MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Join hosts Joseph Itaya and Anika Jackson as they dive into conversations with leaders and changemakers shaping the future of digital media. Each episode explores the frontier of multimedia, artificial intelligence, marketing, branding, and communication, spotlighting how emerging digital trends and technologies are transforming industries across the globe.
MEDIASCAPE is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. This online master’s program is designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Crafting Emotional Connections: The Power of Sonic Identity with Russell Boiarsky
Discover the captivating journey of Russell Boiarsky , a visionary musician and marketing guru, who masterfully intertwines his love for music with a thriving career in sonic branding. We delve into the intricacies of his career path, revealing how his risk-averse nature and the challenges of the Los Angeles recession led him to a unique blend of passion and profession. Russell’s story is a testament to the power of aligning personal passions with professional pursuits, offering an inspiring blueprint for success in the evolving landscape of digital marketing.
Ever wondered how sound influences brand identity? This episode uncovers the fascinating world of sonic branding, spotlighting iconic sound logos like the Netflix "ta-dum" and McDonald's "ba-da-ba-ba-ba." We explore how brands, from car manufacturers to political campaigns, use sound to forge emotional connections with their audiences. With insights into the services of Stephen Arnold Music, we discuss crafting intentional audio ecosystems that resonate with brand values, underscoring the strategic role of music in enhancing brand experiences across industries.
As we navigate the complexities of music licensing and the burgeoning influence of AI in the music industry, Russell provides valuable insights into the importance of human touch in music selection and licensing. We tackle provocative questions about AI's potential in music creation and its challenges, from emotional depth to legal hurdles. Russell shares stories about innovative projects, like using AI to revive extinct languages, and offers practical advice for aspiring marketers seeking to weave their passions into their careers. This episode is a treasure trove of knowledge for anyone eager to explore the dynamic intersection of music, technology, and branding.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
Welcome to Mediascape insights from digital changemakers, a speaker series and podcast brought to you by USC Annenberg's Digital Media Management Program. Join us as we unlock the secrets to success in an increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2:I'm thrilled to bring a guest to our USC podcast who I met in my Villanova MBA program, and I think there's so much crossover between what we do for digital media management and things to consider. So, russell Wioski, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:So I'd love, of course, this is where I really want to get into your backstory and your passion areas, because we find often that students in our program they may have a corporate job or they may have something they're really passionate about and they want to parlay that into either an entrepreneur journey or into working for a company, but using their skills and their passion to go into that organization.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I can expand on my background a little bit. I think there's two important things to know about me before you decide if you want to pursue a path like this, and one is I'm a passionate musician, which I would hope a lot of folks in the program out there are passionate about, whether it's music or arts or whatever it may be. The other thing is that I'm terribly risk averse and that comes into play. A lot, has come into play a lot in my decision making about my career and my day-to-day decision making about you know what it is I'm going to be doing. So I started off I imagine many of your listeners started off playing music at a very young age, started playing piano when I was five and by 14, I was playing guitar, writing music and started doing gigs with. You know, I grew up in Houston, texas, so I started gigging around with my local band at that point and dreaming about what it might be like to be a professional musician. That's where that sort of dream starts and you want to pursue it to its fullest. But as I got into college and started thinking about my future, I realized very quickly that you know again, that risk averse part of me said well, hey, you know, maybe you want to think about some other things in addition to. You know, the music will be the music. You can always pursue that but maybe some other things to pay off some of the student debt that's creeping up on you. And if you want to have a family, the reality check comes in. And it's funny. You know, I love the fantasy of the and it's not a fantasy, it's reality. But I love the fantasy of a starving artist kind of growing into this, you know, in terms of music, into a professional musician that hits it big and all of that. But honestly, I don't have the stomach for it. And so I started to pay attention to other things I was interested in and quickly found that marketing, like music, demands a high level of problem solving, mathematics, as well as creativity, and I realized that was kind of pushing the same buttons that music did for me, and I could still do music all the while.
Speaker 3:So I came out of school, I actually moved out to Los Angeles for a year. This was in 2001. So I'm dating myself here, but I moved out there two days before 9-11. And, unfortunately, normally in a recession you would have the entertainment industry kind of carrying you through and there would be opportunities in entertainment. But not in this case, in fact, not only were there no entertainment positions, there were no positions period, and so I really struggled out there. I found very low paying internship with a small record label called Emperor Norton Records, which isn't around anymore. But that led me into brand strategy and you know, again, I haven't forgotten about the music part this whole way. But I'm also kind of pursuing this other interest now, which is exciting. You know, there's these new things happening.
