Ray Aldaco - Ray Aldaco Music, LLC
Ray Aldaco Music, LLC is the freelance company of burgeoning music producer, Ray Aldaco. The company was formed to accommodate the freelance work execute by Ray Aldaco in the field of music production.
What sets Ray Aldaco Music apart is flexibility. Often, the company offers its services to artists for little or no advance. In exchange, Ray Aldaco Music retains shared ownership in the artist's masters and shares in revenue streams such as merchandising, publishing, and live performances.
Working closely with pop/singer-songwriter/rock acts, Ray Aldaco Music aims to help artists develop their sound and realize their musical vision. The production style of Ray Aldaco is tight and radio friendly. A serious effort is taken to make each recording unique in sonic landscape. Arrangement and production efforts are aimed at not only appealing to the conscious mind but to the subconscious mind as well. Hidden details and atmospheric textures seduce the senses and allow the listener to slip into the reality of the recording.
Currently, the company is developing NYC rock band, Hello Nurse. This four-piece group has the highest myspace fan play count in their genre and receives significant play on college radio. Ray Aldaco has joined forces with Hello Nurse to produce a 12-song album.
The company's short-term goals are to increase the quantity of freelance work and attain management. Long-term goals for the company involve acquiring larger clients and advances.
Rebecca An - The Cookie Girl Productions
The Cookie Girl Music, LLC is a New York-based full service production and creative consultation company that assists up-and-coming independent producers, engineers, photographers, designers, makeup artists, and hair stylists - The Cookie Girl Music serves as their representative in the music industry and helps them find opportunities to put their skills in to action in the music industry.
Jason Aquino - Spikey Jay Recordings
Located in the calm, suburban neighborhood of Searingtown, NY, Spikey Jay (Jason Aquino) is a freelance mixer, producer, and engineer, and runs Spikey Jay Recordings, which is a home-based recording studio on Long Island. Aquino serves as chief producer, engineer, and mixer in this sole proprietorship.
After spending 14 years as a classically trained musician, Aquino decided to pursue his interests in recording, and since then has constructed his studio and developed a talent for mixing both music and film. Within five to ten years, he hopes to find success both as a freelance mixer for record labels and as mixer in the audio-for-video realm.
Spikey Jay Recordings offers professional quality recordings for half the price that professional studios would normally charge. We specialize in metal, rock, and pop, and are most notable for our mixes: skyscrapers characterized by a powerful drum and bass section, supporting a tower of guitar, with a delicate vocal sitting right on top - a harmonious balance of power and clarity. Our mission is to provide our clients with only the most professional-sounding recordings and mixes.
Zach Berkman - Solo album, entitled Stumble
This is a project based solely on my career. My name is Zach Berkman, and I am a NY based singer-songwriter, producer, and mixer. I have a small, established audience of about 5,000 myspace friends, a large portfolio of about 80 songs, and a small live audience following. People say I sound like Ryan Adams, Damien Rice, and Glen Hansard, and I hope that's true as they are all great influences. Music such as this has great potential for success and popularity both independently and as licensed material. As a producer and co-writer and roommate, I've spent the last few years working with the artist, Ron Pope.
I produced, mixed, and engineered the record Last Call for a band called The District that Ron and I both played in. Then we wrote a song called "A Drop in the Ocean," and it generated some Internet attention. Now, over half a million combined myspace and youtube plays later, the song has been featured on MTV's TRL and as an audition song for Australian Idol. We're currently in the production process for Ron's first solo record, Daylight, which I am co-producing, but all this production work made me want to take a chance and focus on my solo work. I had started as a solo artist and I thought it was time to produce a Zach Berkman record, which I have named after the last song Stumble. In addition, during the past year, I have been working for XM Productions/Effanel and have been lucky enough to assist on projects for artists such as U2, Maroon 5, Josh Groban, Wynton Marsalis, and Buddy Guy.
This plan will focus on the release and sale of Stumble and the promotion of myself as a solo artist, a producer, and songwriter, specifically on licensing music for television, movies, commercials, and the use of songs by other artists. The goal is to supplement a continued live performance schedule and online fan base. I am looking for licensing opportunities independently or through a publisher and for any other advice you have as to where I should point my career.
Rawley Bornstein - Benefit, Concert for a Healthy City
According to the NYCDOH Report on Health Care Access Among Adults in New York City, there are two important obstacles to health care access: (1) not having health insurance, and (2) not having a regular health care provider. With over one million New Yorkers uninsured and the exponential rise in health care costs, there is a strong need for affordable, high quality health services for uninsured New York residents. It is for these and many other reasons that the student-run free clinics of New York strive to eliminate the growing barriers to health care access for those living in the general New York area.
