Oddly enough, these past few weeks have found EF more or less on the “jingle beat”. What began as a casual conversation with Jimmy Harned - composer of Subway’s 5-Dollar Footlong jingle - has since expanded to a look at the broader landscape of music placement in television (and film). Where does the jingle fit in these days? How do companies choose what bands and pre-existing songs “work” when shilling a particular product? What’s next?
This is where Jared Gutstadt enters the picture. As head of Jingle Punks, Jared’s work involves placing bands’ music within popular television shows on a daily basis while continuously feeding the beast that has become the JinglePlayer. Futuristic music-predicting supercomputer? Benevolent audio-ally? The JingleWhat? And how does one get their band’s music into the mix? Keep reading, and together we’ll make our way towards a nice online degree in jingle studies….
EF: How and when did Jingle Punks first get started?
JP: I have spent the last 6 years building a music database for music supervisors to track down cues for TV shows, commercials and films. The idea behind the Jingle Player has been in my head for some time and served as the catalyst for the formation of Jingle Punks as you know it. The company was launched one fateful night on the way to a Black Keys concert. Besides seeing a great show, I met Dan Demole, Jingle Punks resident techie. After a slew of cocktails and enough interesting stories to cement our friendship, we solidified the core concept for the Jingle Player. Since then, things have moved at the speed of light… we’ve quadrupled the size of our library, launched the Jingle Player, signed numerous network deals, and become a recognizable name in the tight-knit production community.
EF: Give us the “company manifesto” if you don’t mind. Immediately, the name itself implies something a bit different from your average music supervising/jingle production company…
JP: Artists first. We want to break musicians and give unknown bands exposure. When we built the contract for this company I wanted to make sure artists didn’t feel restrained, tricked or bamboozled into working with us. I played in bands my whole life and I know how hard it is to let go of your music and trust it to someone else.
The music business is a tough place to make money in and we are hoping that placing indie bands in TV shows they will make some money and gain exposure for themselves in a new way. We are hoping that the Jingle Player will be the new A&R.
For example on The Hills Live Finale we placed 10 bands from NYC. One of these bands The Crooked Looks, out of Brooklyn, has already reaped the benefits from this, as they now are working with Sting’s management company and are getting really cool spots opening for bands on national tours. This is just one example but we hope there will be more to come.
EF: What about your own musical background? Bands, songwriting, etc?
JP: I played in popular and not so popular bands in NYC for many years. The Izzys, Group Sounds and Generals & Majors are some of the projects I was involved in. The Izzys almost blew up in England, coat-tailing on the Strokes and White Stripes (NME even called us the next “big thing”). Group Sounds was in Page Six a lot, had a naked keyboard player and we filmed a music video inside a giant vagina (NSFW warning). The other band was straight-ahead rock. All of the bands subsidized our tours by licensing our music to TV shows. My band Generals & Majors never even left NYC but we’ve managed to get played on MTV over a dozen times last year.
Anyways, all these bands taught me different aspects about the world of music and I also learned how to roll with the punches and adapt. The music business is in a far different place than it was even 3 years ago. Being in video games, TV shows and commercials is a new platform for discovery.
Gutstadt doesn’t need a time machine to find good music cues
EF: It seems a large part of what Jingle Punks does is help place the work of indie bands and composers within television shows and such, but do you also do your own composing for clients?
JP: Aside from providing a database of music for MTV, FOX, VH1 and CBS Sports, we also get requests for custom compositions. For the most part, I handle this because we are a small company. I am the A&R and in-house composer. Dan Demole is the techie and business guy and we are also working with 3 other really sharp guys - Ethan, Anthony and Justin - who handle client relations, major labels and data mining.
My most recent composing gigs were for this Animal Planet show called Underdog to Wonderdog. I was also asked by MTV to re-brand their show Engaged and Underage. For this show, I made custom elements and also gave them access to the roster of indie acts within our system. Through this show we exposed people to bands they never would have heard of such as SIWAT, Quitzow and Setting Sun.
EF: How do you find bands to work with? Is there a screening process or can anyone upload “cues” to the Jingle Player? What kind of compensation and exposure could they expect?
JP: If bands send us links to MP3’s, a link to their myspace page or we see a band live and feel we could work with them, we sign ‘em up. We also like to work with bands that own their masters so they can get us versions of the song with and without vocals. In this day and age there is no reason for a band not to have control of their recordings. I also think people who make music at home on Logic, Garageband and Protools has opened up this market in a big way. Ten years ago it would cost thousands of dollars for an act to record a demo. Now, it’s the first thing a band does when they need to get gigs. It’s amazing, and has created a vast amount of useable music.
EF: Have you worked with any bands that EF readers may recognize?
JP: We have a lot of people in our roster that have composed for huge shows like 30 Rock, Chappelle’s Show and for John Waters. We also have composers that play in some big bands, the drummer from MGMT is a recent acquisition, which we are pretty proud of. We also have producers who have worked with Ric Ocasek, Bowie and Robert Plant, the list goes on and on…everyone in this business seems interested in getting music in TV shows these days.
EF: And tell us about the Jingle Player. Do you think automation is where the future of music placement/supervision is heading?
JP: Haha, thats a trick question. We want to work with music supervisors. We hope the Jingle Player will be just another production tool that supervisor’s use to search and discover new bands. The automation of the Jingle Player is actually a lot more complicated than it looks. For every song listed in the player, we have about 30 minutes of labor involved to get it online. We have musicologists scrub our database and do the legwork for producers so that they can save time in the edit room. Producers need to be cutting shows, which can be expensive, and we want to create a tool that does the thinking for them.
For example, if a producer needs a Green Day song, but cannot afford one, they just type in the word green Day in our keyword search and they’ll be given a shortlist of cues that meet the Green Day criteria. The same thing will happen if they type in the word, Sad, happy, Juno, or Batman. It’s a dynamic system, which will always yield a relevant result.
JinglePlayer demo vid
EF: Speaking to that somewhat, last week I interviewed Jimmy Harned and asked him his thoughts about the future of jingle-writing, what are your thoughts? Is the traditional jingle threatened in the face of such inexpensive alternatives?
JP: I want the jingle to make a major comeback. Our company believes that music in branding sometimes gets overlooked. As we grow, I would like to write more songs for film and show opens. Kenny Loggins used to be the king of writing theme songs about exactly what is going on in a film (Footloose, Top Gun, Caddyshack) if that’s not brand synergy, I don’t know what is.
One of the Jingle Punks (Dan Kramer) has a great story about how out of touch many media companies are. He wrote a song about Die Hard as a joke and Fox sent him a cease and desist letter. Two weeks later, Fox bought the song from him and featured it in the trailer for Die Hard 4. Hilarious!
EF: You guys have already worked with a lot of clients; what’s been the most rewarding project so far?
JP: Without a doubt composing for John Waters is the most exciting musical experience I have ever had in my life. Aside from that, being asked to do music for Chappelle’s Show was really cool too.
EF: What makes a good “cue”? Are there general guidelines or even a scientific algorithm behind music placement?
JP: Haha, all I have to say about this is, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I have no idea why people like what they like. I just want to give ‘em some choices.
Visit the Jingle Punks website.
Top image of The Hills’ demon-women found HERE