Speaker 3:I'm actually making my way up the corporate ladder, so to speak, and I got about 12 years into my career and I realized, oh well, maybe there's some ways now to bring music back into the fold. I wonder if there's other positions available where I could use this marketing experience that I've gotten and start to blend it with my musical passion. And sure enough I found a company called Song Division, which you heard about this in the Villanova program when we were talking about it. But Song Division develops music for big corporate brands, but it's to help build teams internally. So they're writing original music with your internal teams or your corporate teams, and the musicians are all top notch. They're big touring session players, folks that are very talented. So just being around them I was their CMO for four years. I got to help build up the company and find new channels and new opportunities to get our name out there.
Speaker 3:But just being around that atmosphere, I realized there's something to this. I really put a smile on my face every day. No, I wasn't playing music every day, but what I was doing was talking about it and I was using the other skills. I had to put my full time and energy and passion into it. And that led me to Stephen Arnold Music, where I'm essentially doing a very similar role. I'm the director of brand strategy. So I do a bit of marketing, I do a bit of business development and I get to talk music all day long and also make a little bit of money here and there. I never hit it big. I'm not a millionaire by any means, but I'm happy and at the end of the day, I have a smile on my face.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's honestly the most important thing.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. I hope that wasn't too long winded of a story or of an answer to your question.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. I just think it's one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on this show was to talk about. You can have a passion for music and you can find ways to parlay it into this bigger world of marketing and branding, and that's really senior. Art of music is about sonic branding, and I think that's something that's so overlooked by so many people when they're thinking about the construct of brand building. So will you talk a little bit about what that looks like of brand building? So will you talk a little bit about what that looks like? And you know, I know we can't show all the case or we can't hear all of the different examples that we've gone through before, but I'd love for you to talk about some of them and so that people can really see that or understand the concept of what sonic branding can do for a brand.
Speaker 3:Sure, sure, and sonic branding is. It's a newer term for something that's been around for ages. A lot of folks might refer to sonic branding as a jingle. You may have heard the term sonic logo before, even though jingle is a bit of a dirty word in our industry. But essentially what sonic branding is, it is the audible identity of a brand. So in the same way you have a visual mark, you've got your logo, you've got your colors, you've got your tone of voice you would also have an audio identity, and that spans not just your logo, you know and when I say logo just so that your listeners are familiar, if you heard Netflix start up and you hear the ta-dum or McDonald's ba-da-ba-ba-ba, all of those are examples of Sonic logos which are a part of your Sonic branding world.
Speaker 3:But when we're talking about Sonic branding, what we're talking about is also the music that you use in advertising, the music that you use in your social content. If you develop a product or a service, say, you're a car manufacturer, what sounds does the car make when you first turn it on? I'm sure we're all used to our washing machines talking to us these days and singing to us after we finish a load of laundry, microwaves, do it. That's all a form of sonic branding and the apps that you use every day. So what we try to do at Stephen Arnold Music is find that consistent thread within a brand, and sometimes it's a musical style, like a musical genre, other times it's a rhythm, it could be just an instrument, so maybe you always incorporate a certain type of instrument in the sounds and music that your brand has. There's a number of different ways to define it, but we try to find that one thread and then we work with brands to develop the music and sounds that stick to that thread and build their audio excuse me, their audio identity.
Speaker 2:I hadn't even thought about the sound our microwaves make, but as you were saying this, I was thinking about electric vehicles and how there's a sound so that it's and you're in a gas-powered car because you hear the sound or other people can hear the car coming, instead of just the silence.
Speaker 3:Exactly. And you know it's funny because sometimes brands aren't conscious, brand managers aren't conscious of that conversation with the product development team and those types of sounds. I'd be willing to bet some of those. I know what you're talking about, like when an electric vehicle is in reverse and you hear sort of a very spacey I'm thinking of Toyota, that's the only one I can think of, but it's definitely a very planned sound. But sometimes it doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the in this case, let's say, the Toyota universe and I'm not saying theirs does or doesn't, I'm just using it as an example. But and I'm not saying theirs does or doesn't, I'm just using it as an example. But other times, if the brand conversation has been had, those folks are getting in the same room and they're going OK, we've got this, this sonic voice that we need to stick to.