Concert for a Healthy City is a collaborative effort among student-run free clinics in New York. We strive to bring about awareness of the growing health care access problems faced by New Yorkers as well as raise funds to support efforts to provide to those in need. In this way, we hope to create a healthy and supportive city.
Dan Chertoff - Chertoff Productions
I have started a new-wave production company looking to produce, sign, and help artists structure the best presentation of their recorded sound as possible. I am a Sound Partner with each artist, which means that I will record artists with no advance, and find a fitting distribution home for them, and in return, be compensated with a piece of their touring, publishing, and merchandising. I am making an investment in these artists.
In 3-5 years, we plan to be a fully running production company with a roster of recording artists. By then, our goal is to attract a bigger distributor who would like to front us money and marketing muscle to distribute all of our records. We are also looking in to partnering with a recording studio; General Studios in Douglaston, New York. It would be a spec relationship, where we would record for free, but the studio would get a piece of the touring/merchandise/and publishing, on a percentage of the companies share.
Ryan Daniels, Mike Leikin, Jake Smith, & Nate Stanton - The Abbey
Mike Leikin, Ryan Daniels, Nathan Stanton, and Jake Smith have developed The Abbey, a music venue, recording studio and artist services space. The Abbey combines live music performances, multi-track recording, and a number of services in the up and coming music community of Asheville, North Carolina. The synthesis of these connected services will create a dynamic arts collective that will culturally shape Asheville. The Abbey takes advantage of new digital technologies and the decentralization of the music industry to create a model that is flexible, artist centric, and commercially sustainable.
Brent English - Response Productions, LLC
Response Productions LLC, is an independent hip-hop/rap production company based in New York, NY. Established by Dallas, Texas' Brent English (Endo) in 2004, Response is devoted to introducing some of the most “hard-hitting, adrenaline pumped, and radio ready productions to the national hip-hop scene. Response prides itself on being a true production company as opposed to a mere beat company. Endo intends to establish Response as a premiere hip-hop production company along the same models of DJ Toomp’s Nzone Entertainment and Swizz Beat’s production label Full Surface. Our mission is to provide tracks for hip-hop artists both nationally and internationally that will best highlight their lyrical performance.
Rachel Etheredge - Popquark.net
Popquark.net is an online music news site targeting young adults ages 13-20 interested in all aspects of the mainstream music industry. Curated by our able staff, Popquark.net will feature exclusive video interviews with top celebrities, quick access to top charts, scoops, AP generated news and information on daily happenings in the industry, tour dates, a weekly featured new artist, and a chance for users to build profiles and share pictures, video, and text. Popquark will boast a unique ability to reach teenagers unlike any other existing music news site with a clean, easy to navigate interface matched with exclusive scoops and original video content on three different platforms.
Users will have access to Popquark’s content through SMS, MMS, and voice messaging on their cell phone, a newsletter sent as an e-blast weekly, or through the home site at Popquark.net. What’s special about Popquark.net is its unique ability to reach a younger generation across multiple channels by building a community of young people interested in music with social networking while evoking immediate brand recognition and maintaining strong, visual elements and logo design.
Addy Fox - Author, F!!K This Noise
I am pitching a book entitled F!!K THIS NOISE, a light-hearted romp through the trenches of the music industry.
It tells the story of a starry-eyed young lady from the Mid-West (me) who moves to New York City with the hopes of climbing the corporate ladder in the major label system, but soon finds herself more interested in changing that system than being a part of it.
Through her experiences at places like Island Def Jam, Rolling Stone Magazine, and the world’s largest advertising firm, the narrative explores the conglomerates who, until now, have enjoyed virtually unfettered influence over every aspect of music making, distribution, consumption and control, to the point of altering our legal guidelines for free expression. It suggests the business model those companies use is not only bad for new artists, but is getting ever more avaricious in today’s desperate sales climate.
The conclusion, however, is far from pessimistic, as the very technology that is jeopardizing the status quo has ushered in a new era of artistic empowerment. Despite efforts to contain it, this revolution of truly free expression and distribution may have the ability to reinvent the music industry for the better.
