From Blue Collar Musician to Music Tech Entrepreneur w/ Travis Terrell

Travis Terrell (00:00)
We tried to get publishing deals, we tried to meet music supervisors, we were doing the whole thing and just weren't getting anywhere. And we realized we needed to take things in our own hands a little bit and we decided to put that music online and see if anybody wanted to buy it.

and license it. We had no idea what we were doing. We were not startup founders. We were not really even entrepreneurs. At that point, we didn't know anything about business. We were just obsessed with this notion that you could be a blue collar musician and why is it so hard to make a living?

Danny Garcia (00:45)
Welcome to the Music to Your Ears podcast. I am your co-host, Danny Garcia.

Jimmy Mikaoui (00:50)
And I'm Jimmy Mikaoui

Danny Garcia (00:52)
And today we're joined by our guest, Travis Terrell, the co-founder and president of Soundstripe. Thank you so much for joining Travis. Yeah, yeah. You know, taping in from Atlanta at Music Biz Conference. So ⁓ how's the conference been for you so far?

Travis Terrell (01:00)
Thanks for having me. This is gonna be fun.

It is good. It's like a homecoming of all your friends that you never get to see or you jump on Zoom calls all year and then they're there. So it's hard to like walk around and have some peace ⁓ because you're like seeing somebody that you haven't seen in months or years. it's just, it's great. It just reminds you of the music business is small. It's small.

Danny Garcia (01:35)
Yeah.

Travis Terrell (01:36)
and you get to know people and it's kind of like a family. So it's great. It's a great thing.

Danny Garcia (01:44)
Yeah, no, I had the same kind of experience yesterday walking around. It's like just running, bumping into people. But I guess on the topic of, you know, the music industry, how did you get your start in it? Right. Like how I love to just start there and learn the story of, you know, your progression and Soundstripe and dive in that way.

Travis Terrell (02:05)
think a lot of people start in the music business because they love music. So that was no different for me. I grew up in a small town in East Texas and my grandfather was around all the time with us, raised me a lot. And he had a little car dealership and right next to the car dealership was our house and he sold used cars.

And he would just play music all the time. He started playing music when he was like 65 years old, just for fun. And he was a fiddle player, played a lot of old country and bluegrass and harmonica. And I was just around, four, five, six years old, around it all the time. And all these old men would show up and smoke cigarettes and play old music with him. it just, I fell in love with it. And so I started playing the fiddle.

and guitar and piano, a lot of different things when I was like seven years old. And I also started playing in my church around 10 or 11 years old. so, yeah, it just led to one thing led to another. I thought I was going to be a musician my whole life. And you are a musician your whole life. But I played music throughout my teens, played and then moved to Nashville. I made my mother.

very mad by dropping out of college and saying, I want to be in the music business. And she was like, ⁓ OK. ⁓ so be careful. ⁓ And she was right. It's a very tough business. I ended up dropping out of college when I was 19 years old, moved to Nashville, and got on the road playing music. ⁓ then that led into record production and doing

Danny Garcia (03:39)
well. ⁓

Travis Terrell (04:02)
know, producing records for different people. And then that led to making jingles for commercials and things like that. We really loved the process of music for video and the art of it. was a John Williams. was obsessed with Hans Zimmer and John Williams. And that was awesome. And so me and my my business partner, Micah, we started this little recording studio. We're working and we're

Starving also, I became a tour bus driver. I was a tour bus driver for eight years. Drove all these ⁓ famous people around on tour. that was ⁓ eight years of my life while producing and driving buses. ⁓ Kind of led us to, we had all this music sitting on our hard drive that we had made that was going nowhere. And we realized,

that there were all of these other amazing producers in Nashville, LA, New York that had the same problem. They're really talented. They had music sitting on a hard drive going nowhere. Maybe they pitched it for a sink spot that didn't land. Maybe they ⁓ worked on a bunch of music with an artist that they didn't take. It could have been any number of reasons.

We just decided, and we had all sort of, we tried to get publishing deals, we tried to meet music supervisors, we were doing the whole thing and just weren't getting anywhere. And we realized we needed to take things in our own hands a little bit, and we decided to put that music online and see if anybody wanted to buy it and license it. We had no idea what we were doing. We were not startup.