Speaker 2:What sound can we make? That's subtle, it's going to let people know the car is coming, but kind of sticks in line with our, with our brand voice, and that's exactly fair game, what you're bringing up. The automotive sounds. And you know, in Toyota, whatever car you might be thinking of, I was going to ask you which you did just bring up a little bit about the music and commercials, because so often nowadays we hear things from I'm aging myself now, from my youth, where I'm like, oh, that's a really good song, but now it's being used in an ad and that just doesn't seem like it matches at all with that brand. So what is your approach at Stephen Arnold Music when you're working with your clients or when you're thinking about their sonic identity, whether it's the logo or the other music that's being used throughout their entire ecosystem?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, ultimately, what we're trying to do is create an emotional connection with audiences, and music is processed in the area of the brain that's responsible for emotion and memory, and so it's already kind of pre-built to do all of this. We just have to pick the right music to make the connection. One thing we're starting off every conversation with is what are their values? What is it they're looking to communicate? What's their persona? In the same way you would to plan a visual brand strategy, you want to understand the brand from the inside. What's their why? What motivates them? Those are the things we want to bring out in the music. And you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you'll hear a track and it's like eh, I'm not so sure that you know, sometimes it's a personal viewpoint, but other times it's that really doesn't seem to fit with the brand and I hate to bring it up, but it's that time of year. Politics are the same way. You know, politicians will use music to try and boost their supporters, to try and give a sense of their values and what they stand for. But not all music is A the right fit for a certain politician and sometimes, as we're seeing, you have musicians that don't want their music associated with that particular candidate's brand. So you do have that delicate balance of trying to find the right fit and if you are going to use, in this case, a popular artist song, you also need to make sure the artist you know that you're getting licensing and that the artist is willing to let you use that music as well.
Speaker 2:You have various services that you offer, whether it is working really intentionally with brands, including our whole sound sonic ecosystem. But then you also have if people might not have as big of a budget but they still want access to original music or soundalikes or different areas. So can you talk a little bit about that and in your role, do you work across all of those ecosystems?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we, at our heart, at our core, we're a creative agency and so what we focus on, obviously, and the projects we love to do, are the original compositions, the custom work, you know, stuff that's never been heard before, never been created before. But, like you said, if a client needs a piece of music and maybe has a lower budget, or maybe they've already come to us for custom work and they're looking to add on some additional pieces, maybe for, say, for social media or for an advertisement, we have a music library of over 350,000 tracks that we license and growing. In fact, those numbers are probably wrong. By the time this is posted It'll be more. But yeah, those budgets or those tracks allow for much lower budgets, much more flexibility, and we have a full team on staff. That library is called the Vault, by the way. We have a full team on staff that can work with folks, so you're not left to your own devices of just doing random searches and trying to find a piece of music that fits.
Speaker 3:You're actually working with a team member and saying, hey, we're looking for a piece of music that sounds like this or makes you feel this way, this way and this way, and they'll come back with a playlist of 20 tracks and they'll say, do any of these sound right? Is this feeling close? And you say, yeah, track number two and three are really close. And they'll pull 30 more tracks that sound like tracks two and three. So you kind of narrow it down with an actual human, and that's one thing we really stand by with our company, and one of the reasons I love working here is that it is about relationships Ultimately. You know, everyone's call gets returned, everyone's email gets returned, people have conversations here and you know, for me that was a really important thing not to bring this back to my path, but maybe closing the loop on that in terms of you know, was this the right decision for me? Is this the right fit for me? Well, yeah, there's the passion and there's the marketing side of things, but then there's also the personal fit of these are the people I'm going to be around every day and you know what our own company's values are, something I really stand behind.
Speaker 3:I really appreciate the other service that we offer. So, outside of production music and custom music, we also have a wide array of vendor partnerships and in fact, we I can't mention the company that we just did this for. But we had a company come to us and say, hey, we're doing a really big event, a big product unveiling, and we need a major artist's song for this. Here's the five tracks. We want to go after licensing and procurement for brands, but we work very closely with some big names in Nashville and Los Angeles where we can reach out and help kind of spur those contracts along. So we were able to in so many words, we were able to get that contract together for them and everything got launched and it's all good now.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, and that segues perfectly into my next question, which was about licensing, the class I'm actually teaching for the second half of this term is 515, where we really talk about use cases you know what kind of rights you have, how long you have the rights for and it might be more about visual, but I think it's also really important for people to understand what that might look like for the sound element.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know I'm not sure if this answers the question, but one of the things that's really important in going into any of those discussions is knowing every single detail about if there's a certain track you're going after, know exactly the track you want, know what you're using it for. And I don't just mean, yeah, we want to post it to social media. It's like, okay, well, how many times is it going to get posted? How many views are you expecting? How long is it going to be up there? And, most importantly and I actually learned this the hard way I learned this when I was working as a marketing director for a housing builder.
