[Interview] Emanuel Heinstein, CEO/Founder of Syncofy

Five questions for the CEO of Syncofy: A new, independent marketplace for music discovery and licensing

By Kira Grunenberg

As the sub-title above suggests, it is not too difficult to figure out what indie music licensing marketplace, Syncofy, wants to help people do: get music heard and in the hands of those who wish to enhance non-musical media, such as commercials or movie trailers. This week, the proactive startup launched an alpha version of its service (currently on private request) and has made applications available for music creators or people seeking music for licensing. The core of this platform is all about cutting out the middleman. A non-exclusive service, Syncofy is both flexible and supportive of music makers. “Creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work,” is emphasized more than once in the introductory information on Syncofy’s website. Regardless of the user’s role, Syncofy is dedicated to having few barriers between partnering parties. Communications deal solely with music makers and licensees, and no one else.

Discovery is the other half of Syncofy’s services, as media producers are often unsure of what they’re looking for. A search engine targets specific music with various qualifiers including genre, tonality, social media appeal, rhythm, and correlation. The music retrieved is discerned using multiple elements as well, including “acoustic analysis, editorial data, (artist, album and track info, period, etc.), user generated data (search data, downloads, likes, etc.), and other social specific data such as geo and demographics,” as described on the site.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what Syncofy can and looks forward to doing for music creators and media licensees going forward. I spoke with CEO/Founder Emanuel Heinstein and got his perspective on where Syncofy will fit in the current music industry, the future of syncing placement in general, and even a few details on their aspirations for mobile capability.

Emanuel Heinstein: Everyone at Syncofy literally breathes music and music brought us all together. I’ve been a DJ and producer for all my life and since I first picked up a book in a small NY bookstore in 1999 that explained the principals of MP3 encoding and the boundless opportunities which it unleashes, I was hooked to the idea, that one day, technology will be able to dis-intermediate the artist business, putting creators back in control. The team evolved through miraculous ways. I can’t tell you exactly how, but coincidence brought us all together and the idea behind Syncofy was so appealing , that it was simply a no-brainer and a logical next step for everyone to join the project.

Right from the start, Syncofy makes it clear that streamlining is its operative mentality. Everything, from your SoundCloud marker-style media player, to self-checkout with licensing, to the very meticulous options for finding and curating different songs for what ever specific needs a non-musical content producer might have, is very fast and straightforward. How do you see this DIY-tinged approach coexisting with traditional structures like the world’s big PROs that already do so much for so many of the world’s artists? Do you believe Syncofy’s mediation between artists and companies is the future of licensing and royalties?

As content spreads beyond traditional media and into the digital world, there is a tremendous need for high-performance monitoring services to catch up with new standards. Syncofy is not in the business of secondary market royalty collections though, and we are certainly not trying to replace PRO services. On the contrary, we would like to see these services evolve into a more reliable tool for artists to be able to collect their hard-earned performance royalties.

Having said this, we are approaching a much more serious problem for the independent artist community and therefore a massive risk of suffocating cultural diversity. As the music models are shifting and are transitioning from purchase to access models, future musicians will know little else than streaming royalties which pay little to no money. For instance, your track needs to be played over 4,500,000 times a month on Spotify to make the US minimum wage of $1,160. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Spotify and use it on a daily basis but we simply have to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Music streaming platforms are the new way to consume music. Musicians will have to rethink their whole business approach.

We see music licensing in its various ways as the one revenue stream that has been continuously growing. So far though, the whole licensing business has been a total chaos, not only for artists and labels but also for those looking for music to license, and no one has emerged as a successful player to solve this problem. Either music licensing companies are trying to monopolize the industry, double dipping on the independent artist’s and label’s hard earned cash, or artists and labels are simply not able to cut through the noise in the thick of things.

Even though this industry is all about discovering and finding the next big act, no one has taken advantage of today’s technology that enables the aggregation and curation of music on a large scale, making it accessible to the industry. As a result, most amazing music and artists are falling through the cracks and are lost. I believe there is a great opportunity for us to create something better than that.

This is where Syncofy comes in. We believe in the disintermediation of the artist’s business. New disruptive technology lets us build an independent marketplace for music where creators keep total ownership and control over their music without having to share their profits. Music providers state their terms under which they are willing to accept a license. Licensees on the other hand will have the option to negotiate licensing terms and conditions directly. We challenge you to find anyone else who offers that.

At Syncofy’s core is its cutting edge music search and recommendation and discovery engine. In order to produce the most relevant search results, the engine combines acoustic analysis, editorial data, user generated date and other social specific data such as geo, demographics as well as frequency of use of search phrases which correlate with social trends. That’s about all the secret sauce we are able to share this far.

It is refreshing that Syncofy doesn’t abandon the color of human preference in its music discovery feature. That said, how do you balance the “human factor” involved with Syncofy’s music curation, with the highly adjustable song filtering systems available to those looking for just the right track to use in syncing? 50/50? More or less?

I recently came across a quote by E.E. Dijkstra, “The question of whether Machines Can Think, is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.” I think all this disembodied data floating around needs to be put in some kind of context to make sense of it, and technology certainly does its job offering you a bird’s eye view over all of it. However, music is speaking to everyone in a different way. Ultimately, it is up to the music professional working with the site, applications, and service to identify the next big act. We simply acknowledged the necessity for music content to be filtered and curated to actually become valuable to a user. Our music department will of course also be part of this process but to what degree will depend on the task to be accomplished.

Syncofy was clearly keeping a close eye on the various talks and activities happening during this year’s midem conference via Twitter. Since a major part of your company’s objective is to, “steer the music industry into a more sustainable [entity] for music creators…” What are your thoughts on some of the principles outlined in Midem’s circulating infographic that asks, “[Music Industry:] Back to Growth?,” as well as their panel that discussed sync placement, brand integration and pitching to media?

I think music reaches more people than ever before. So in that sense, I think we do okay for now. However we must accept that the days of record sales are finally over. We’ve all seen it coming. For some reason though, most of the industry is still in some kind of “Wile E. Coyote state of mind,” who has just gone over the cliff but has not realized it yet. As said earlier, there is this big elephant in the room and only few people seem to acknowledge it. So unless we break down old structures so that something new can emerge, cultural diversity, which is channeled through independent music, is in peril.

I believe with the right tools and services though we can steer the ship around and I think the right answer is the disintermediation of the artists business. There still will be enough room for labels to get on board and help artist reach their fans.

In the coming months, as you gather data from alpha testers and refine things on the development side, is there anything preliminary you can tell prospective members about the imminent addition of a Syncofy mobile application and/or your ideals for its future capabilities? 

I love my mobile and I love my tablet. I love their touch screens and ease of use and we’re trying to incorporate this look and feel as much as we can within Syncofy’s UX. However, the processing power for those devices is just not there yet and as we improve and incorporate new technologies we want to make sure that they are performing flawlessly. Undeniably, tablets and mobile devices are the future (at least for now) but today still more than 80 percent of all users browse the web using desktop computers or laptops. This number is even higher when it comes to users that are working professionally with computers. And even though native apps currently run faster and are more likely to have access to new mobile device capabilities before web apps do, we believe in a “best of breed” hybrid approach using the right tools for the right job, focusing on both scenarios in which web and native components work together. Choosing the right approach will then better enable us to swiftly adapt to whatever the next hot technology is going to be.

Syncofy is active now via desktop computer. You can request an alpha application today as a “Content Provider” or “Licensee.” Read more at Syncofy.com and follow Syncofy on Twitter @syncofy.

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1.

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