Hi, I'm Tamara Lackey.
On this episode of
The reDefine show for AdoramaTV,
I speak with Roy Ashen about how early
on he found success by licensing his own
music to photographers and filmmakers,
and how we could all use creativity and
drive to master our own industries. Check it out.
Hey Roy, how are you? I'm good.
So you run a music licensing company and
have for a decade. Yes. And but your
background is as a musician. Right tell
us about the progression of that. Yeah
well I've been playing music my whole
life, I started playing guitar when I was
in kindergarten and my mom would play
guitar actually, and she would sit my
brothers and I down on the couch and
strum Beatles songs, and we always used
to say the louder we clap the quicker we
got to have dinner! But she was good,
and music was only just a part of my
life. It was the kind of thing that I
think at an early age it was just part
of me, any whether your day, whatever kind
of day you were having you put on the
song that you liked and everything got
better. So I started playing
guitar, I was always interested in what's
next, so once I started playing I figured
what do guitar players do?
The ones I like they write songs, so
I started writing songs I ended up
saving money to go into recording
studios as a teenager and make my first
albums. I didn't know enough about the
process to know that other people would
say... 'you should wait until you're older
and then you could do this'..I just figured..
What's next? And so I called this... the
recording studio where ZZ Top was working and
I said, I mean I was 12 years old, and I
said my name is Roy ashen I've saved
$536 and I'd like to make an album, and I
think the guy who ran the studio was like
this is Larry,
so he's like yeah, we sent him our little
demo tape just recorded in the garage,
and he invited us to come in and that
was my first recording session.
That's so cool.
So fast-forward, I moved out to Los
Angeles, I went to and graduated from the
school called Musicians Institute when I
was 18, ended up coming back to to teach
and kind of like a lot of the
photographers in the industry do, I
spent the next 10 years traveling around the
world doing guitar seminars,
releasing albums, licensing music to
TV shows and movies. How did you get into
licensing your music? My own music? Yeah
just mine. Got it. And that's how I
learned about the idea that, if you put
all this passion in your art doesn't
matter whether it's photography or music
it's a real disservice to yourself to
not try to apply that same leverage and
that creativity to the business. Right,
and that lesson is probably among many
things or that lesson is probably the
number one piece of advice I have for
every artist. But you also, most artists
by the time they become professional and
this is an interesting thing that most
people I don't hear them talking about.
It takes 10,000 hours to be a master of
something right? But if
that whole time you're becoming a master
photographer, a master filmmaker a master
songwriter, but there's this other part
of you, maybe it, maybe, that might make me
conscious but you're practicing this
resentment, and this concern, and this
identity crisis when it comes to the
business of doing what you need to do to
make the art happen. Yeah! Now if you've
spent an equal amount of time under the
surface building this wall this barrier
between you and this conduit through
your audience, to you know, now you're
going to look for someone to touch you
with the magic wand, and you know
somebody else's money somebody else's
opportunity. Yeah! And I think that the
more conscious we are as artists to get
past that, and say I need to practice
this stuff and right, and I'm it's like a
marathon
I'm not going to practice as many hours
a day at the business on day one that I
am at the music, but what if I do it 30
minutes a day? What if the first hour of
every day I make the 10 calls that scare
the absolute crap out of me right? Right!
and so I think again this idea, if you
don't, if you don't, if you don't put
those limits in front of you, it's
amazing what you can do. Yeah I agree,
I think that is very well said, I mean
I've had photographers at my workshop say
..no you're good enough they find you...
l'm like... I wish that were true! And, here's
an example of that, musicians are
entirely the same. There was a time
where I thought okay, I want a record
deal I'm in Los Angeles, and it was
before I started putting out my own
records in LA, so the thing that happens
with a lot of artists and photographers
is they think if their art is amazing
and it's unique, and it's different,
special, that that alone is going to
bring the attention, the attention is
going to bring the money, the money is
going to bring all the dreams, come true
but the interesting thing about it is
I'll say this as a musician who's at a
photography convention. I love
photography. I am blown away, I walk up and
down the aisles, and I keep thinking of
what would that one,
what soundtrack would go with that? What
song would go with that? But I don't know
that I could tell you the difference
between a print that scored 100. Right
and a print that scored a 70. Yeah. It
really is just how it affects me
emotionally, so let's pretend I'm going
to be a client of any, any photographer.
One charges $1500 the other charge is $15,000 and
I think their images are all pretty
amazing, so if you don't take the time to
market yourself, and what makes you
unique as an artist, and not just show a
slideshow but maybe a sizzle reel that
shows you talking about what you love.
About your photography, I may never
become your client. So I'm just
naturally... I can't tell the difference
because I'm not an expert. Right. And this
is true in all businesses, even music the A&R
guy at the record label... believe it or
not he's not looking for the best band
in the world. He's looking for the band
it's going to make him look or her look
like a Superstar to his or her boss
Right, right. So if you take the time to
think about the other person in the
transaction, and what it is that you can
do to help them achieve or accomplish
their own goal, thee other part of the
business gets much easier, because now
you're not in this desperate position of
selling and hoping they'll please
say yes... please tap me with that magic
wand, make me a star, please just look at
my photography and assume it's worth as
much as I'm telling you. Yeah.