Speaker 3:Of all folks, it does have a tie back to music. I won't go into that story, but suffice to say the housing developer was a major sponsor of one of the big concert venues here and I live in Columbus Ohio now, so one of the big concert venues here in town. They were the naming rights sponsor, so that was the link to music. I won't go into that. We'll save that for another day. But they were trying to put on a benefit concert to raise money for a local charity and they really wanted to blow the roof off and they wanted to have these big acts come in. In fact, we were at one point looking at having members of Maroon 5 come in and play this show and of course I was tasked with trying to track down the contract to see what this is all going to cost.
Speaker 3:That was problem. Number one is what is this going to cost? You have to go in with a budget saying we have this amount of money Because have to go in with a budget saying we have this amount of money because I kid you not, as soon as you reach out to management for a band like Maroon 5, they will come back with something like oh, a million dollars and we need a private jet to fly us in. They'll make up numbers because you haven't given them a number. But if you have a number there's some room to negotiate. You won't always get what you want. Sometimes you will.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's really good advice, because I think a lot of times people are like I don't know, we'll make it up as we go along, yeah, and then that gives the other party license to do the same.
Speaker 3:Well and it's just. It's a very cutthroat industry when it comes to that, especially those big artists. You know they're getting requests all day long that you know the top tracks that are sitting there on the Billboard 100, they've got their pick of offers and so, when it really comes down to it, if you've got something compelling and you've got a budget that you can put in front of them and you know exactly how you're going to use it, that's going to go a lot further in getting you a deal than coming in and asking the questions. You might not get a response back.
Speaker 2:What about AI music? Obviously there are a lot of different companies that I'm sure are not direct competitors, because you have this very personalized experience, very intentional. Somebody doesn't just go on and pick a preset that they can license for a podcast or for a social media post or whatever that's part of a subscription or for, you know, for a social media post or whatever that's part of a subscription or something. But AI is also. I've seen a lot of people try test out making like country music using AI and it's pretty funny. Usually it's not necessarily good, but I'd love to hear your perspective on is. Is AI changing your industry?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and we actually really enjoy it. At Stephen Arnold Music, we're advocates of incorporating new technology as it comes in. I mean, you can't avoid it. Ai is part of our world, whether you like it or not, and, as a musician, yes, there's that little bit of fear where you're like, all right, well, is it going to take over? Is it going to, you know, are we going to just start listening to music produced by robots and not by humans and what does that mean? And you kind of get lost in the rabbit hole.
Speaker 3:But in terms of our industry, realistically, there are some great AI platforms out there capable of producing some really good music with the right musical cues and instruction.
Speaker 3:But what we found is the time that it takes. And we've actually done. There's some research that we've posted. We're getting ready to post some additional research on not just the appeal of AI music so how appealing it is versus human-created music, but also how good of a job does it do at creating an emotional connection. So if you gave it a brief, a creative brief, and said I want a song, not just a country song, but I want a country song that makes people feel this way, this way, this way and this way and we've done this in our testing and then you compare it to a human composer who does that. What we're finding is that AI can absolutely create an appealing song. In fact, we've tested it against some Taylor Swift songs and shown that it can create songs that are even more appealing than Taylor Swift, if you can believe that that study is coming out soon, which actually talks about the Taylor Swift stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's. That's the one I was thinking of when I asked oh gosh.
Speaker 3:OK, I should have gone in. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:This is perfect, because this audience hasn't heard about that. I just remembered oh, I know this is something you did, and I'd love to hear about the case study on the podcast.