Lauren Gulliver - Wish Circle Records
Wish Circle Records is a record label dedicated to the recording and marketing of musical theatre cast albums. We at Wish Circle believe that a cast album is both a documentation of a theatrical experience and a music industry commodity and the existing industry has failed to find ways to integrate the two in order to capitalize on this fact and profit from it. Our mission is to incorporate marketing tactics used in the traditional music industry into the theatre setting in order to better execute the process by developing underground buzz before the show has even opened. We firmly believe in finding winning shows during developmental stages, setting a cast album release date preceding that of the opening night of the show, and cross-promoting the two products, helping to build an initial audience for the production and consequently enhance record sales.
Anders Hester - Love Ship Records
Love Ship Records is an independent music company based out of Denver, Colorado dedicated to spreading my music around the world. The label is initially going to be set up as an LLC around my music. By way of a 360 partnership with myself, Love Ship Records will benefit from all income streams such as merchandise, record sales, publishing, and through touring.
Love Ship Records is a music company that is purely homegrown. We strive to maintain the highest level of quality for the music and products we release and towards all other aspects of the brand. Most important, Love Ship Records intends to release music that is uplifting, inspiring, and socially responsible. Both lyrics and composition will focus on spreading love and bringing people together from all walks of life.
Cassandra Koederitz - Cassandra Koederitz Music, LLC
Cassandra Koederitz Music, LLC, will be a post-production facility that focuses on stereo and surround-sound mixing with a focus on customer satisfaction. This business will not be launched for another 10-15 years because post-production mixing is such a deliberate skill and I feel that I need a sufficient amount of time in the work force to master the skill set that I will need, to a point that I feel comfortable fully supporting my own clientele.
There are many reasons why I am choosing to wait to launch this business. The most apparent is my lack of experience, but I also would not want to put money in to a business in this terrible economy. On top of it being poorly timed with the state of the American economy, I would not want to put much money in to gear with the constantly changing state of recording technologies right now. I also currently lack start-up capital, but if I were to work for a period of time and save 10%, then I could have close to $100,000 put on the side when the time comes to launch.
By waiting several years, I can launch mu business when I feel the time is right to take on such a large reponsibility, both personally and fiscally, as well as watching for the trends in recording technologies to perhaps slow down.
Laura Schwartz- Unheard, TV Show
“Unheard” is a 30-minute music and culture television show which, each week, looks into a different city and the music scene which exists there, focusing on how the culture of the city influences the musicians and the music they create. Each episode will not only take a look at the broader musical landscape of each city but will focus on two up-and-coming musicians. Footage will be a mix of interviews conducted by host Laura Schwartz with both key players in the music community along with well-known personalities and musicians to come out of each city. In addition, there will be footage of live concerts and prominent landmarks and events in each locale. The program will document the music scenes out there that for whatever reason are undocumented and whose stories remain...unheard.
Brian Speronello - QSync.biz
QSync is a music licensing company founded by Brian Speronello and Gabriella Perez. The company is based out of New York City and plans to operate in the global music licensing market. QSync's mission is to make the process of finding soundtrack music for independent films simple and convenient. At the same time, QSync creates opportunities for independent musicians and record labels to gain additional exposure for their music, which will appear in both feature festival films as well as festival shorts. Our company exclusively targets independent filmmakers because it will allow us to adapt our service to fit their specific needs, as well as give us the option to expand our brand to incorporate other networking opportunities for them,. We're hoping to eventually become the best place on the internet for independent filmmakers to license music, as well as a hub that helps connect them to other industries with whom they do business.
Elle Varner - Wyld Chyld Records
Wyld Chyld Records will capitalize on the expanding digital music market worldwide by producing brand quality material. Wyld Chyld Records is a family run label that employs some of the most esteemed students at New York University, as well as highly accomplished musicians, writer, producers, and veteran executives in the music industry. Using the business model of a modern Motown Records, we plan to flood the market with flavourful, single-quality material. We are a digital label that minimizes production costs by marketing and distributing the majority of our product online.
Whitney Vogt - The Lost City Music, LLC (LCM)
The Lost City Music (LCM) is an independent record label based out of New York City. Committed to discovering, developing, and launching strong brands for multi-talented young artists, LCM has partnered with triggerhappy (media production company) and Integrated Studios to create a team of experienced and passionate professionals specializing in new media, creative and viral marketing, publicity, branding, music production, songwriting, and film. LCM prides itself on a short, yet impressive roster of highly talented, versatile, and eclectic stars of tomorrow. Through the consistent high quality and success of their roster, as well as the development and promotion of the label's brand and logo, LCM also plans to build its own brand identity and recognition. Currently, its flagship artists is singer, songwriter and musician, Charley Paige.