Founders we were not really even entrepreneurs and that point we didn't know anything about business. We were just obsessed with this notion that you could be a blue-collar musician and and why is it so hard to make a living? So that's that is the genesis of how we started the company

Danny Garcia (06:12)
Yeah.

That's amazing. And from there scaling up, I mean, do you remember one point throughout that journey where you were like, ⁓ we kind of, we really hit something, right? Like hit a nerve here or in a good, like, was there any feature or anything like that that you hit a turning point and it really like took off? Or was it more building block steady kind of approach?

Travis Terrell (06:45)
We did have a moment. First of all, I mean, we had the idea in 2014, and then we failed two times before we finally launched ⁓ what is now Soundstripe.com. We started as Lavello Music, which is a terrible name for a company. You know, it sounds like a Harry Potter spell. Lavello, you know.

Danny Garcia (07:07)
Yeah, yeah.

Travis Terrell (07:12)
And then we had a bad business model, we had the bad brand, we had no real product. So on the third attempt was Soundstripe and we thought that the world was now creating more content than ever before and there needed to be a different approach to music licensing or at least micro-licensing, ⁓ licensing music at scale. If you are creating content, if you are a

a podcaster, YouTuber, if you're a freelance videographer, ⁓ where do you license background music? know, at that time, you had to go to a really crappy stock music website. that was your really only option. that's why we started the company. And so we got really lucky on timing. Like we launched at the...

perfect time that people needed this. ⁓ The night we launched the company, I think I was playing video games in my room with my roommate at the time ⁓ and my business partner, Micah. We launched the company and I think about eight o'clock at night, we got the first ding from a subscriber. And that was like...

Oh my gosh, we like, and this was like $10. It was just like, oh, we've got something. And I think a month later, we had a hundred subscribers. And then by the end of the year, we had a thousand subscribers. And that was for us, like, okay, I think we have something. I remember it getting shared in a very like active.

wedding videography Facebook group in 2016 and everyone was talking about it. And so that was sort of the moment for us when, and it's small I know, but it's like those little moments like I look back really fondly. There wasn't a huge moment. It was just like little tiny bits of affirmation that you're onto something and then you keep going.

Danny Garcia (09:32)
Super validating and I mean I even I was a an early user of you guys I remember I don't I think maybe not so early for you, but like maybe 2018 2017 28 I I think I found you guys through a Facebook ad or something and I saw I subscribe and I was I I was a subscriber for a long time, you know, and so No, no, but

Jimmy Mikaoui (09:53)
Do mean you cancelled your subscription now?

Travis Terrell (09:56)
Thank you.

Danny Garcia (10:00)
Yeah, it's awesome because I remember learning about it and just subscribing right away. So that's really cool to hear the backstory behind that.

Jimmy Mikaoui (10:11)
Now that the company has grown at the scale it is, do you feel that the talents you're working with change a lot? Is it the same producers that used to give you their hard drives of on-place tracks or things have changed there?

Travis Terrell (10:31)
You know, honestly, they're some of the same people. We really prided ourselves in working with amazing musicians, ⁓ and that has never changed. Now we can ⁓ either afford or we can talk to people that we probably couldn't get in the room with ⁓ almost 10 years ago. That's certainly true, and that does happen. ⁓ But I'm very...

proud of the fact that we still work with a lot of the people that we worked with in the early days. ⁓ And those producers are amazing. We have three that we work with ⁓ all the time that, you know, they're on actual staff of the company that started with us in the very, very, very early days. ⁓

that also had hard drives of music, but then we were like, come on, let's make music all the time together. And that's a really great, I don't know, I'm really proud of that. ⁓ We've changed the model of how we make music and collect music, choir music over the years, but we try to keep ourselves in the ⁓ producer, composer, and indie artist category.

You know, now we're working with all sort of people, but anyway, yeah, I'm really proud of the music that's on the platform and...

Jimmy Mikaoui (12:01)
To kind of explain the end game and the real impact to the artist who would have handed you part of their hard drive, is there a story where magic happened and it became a really big deal for the artist?

Travis Terrell (12:19)
I live for those stories, right? Because our mission at Soundstripe is to keep creatives creating. it's sort of sucked into our DNA that the music industry is so much about winning the lottery that every artist in the world is trying to get the big sync placements at the Super Bowl commercials.