Speaker 3:Sure. Well, let me finish the thought and then I can talk a little bit about that case study that we're doing or the research that we're doing. What I was going to say is it can create incredibly appealing music, but where it has proven to fall short is in creating emotionally accurate music. So not only are we seeing that it's having trouble with conveying the emotions we gave it, but it's so much so that it's only hitting those emotions like 10% of the time, whereas human composers can hit it, you know, 60 to 80% of the time and then fine tune it from there. So we've done a couple. We did one about six months ago where we took the top AI platform at the time and we gave one of our composers a brief and this was more brand music, so more orchestral based kind of music, and we found the same results that the appeal was actually very high from both AI and our composer. But when it came to actually touching on the emotions that we stressed in the brief, the human music was by far, by far and away the winner. So we decided to repeat this by taking Taylor Swift's top five songs from her last five albums and then seeing if we could sort of back into creative briefs for those songs and then give those to AI, and then give those to AI, and what we found again was the same thing. That again, actually, the interesting thing was the appeal is that and the appeal portion of this study is done with live human respondents, so over 200 respondents in the US listening to these tracks in a vacuum and responding based on what they like, what they don't like, and so what we found was that several of the tracks two of the five tracks were more appealing than the Taylor Swift songs, which is kind of unbelievable when you think about it. I mean, she's such a big rock star. But then, on the flip side, the emotional connection, the emotional accuracy of those songs, well, they were great songs, but they didn't do what we asked them to do. They didn't hit on the emotions we asked them to hit on. So it's very interesting the time we live in.
Speaker 3:So the way that we're using this AI technology in our music is not for finished products, it's not for, you know, taking a client's request, putting it into an AI system and spitting out a piece of work. I mean that really isn't what we do anyway. I mean we want to be the creators of the music no-transcript finished piece from there, the other way that we're using it, which is really interesting. So we also do. We kind of do everything sound for clients, and one of these projects we've been working on is an augmented reality project at the Alamo, which is it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 3:So it's the client is called Histovary and they basically create these tablets that you walk around famous historical sites with and you hold them up to hotspots and you can immediately travel back in time and see, you know, what that hallway looked like 200 years ago, 300 years ago.
Speaker 3:So they've simulated in a 360 degree universe what you know, in this case, what the Alamo felt like 200 years ago, and then you can travel back 100 years ago and maybe 50 years ago, and what's really interesting about it is there's a lot of interactivity along the way. As you're exploring the world, you can also touch on things and see things. We used AI to create some of the voiceovers, specifically when we were trying to replicate a now distinct language, the Kuala Teka language, which was spoken by Native Americans in Texas back in the 1700s. So there's no spoken language anymore, so we were able to find some older videos of people kind of speaking certain words and phrases, teach that to AI and spit out, you know simple phrases but phrases that would at least be authentic to the time period and to the language and help kind of revive it and bring it back to life.
Speaker 2:Wow yeah.
Speaker 3:There are benefits.
Speaker 2:That is a really interesting use case, but I think what I'm hearing, though, is, yes, AI can do the job. What I always argue maybe not argue, but share with my students is that AI will not replace the human creativity and emotion that is what we bring to the table. It can do the tasks you know, but it's not going to have the same resonance.
Speaker 3:No, it's well said. I mean, we haven't seen anything in our data or our studies to suggest that it is doing a strong job of creating that emotional resonance, Exactly. In addition to that, when it comes to music and specifically for branding. So back to kind of our industry, there are some other challenges in there. You know we talked about licensing tracks, One of the issues with AI.
Speaker 3:Right now, two of the biggest AI engines, Suno and Udio, are in a major lawsuit with record labels over their source material. Now, the idea that their source material is a train of the platform, the challenge with that as a brand. You know, if you're Coca-Cola or you're Netflix or whomever, and you're looking to utilize a piece of music that was created on one of those systems, you might not want to touch that with a 10-foot pole if it's still under lawsuit. So there's those considerations. There's considerations of anytime we've worked with anything in AI and tried to create, like on these studies with the Taylor Swift study and the study before that, it's taken us quite a bit of time to get what we want out of it.
