John Pisciotta – CEO, MusicSynk
By Jamison Antoine
John Pisciotta is an entertainment entrepreneur focused on creating innovative business models for the entertainment industry in the digital age. He is the CEO of Nashville based MusicSynk, which offers a secure online platform that facilitates the music licenses for the film, television, online, advertising and video game markets. I had a chance to demo the service and speak with John about how he and his team intend to make life easier for rights owners and music supervisors.
Q1 – John, your resume is flush with endeavors in the music and tech space. Can you share briefly how you made the transition from a producer to serial entrepreneur?
John Pisciotta – As a music producer and publisher, I have spent well over a decade producing records. We won an American music award and song and video of the year nominations during that time.
The DNA of a producer parallels that of the entrepreneur. As a producer you’re putting the team together, you’re choosing songs for the record, you’re driving the process, finding solutions, building partnerships, handling financials and you’re basically leading the charge. This is what an entrepreneur does every day in an early stage company (just on a larger scale). So, after years of doing licensing I decided to build a solution that fixes the 40+ fractured steps in the sync licensing process. I went from working in music to working on music. At MusicSynk we have a unique view, in that we understand the importance of copyrights and technology at the same time. We have one foot in entertainment and one foot in technology. We see these as complimentary, not competitive. The mistake is looking at it through the lens of “either or”. We see them as inseparable and a massive opportunity. The entertainment space has gone through an industry- wide reset. We think there are many problems to solve and greenfield opportunities for the next era. This is what I wake up every day focused on working on.
Q2 – What specific licensing pain points do you hope to ease with your new site MusicSynk?
JP - MusicSynk was built to synthesize the synchronization process. So previously, you had 40+ fractured steps that would take weeks to clear songs for use in film and television. The process had not innovated since the 1940s Tin Pan Alley era. The entire process was frustrating for both rights holders and supervisors. Often, money was left on the table by either party quitting out of frustration. So, MusicSynk empowers both parties (rights holders and supervisors) to accelerate how they work. MS users are in complete control of who, what, when and where their content is licensed. This allows for MusicSynk users to collapse the time it takes to license music from weeks into hours, increases their income and expands their reach to new licensing opportunities. It really frees them up to work better, faster and smarter. There are a few new modules that we are testing that we will be talking about in early 2013 that are very, very cool.
Q3 – Many of the larger rights holders (labels, publishers) have sites that allow music supervisors to license their content.
JP - Sure, most labels and publishers have an in-house system for RFP (request for proposal). “Click here for more information and we will get back to you” kind of system. MusicSynk goes quite a bit further than in-house systems. Some of the things we are working on we can’t talk about yet.
Based on our users, the response is really great. One of our supervisors said, “So, really what you’ve built is the Holy Grail” (referring to our MusicSynk platform). We like that. We won’t stop until it is 10x better than what is currently in use today. MS users have a dashboard suite of tools that accelerates their workflow significantly.
Q4 – There are some producers who need one song and others who are looking for twenty. What type of support does MusicSynk provide to usher these individuals through the process?
JP - That’s a great point. One of the things we think about a lot is the idea that one size does not fit all. Everybody has a different workflow. Some supervisors work super-fast and are going to air at 2:00 pm, others are very methodical and very protective. MS was built to be agnostic. So, a MusicSynk user could do 2 licenses a month or get 100 sync requests a day. Whether you are a label, major music publisher or a scoring composer, the workflow is very different. We work closely and listen to our users, as to how they work and the things they ask for.
Q5 – Last but not least, are there any plans to sneak some of your own music in on the site for consideration or are your songwriting days behind you?
JP - Sure, we built it largely around our needs. We built it initially to scratch our itch and to solve the problems in the sync space that we were having ourselves. So we will use the platform for existing catalog, you bet! As far as songwriting… as an entrepreneur, I am just writing different types of “songs” now.
Jamison Antoine is a music industry veteran and social media marketer with stints at Island Def Jam, Universal Music Group and 360i Digital Marketing. Follow him on Twitter: @JayDigital
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