And that's well and good. And actually this year we had our first Super Bowl commercial. wow. Which is, whoa, that's amazing. ⁓ But also, like the story is about the long tail as well. And there are, and when we first started, it was always the chicken or the egg. You had to sell ⁓ these amazing musicians on the, either the promise or the story.

Danny Garcia (12:50)
That's incredible.

Travis Terrell (13:14)
that the subscription game is the long game ⁓ and that ⁓ royalties are important, but it's going to be a slow trickle and if you keep adding music to the platform, that's going to keep rising. And so that was a very delicate balance for us in the beginning because we had no money, we had no subscribers, we had no business. So you really had to sell the, like,

⁓ get on the journey with us in a way. And luckily it worked out and now there's, you know, I think to date we've paid out something like 15 or 20 million dollars to the artist community at large. that's, you know, I look back and I could barely make a living as a producer myself. But I think my mission ultimately became helping other

people make a living doing it. ⁓ And I was actually better at that. So, you know, because it's such a left right brain thing and, you know, ultimately I was blessed with that, to kind of work up that mental model to be able to help some of these musicians. So, yeah, it's been super rewarding to even like have their

their music on HBO shows, Netflix shows, and a Super Bowl commercial. even small like YouTube channels and wedding videos. And that's cool too. people love to, people, artists love that. anyway.

Danny Garcia (14:56)
Yeah. I mean, this, kind of brings me, cause a lot of the people listening are, are independent artists, right? Like bedroom producers, those people we're talking about. And I speak to a lot of them all the time and they are very much focused on like the DSP, the streams, Instagram, right? And, and a lot of them are maybe it's miseducation, but aren't looking at sync as like whether they don't know what it is, whether they don't know how to get started in it, right? Like

Do you advice to a bedroom producer that's looking to open up that revenue stream and just tap into it? How do you get started if I'm completely new to it?

Travis Terrell (15:39)
Well first, like if you're a producer, if you're an artist, you're the CEO of your company. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And that's, and you have to look at all the different ways you can make money. ⁓ there, somebody described it to me one time as you're the, you know, your art and your artistry is the center of a wheel and you have different spokes on the wheel.

that represent different ways that you can possibly make money. know, sync is one, streaming is one, publishing is another, merch is one, you you name it. And there's like 10 or 15 of these things now. And if you go the route of independent, but even if you go signed, have, you need all of these spokes on the wheel to ⁓ really make it work, you know? And... ⁓

And there are people that, and I think having some diversification is good. And so a lot of people find themselves like, I don't know, sync is just sort of this underrepresented, it's sort of elusive, don't know how to approach it. I think that's it.

Danny Garcia (16:59)
100%.

Travis Terrell (17:01)
I think it's like this, it's black box, it's a mystery. It's sort of like publishing, you know? This weird thing that people, it's the sexy thing that the labels do. But it's not really for an independent person. And that's not true.

Danny Garcia (17:11)
Yeah, yeah

And you think about it from the perspective of volume, Because it's like playlists, right? There's so many playlists. But when you're an artist thinking about sync, you're like, have two or three Netflix shows I watch, right? How many artists are they going to get? So there's a misconception there, because you mentioned 20 other places where you can land a sync, whether it be a wedding video or things like that, right? Through companies like Soundstripe. ⁓

Jimmy Mikaoui (17:42)
Also, it's very difficult for artists to understand the dynamics in sync because they're in... If you're self-releasing, you're by default in autopilot mode of promoting you and pushing your art out to specific destinations. And I think with sync, you have to accept the fact that the person sitting on the other side of the table has a brief...

has a budget, has a timeline, has been giving creative direction from the director or someone else, and they're on the hunt to find something specific. your track might be the answer that's going to unlock it, but it's a completely different state of mind of just making sure it's available and easy to clear.

Travis Terrell (18:32)
That's right. That's so true. SYNC, people in the SYNC business are serving the story on the show, right? And so we're a tool, we're a utility for this. We're not here just to promote your song, right? It's like, it is exactly as you're saying, and we have a job to do, right? And SYNC music itself,

can even be, there is an art to it. Like there is an art to making a great synchable song. Like first of all, if you have like a song, like it can't be super specific lyrics. Like you know, hey I drank a Coke the other day and I'm going down Elm Street and I talked to my girlfriend but she's like, I don't want to go to Costco today. Yeah, those kinds of songs don't get synched very well.