Speaker 3:It's a little bit of a you give it some commands and then cross your fingers and wait for it to spit something fun out, and when it does, you're like, okay, that's close. There really isn't a way to just put that back in there and have it massage it a little bit more. It pretty much just recreates a new track and maybe it grabs onto what you liked. Maybe it didn't, and there are ways to fine tune it, but we found that it takes an awful lot of work and energy and time and, honestly, musical ability to get what you want out of it. So the other question is will brands put that kind of energy into their payroll? Do they want people on staff that? Can you know? Are they going to start bringing musicians on staff that can speak to AI to then spit out music, or are they still going to come to agencies like us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I was going to say babysit the AI, but I've seen the same thing. When it was at the AI4 conference, I saw the same thing with a commercial that Z made for it might have been Toys R Us and it was maybe a Christmas commercial and with that it took them so many times to render the graphics because it's all created with AI. But so you see, they showed us like the boy who's the main character doesn't quite look the same from frame to frame, because it's going to spit out something new. It's not going to spit out the exact same image, and that's what you're sharing right now as well. The prompt engineering aspect of it is just like with anything that you're doing in AI you have to be so precise, but I imagine it's a lot easier to prompt engineer a written word than it is a visual or an audio to like exactly what you are looking for.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you're right. I'm sure it'll get better at this over time. But if you were sitting there with a graphic designer or with a music engineer sitting over the mixing board and let's use the music example, because we're talking music here today, but if you're looking over their shoulder, you're listening to the music and saying I really like that section, let's keep that. But can you do this little accent to the third beat each time that section comes through? And also when we get to the chorus, let's just try something new in the chorus. To ask AI to do something like that, it's actually it's pretty fiddly. You would have to save out the existing stuff that you like.
Speaker 3:No-transcript little accent that I wanted. A lot faster than I can tell this thing what I want it to do and then edit what it spits out. But it takes different folks and everybody's got their process and their way of doing it. I do think it'll get better at that. You know, as more musicians work with it kind of kick the tires. Those are the things that I'm sure people will bring up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you still play instruments? Are you in a band today just to get one for, like your local, you know, your local bar or your family?
Speaker 3:Yes, I never stopped playing instruments. I still. I release albums, a lot slower than I would like to. I'm getting ready to release my eighth studio album. Hopefully it was supposed to be this year, supposed to be Most likely will be next year or late next year, but that's all my singer-songwriter stuff, the stuff that I've been doing all the way back, and I will say thank you for asking.
Speaker 3:I will say that when my kids were born they're both teenagers now but when they were born it became really difficult to be a dad, to be a marketing professional and to play gigs until three in the morning. You had to like, you couldn't keep all those balls in the air and you had to give something up. So what I started doing was, instead of spending all my time at bars and playing shows and waiting around for you know $20 at the end of the night, I started composing for theater and film and whatever I could get my hands on. That was something I could do in the basement or in my own studio until you know two in the morning, and then I could just crawl into bed, and that actually turned into about 10 years or so of some great work I ended up.
Speaker 3:Theater was the one that really took off and I ended up doing gosh countless shows I can't remember how many I did where I was doing sound design and original composition and really just getting into my creative vibe. You know, it didn't have to be an acoustic guitar and singing, it could be whatever I wanted it to be violins and horns and orchestral sections and I really enjoyed the release you know, after these busy, busy days, of being able to sit down and just create something from scratch. So, yes, I kept things going all along and yeah, you couldn't keep me away from my guitar, from my keyboard. It's just something that's part of me guitar or from my keyboard.
Speaker 2:It's just something that's part of me. Yeah, that's great to hear that you were still able to find ways to work with your first love. If you will, and I wanted to know, do you think there are a lot of opportunities for perhaps, people who are listening right now, who are going through a master's in digital media management, or other listeners from other parts of the university? Do you think that sonic branding is an area that there are still going to be a lot of jobs in that they can look to for opportunities?
Speaker 3:I do. I think things are changing, as they always are, but this particular industry continues to take off, so much so that some of these bigger brands are even building their own in-house music departments. So I mentioned Coca-Cola before they have Coke Music. So Coke has done such a good job over the years and they're not a client of ours, they didn't pay me to say this but they've done such a good job over the years of getting us to believe in sort of the positivity and the joy that comes from drinking Coke. All of their music, as far back as I can remember, in their advertising, drinking Coke All of their music, as far back as I can remember, in their advertising has promoted that feeling and the values that they share. They've also done a great job of the ASMR effect. When you crack open a fresh Coke, that fizz that's almost embedded in the brand. I mean, it's something that you hear in every advertisement on their social media. So they've just done a really nice job. And what they've learned over the years is that a lot of the music from their commercials has then gone on to take off elsewhere. You know, originally people buying the cassettes or going on to buying the CDs. So they actually started developing artists in this. Is it Coke Studio or Coke Music, I can't remember exactly what they call the division, but essentially it's their own record label that takes artists that represent their values and folks that they're going to use in their advertising and use across their brand and they help promote them and build them up this in-house music arm.
