. Many projects we work on have multi-prong approaches early on where we’re exploring licensing well-known songs, writing original compositions, and even creating covers or rearrangements of popular tracks. It is so important for a modern music company to specialize in all of these areas and be able to offer all of these approaches simultaneously for one project. The recent trends with classic catalogs becoming more within reach makes this more realistic for more projects.
What are the implications of emerging dynamics such as the pandemic and relatively new markets like NFTs, podcasts, streaming platforms, etc., on the music library business?
Music libraries are huge right now. In the past agencies used to pull known tracks for temps but are largely asking us to pull from our libraries as a research phase during early days of production. Unlike stock libraries, SOUTH’s library is organically born from the hundreds of projects we work on each year. We write thousands of original tracks, but not every one immediately finds a home. Brands, agencies, directors, editors, etc find these tracks useful as inspiration and creative conversation starters, as they offer a higher quality and level of authenticity than standard stock music. But they can get their hands on them a bit quicker than having us compose from scratch. Basically the expectation of what library music needs to to accomplish continues to increase, and we’ve been happy to meet that challenge.