You know, and you need a broader message that's going to relate and work really well on that last scene of Grey's Anatomy or whatever. Or that BMW commercial. that is true. But some artists are really good at that. And you just have to kind of learn the game and talk to a lot of people in the industry. ⁓

to your point, there's more content being made than ever before. Think about, ⁓ like one of my great ⁓ people that I love and follow is Seth Godin, marketing genius, right? ⁓ The thing that he says is distribution changes what gets made and created. What he means by that is that when you...

In the old days, there was linear TV, and it happened in 30-minute increments. And the shows that got made were Seinfeld, Friends, and everything like that. Then cable TV came along, right? Cable TV kind of changed the game. HBO came around. And now, all of a sudden, you have The Sopranos, where, like, these long shows that go forever, right? And then the internet came around. YouTube, streaming.

And now, so the distribution constantly changes the media landscape. And now it's all about shorts. It's about, ⁓ it's different right now. so.

Danny Garcia (21:12)
Now it's like hooks, like TikTok hooks of, you know.

Travis Terrell (21:15)
Right. Or long form podcast. Yeah. Tons of those kinds of things. And so there's more content being made than ever before. There's more. So it's not just about getting ⁓ landing those big sinks on, you know, the BMW commercial anymore. It's how do you serve all of this music, all this media that needs sync licensing? ⁓ And so that's that's really the game that

Danny Garcia (21:18)
Yes.

Travis Terrell (21:44)
that Soundstripe plays and I think it's a huge opportunity for independent artists ⁓ out there that are making music. There's just so much media being created. ⁓ It just creates an opportunity for musicians.

Danny Garcia (22:03)
100%. 100%. And I mean, that kind of brings me to a question that I had is, you consider sync a part of like a marketing strategy? Right? Cause I'm trying to bridge the gap here between what we do at song tools and what you do at Soundstripe. And I think, I think it, I think you can, right? Like, mean, anecdotally from, from our perspective, like we've seen people justify sync to like a, to a music supervisor.

because the song is doing well on streaming, right? So you have a supervisor going between one song or the other, they might go for the one that has already like great streaming numbers versus another one because it's more proven out or validated by actual listeners, right? So do you see sync as a part of a marketing campaign in a way or?

Travis Terrell (22:56)
do,

personally. think that the two are related. for some, like if you're doing music for wedding videos or something, maybe not, but the great example recently was the Kate Bush running up the hill, Stranger Things thing, like, my gosh, this song just blew off. Exploded. Exploded, and I don't have the numbers in front of me, it was, it was insane. There's so many examples of that.

Danny Garcia (23:17)
Hello.

was ridiculous. Yeah, it was ridiculous.

Travis Terrell (23:27)
you know, see on the end of Six Feet Under, like, there's so many examples of songs that have just become embedded in the culture because of a sync moment. ⁓ And that is the real art and creativity of true sync people that I think is really undervalued. ⁓ They're not just...

doing the transaction, they're actually digging in and thinking about, what song's gonna really serve this moment in this TV show or this movie or this film? And then how do we think about the overall song promotion on top of that and build around that campaign? I think it's a part of your tool belt that ⁓ artist should be thinking about.

Jimmy Mikaoui (24:23)
For

artists who want to be proactive in the space, ⁓ you mentioned a few things not to do, especially on the lyric side. Are there songwriting attributes that you think help when it comes to sync placement, whether it's high tempo, positive messages, high energy or anything in between?

Travis Terrell (24:48)
Yeah, I would say ⁓ if it's music, well, a couple things. One, have easily clearable rights. That's number one. Number two, the music itself needs to have ⁓ different sections, right? You need to think about, it's not just verse, chorus, bridge, right? It's a little bit different than that. You need ⁓ moments ⁓ and you need quiet moments, big moments.

and bring, you need to have, and think about like a big trailer or a scene where, you you have this, where the drums open up and everything's huge, and then you have a quiet moment, you know, in the scene. It's still the same song, but so I would think about having different sort of sections of the song.

Those do really, really well. And it's not just about happy or sad songs. All the songs can work, or all kinds of styles work. It's really about how the song is structured that makes a huge difference. ⁓ And also, what is the hook in the chorus? Lyrically, you need something that's...

going to move the scene along, right? So we're going to have a party tonight, know, boom. That's setting the scene. So there's tons of lyrical ideas that you could play around with like that if you're really trying to do sync well. So those are just a few of the things.