Speaker 3:But there are opportunities like that. We are seeing more opportunities within production on marketing teams. So there is a demand for folks that are familiar with music, and I'm talking about internal. Of course, there's always the agency side. There's always going to be Stephen Arnold Musics and Massive Musics. Some of our competition Made Music Studio. There's about 10 really large sonic branding agencies around the world and then there's a whole bunch of others. But there will always be demand for that. But what we're seeing is a lot more of the creative roles within a company that demand familiarity with music or demand familiarity with music production because it's becoming such a big part of I hate to say it like it's this aha thing, like everybody's used music all the way back. It's just becoming a very conscious decision now, and so when it becomes a conscious decision, then you have to build roles around it and we are seeing those opportunities pop up.
Speaker 2:Fantastic Going back to career paths, even if somebody's not in music or that's not their first passion, if somebody who's listening is very passionate about their area and obviously they're getting this degree. What are some of the steps that you would recommend that they take to make sure that they are going into a field of marketing that also infuses with their passion? Should they do cold outreach on LinkedIn? Should they find internships with brands? What would you advise?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, unfortunately some things haven't changed. You know as much as you want people to you know, fresh out of school, take that chance on you and give you the high paying job and the big title and just bring you in the doors and you know you can do it and I'm sure you can do it, you in the doors, and you know you can do it and I'm sure you can do it. You do need to get that experience under your belt and there's a little bit of struggle to that. There's a little bit of self-discovery to that in the process, but I think the traditional path still follows One be extremely open with outreach. You mentioned LinkedIn. Linkedin was how I came across Stephen Arnold Music. After all the years that I've been out there, I jump on LinkedIn and I'm like this sonic branding thing sounds really interesting. I want to learn more about it. And one thing I will say is I didn't reach out to people going can I have a job in sonic branding? I reached out to people asking them what they do because I genuinely wanted to learn the ins and outs of the industry. Is it something that I'm even interested in? I think people skip past that sometimes. They get caught up in the title or they get caught up in the sort of the glossiness of the industry and forget, you know, like, do you want to be a movie star? Let's take like an easy one. You know that sounds amazing, but when you actually sit down and learn what they do every day and their dedication to the craft and all the time they spend learning lines and rehearsing lines and on sets and not doing what it is that maybe they'd prefer to be doing, you start to realize is that something I see myself doing? Maybe, maybe not. I really wanted to figure that out. So, be honest, when you have these conversations and by all means reach out I think folks are so happy to connect these days I, out of the 10 to 15, you know initial reach outs that I did on LinkedIn, I think at least half of them, if I'm counting right got back to me and set up a virtual coffee and we talked for 30 minutes. So that's step one.
Speaker 3:The internships are critical Again, more so in that sense of self-discovery. Is this something you really see yourself doing? I worked for that Emperor Norton Records record label. Yeah, I found some interest in licensing and marketing, but at the end of the day, I also saw a lot of the underbelly of the music industry, where I was like I don't think that's what I want to do, but I do like this part over here.
Speaker 3:So definitely go in with your eyes and ears open when you go into those experiences, get the most out of them and don't be afraid to take those leaps in a direction that maybe seems a little bit off the beaten path. You know, for instance, I worked for that housing builder I mentioned, not because I wanted to go into marketing for a housing builder, but because they had this connection to a major music venue. All right, well, I mean, there's got to be something there, there's got to be an opportunity. And yeah, that was a bit of a leap of faith, but it taught me a lot about myself, gave me a ton of experience and it gave me something to build on that was in line with my passion, so that when I went to talk to the next group of folks that I was interested in, I had this consistent story to tell. It wasn't like it was something so far out of left field that it didn't make sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that's great advice, russell. What is the best way for people to reach you?
Speaker 3:The best way. Well, we just said it LinkedIn is easy. I'm on it every day. It really did a lot for me, so I'm happy to connect with anyone who wants to reach out to me. It's Russell Boyarsky and I'm sure you'll see it in the description of this podcast. You can also find me at stephenarnoldmusiccom and you can email me directly with any questions or follow up that you might have.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Well, this has been a really fun episode. I love speaking about these different concepts in marketing and branding that people might not even think about and really appreciate you sharing your journey and some helpful tips for our audience and for our student listeners.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. Yeah, no, thank you for having me. Of course, to everybody who's watching or listening to this episode of Mediascape, Joseph Ataya or I, annika Jackson, will be back again with another episode next week.
Speaker 1:To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital Media Management program, visit us on the web at dmmuscedu.
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