And if you've been practicing avoiding
that, if you've been practicing building
that wall of resentment up about the
business, I guarantee you if you start
practicing tearing that wall down and
every day taking making those five calls
taking the project to share who you are
as an artist, it will change everything!
It's interesting, cause you say that, and I
think anybody can hear that nod, say yes,
yes, but the actual processing of that
and the awareness it takes, to see that
in yourself when you don't think that's
who you are
and to recognize how much that does stop
you that's a lot harder to do.
It's leverage...
I just leveraged it, and you know there's...
And you clearly did this in your
business. Yes, we had to do this with
Triple Scoop is a good segueway.
You know this leverage, that what you want
is so important to you, that the stuff
that's getting in your way, you can blast
through it, even if it's painful. Yeah,
it's more painful not to get what you
want out of life, than it is to get over yourself!
So your mission statement with
triple scoop is??? It's 'What Does Your
Story Sound Like?', and it's a question
that came out of as a question. Which is an
interesting mission statement, it is an
interesting mission statement, something
that we, this came to us by talking to
filmmakers, videographers, photographers,
small businesses. Basically it used to be
that everyone's identity was specific to
their job. I'm a photographer. I'm a
filmmaker. But the reality is there's a
much bigger identity at play. If you
give yourself the opportunity to look
at it you'll find... you're a storyteller!
When you think of yourself as a
storyteller now all the tools are
available to you, it's not just about a
camera. You can use video if you want you
know, you don't have to just stick to one
type of story because the emotion and
the characters that are part of those
images, whether they're moving or still
are going to carry whatever project it
is. So the sound part is something that's
kind of interesting, because particularly
photographers, music is the last thing
they think about. And what we found as
many of them end up as what we would say ..
of selling in silence. But the reality is
you're the photographer, I'm the client
and you're playing, you're playing a
slideshow. We are showing images I'm
clicking through a gallery and there's
nothing but the images, so you're just
tapping one sensory input. And I'm in my
head, maybe I'm thinking how do I look in
this one, goodness, well how much, how
much am I going to spend? I only
thought I was going to buy one print I
know they're probably going to sell me on this
stuff, you're in that analytical process.
When you add music... especially
when it's emotionally matched music, now
we all know how this feels, something
changes. Now they're thinking about how
they feel about themselves in the images,
They're thinking about the story and
we all experience this in movies and TV shows.
Yeah. And when you do that people tend to
get out of their heads, and studying this,
we found that not only does it result in
bigger sales typically... but even from
marketing... you know content with music
and images that are matched, get five to
ten times more shares on social media so
if somebody told you for the same effort
you could get five to ten times get five
to ten times more marketing traffic,
more clicks, more likes, more shares
That's huge! Right? So it doesn't mean
that those single images on Instagram
aren't powerful, of course they are but,
expanding yourself to the identity of a
storyteller, allows you to tell lots of
stories. Yeah, Yeah. And you have you
brought some clips that we can show,
Well actually this is we just finished
This this is a sizzle reel that we did
for Triple Scoop Music. Now imagine you
have thirty thousand songs in your
library. Which one are you going to use?
We took the same process that we share
with our clients, which is step 1.
What's the story about, before you start
picking all the ingredients, what's the
story about? Step 2 is what do you want it
to feel like? Now if you answer those two
questions before you start a project, all
the ingredients are going to mesh.
I always say I like chocolate,
I like garlic, but I don't like them
together. No you don't. Right so if you, if
you take a folder full of images, some
music that you love, but doesn't really
match the storyline, you don't even know what the
story is, because you haven't taken a
moment to define it. Your results may be
okay but they are not going to be great. So we
took that same process and we ask
ourselves a question. What does our story
sound like? hmm and so it's a short,
short real clip but the idea is.. we said
what we want to feel like, and we wanted
and you'll see in the video it's
essentially all these different stories
weaved together and the glue is the music!
So just like we advise our clients we
clicks key words that we use to define
what the spot should feel like. Okay.
Those words were... wonder, creativity and
imagination, so when you listen to the
music for the video
that's where we were coming from, and
hopefully you feel that, but the most
important thing is that we try to get
all of the content to match that sensibility
Perfect... All right. Lets check it out.
That was creative, wonderful and full of
imagination. Was it really? It really was.
It's perfect
yeah there's 30,000 plus songs. Yeah.
everything's hand-picked. Yeah. You can
create a free account, so you can create
your own playlist, you can download free
previews. You know, jump in and explore!
Thank you so much it was awesome.
thank you.
Thanks so much Roy, check us out here
next time on AdoramaTV and in the
meantime Subscribe... so you can learn
more about the impact of music film
photography and whatnot!