Jimmy Mikaoui (26:39)
Dang, super useful.

Travis Terrell (26:40)
Laughter

Danny Garcia (26:42)
⁓ What are some trends right now, I think kind of just go macro again, like that you're excited about. mean, we're here at this conference, you're probably talking to a bunch of different people, getting exposed to a lot of ideas, whether it's in your space or not. I mean, yeah, are there any things you're excited about looking ahead?

Travis Terrell (27:05)
There's a lot of AI talk. Yeah, right? So there's a lot of AI talk. I'm excited for all the tools coming. ⁓ I personally am not excited at all about, this may be little controversial, of just generative music to just have it. I think most people are missing the point of like, who's the customer and what's the use case of

Right? So I think ⁓ AI can be used as a tool for artists in a really positive way, just like software and synths have been doing for years. They're assistants, and they're helping you ⁓ craft a song. ⁓ That's, to me, the perfect use case of AI. ⁓

Danny Garcia (27:49)
Yeah, they're assistants, right?

Travis Terrell (28:03)
And I think there's some really exciting things happening. The other thing, it's more in my space, but there is such a, there's a lot happening right now with even sync and digital licensing. You're seeing tons of lawsuits right now coming from the majors that are suing brands.

for illegally using their music on TikTok and social media platforms.

Danny Garcia (28:37)
yeah USC and Warner and yeah

Travis Terrell (28:39)
Crumble Cookie and Chew Companies and you name it. There's been a hotel chain. It is real. And this is just going to pick up. ⁓ So there's a lot to be solved in this space. Soundstripes ⁓ were a part of helping with a lot of that. More to come. But it's like there's a lot of really interesting things to do in the space of rights management.

Sink is very difficult because it's, ⁓ you have to have both the publishing and the master rights to ⁓ have a sink, right? And so you have to ⁓ clear things on both sides, which makes it difficult ⁓ if you need things in a hurry, if you need things quickly for a TV show or a podcast usage or a license or something like that. And that's why up until now,

you know, 100 % owned music by independent artists works really well for sync licensing. You know, if you have a song that has 10 writers and five different publishing companies and two different... It's nightmare. It's almost, it's really a nightmare ⁓ to clear that stuff. And there's professionals out there that do that for job, it's not super scalable. And so there's a lot of work to be done in that space as well.

Danny Garcia (30:07)
I guess final question, because we're running up on time here, but ⁓ what's the best piece of advice you've gotten, just professionally or within the music industry that you'd like to impart to anyone venturing into this world? ⁓

Travis Terrell (30:25)
Besides, don't do it. Yeah, yeah. No. Yeah, so probably my favorite piece of advice that I've gotten is to know ⁓ when to quit and also know when to keep going. And what I mean by that is that when you start in the music journey,

Jimmy Mikaoui (30:27)
Stay away! ⁓

Travis Terrell (30:55)
⁓ you may have a certain vision of what you want and you have a version of where it's gonna happen, where you're gonna go. That may look completely different of what actually happens. I started in the music business thinking I was going to be a bluegrass fiddle player in all sort of bands, but then you sort of realize that, there's...

not a big demand for fiddle players nowadays. And so you kind of pivot and then you realize, ⁓ I'm gonna pivot again. So there's a lot of things, I've probably quit more things than stayed with it. And I've quit producing, right? And that was like my, that was my identity, that was my passion. But then I realized I had a key unlock that unlocked me doing something else. So it's...

It's, when people say never quit, I get, I think that's pretty bad advice. So you have to know when to quit. Quitting could be great. ⁓ And then, but then don't give up on the things that really matter. And then you go hard on it and you're really bullish on the things that really matter. ⁓ And so I think that's...

That's really important. A lot of people I know have like been like just just hammering down for 15 years at this one little thing. Yeah. And they haven't asked themselves, is there one slight move that could like change the game? Lateral. Yeah.

Danny Garcia (32:35)
Yeah, that, Well, yeah, yeah.

Travis, thank you so much. It was awesome. You know, amazing stories and thank you for joining. Thanks everyone for tuning in to the Music to Your Ears podcast. We'll see you on the next one.

Jimmy Mikaoui (32:53)
Thank you, Travis.

Travis Terrell (32:54)
Thanks, this is awesome.