Episode 70: How Award Winning Music Supervision Pioneer Frederic Schindler is Fixing a Broken System

What happens when award-winning music supervisor Frederic Schindler takes on the challenge of modernising a broken licensing system? The result is Catalog - a groundbreaking platform that's transforming how music gets paired with visual media.

Frederic Schindler has seen it all in his two-decade journey through music supervision. From his early days promoting French culture abroad to winning the Association of Independent Music's 2025 Music Supervisor of the Year Award, he's crafted soundtracks for iconic brands like Chanel, Hermès, and Prada while supervising acclaimed films including Jim Jarmusch produced "Uncle Howard." 

The disconnect between today's content explosion and outdated licensing processes created a perfect storm. With brands now producing hundreds of assets annually instead of just a handful, the painstaking manual work of clearing commercial music became unsustainable for smaller projects. The result? A massive shift toward generic library music, which now generates twice the revenue of all record labels combined.

Schindler's solution brings together approximately 50 leading independent labels and publishers - including Beggars Group, Ninja Tune, and Domino - on a streamlined platform that maintains artistic integrity while eliminating friction. "We have so much outstanding music not created for visual media," Schindler explains, "that with the right curator who identifies that piece and puts it in the right context, we don't really need music specially created for visual media."

The platform unlocks forgotten gems - album tracks and singles that didn't achieve commercial success but possess extraordinary artistic quality. For emerging artists, these sync opportunities can make the difference between continuing their career or abandoning it. For established artists, it breathes new life into overlooked catalogue material.

Ready to discover how music supervision is evolving? Listen now to this illuminating conversation about the past, present and future of pairing sound with vision.

https://www.instagram.com/catalog.ac/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Music Business Buddy
• 1:38 Meet Frederick Schindler: Award-Winning Music Supervisor
• 4:10 Building a Career in Music Supervision
• 10:36 The Art of Music Supervision
• 15:10 The Evolution of Sync Licensing
• 23:10 Introducing Catalogue: A Licensing Solution
• 38:01 Advice to His Younger Self

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

The Music Business Buddy. The Music Business Buddy Hello everybody and a very warm welcome to you. You are listening to the Music Business Buddy with me, johnny Amos, podcasting out of Birmingham in England. I'm the author of the book the Music Business for Music Creators, available in hardback, paperback and e-book format. I'm a music creator with a variety of credits as a writer, producer, I'm a consultant, an artist manager and a senior lecturer in both music business and music creation. Wherever you are and whatever you do, please consider yourself welcome to this podcast and to a part of this community. I'm here to try and educate and inspire music creators from all over the world in their quest to achieving their goals by gaining a greater understanding of the business of music.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Okay, everybody, in this week's episode, I've got a fantastic interview. Actually, this is a bit of a first on the show, because I don't think I've had a music supervisor on the podcast yet Until today, that is, I'm going to introduce you to Frederick Schindler, who is the founder and CEO of Too Young Limited. So Fred earned the Association of Independent Music's 2025 Music Supervisor of the Year Award for his work on over a thousand commercials and films. So, with over two decades of experience. He's crafted soundtracks for iconic brands like Jean-Paul Gaultier, hermes, chanel, prada and many more. He's also supervised acclaimed films, including Uncle Howard, which is a film that I really like, produced by Jim Jarmusch, amongst many others. Driven by a passion for artist advocacy, he's launching Catalogue, which is a streamlined and curated music supervision platform in collaboration with leading independent record labels and music publishers. It's a wonderful interview, everybody, where I learned a great deal, especially around the art of music supervision, the current problems in the landscape and the solution moving forward.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Ok, I'm going to hand over to the interview now. Grab a pen and paper, everybody. You're about to learn many things. Here we go, fred. Welcome to the music business, buddy. It's good to have you here with me. First and foremost, how are you?

Speaker 2: 2:26

it's good to have you here with me. First and foremost, how are you? I'm great thanks, johnny, for having me, and I'm excited to chat today with you and uncover some of what's going on in the sync and music licensing landscape.

Speaker 1: 2:38

Well, yeah, yeah, and you're the man to talk to about that. You. I've got to start by saying this, fred, um, I really wanted to like congratulate you on everything you've done, because I've read quite a lot about you over the last sort of few days and you've achieved so much. Um, can you tell us a little bit how, about how you built, uh, too Young to become you know what it is, which is, quite frankly, a leading and pioneering supervision company?

Speaker 2: 3:06

well. Thanks for the compliments, johnny. I mean, you know, I feel, first of all, very thankful and blessed to be able to live for my passion. I mean, I've been in music, I mean I've been really into music since since I was a teenager, like I. I started collecting records at the age of 12 and, honestly, my parents were a bit skeptical about me being able to have a decent living out of this industry. So, um, you know, I I really, every day, you know, I come to the studio and, uh, we have amazing projects going on and I'm able to interact with outstanding artists, their teams, their labels, their publishers, their managers, sometimes even their producers or engineers, and I just, first of all, feel very thankful and blessed of that luck. It's a huge luck, but it also took me quite a lot of effort. I would put it straight away I started in music supervision more or less 20 years ago.

Speaker 2: 4:18

I mean, my career in the space is, I would say, um, a bit atypical because I I did several things around then, inside the music industry, I started, uh, working for the french government. I was, um, um, working in a french embassy actually, uh, but in the cultural um. So our role was to promote French cinema and music productions, so basically labels, releases. At the time also we had a division on new technologies, so the emerging digital stuff, and that was back in the early 2000s and that allowed me also actually to connect with plenty of filmmakers, festival directors I met Cannes Film Festival artistic director at the time I was 20-somethings and then Olivier Assayaz and plenty of high-profile French directors, and at the time also we were promoting French imprints, like to export them. I was based in Argentina and our role was to actually help these productions to thrive in those markets. So we had Argentina, chile, uruguay, paraguay and some interactions also with Brazil. And I remember very well, you know I mean, interacting with Laurent Garnier's like first imprint team, efcom, and organizing showcases for the artists in the region. So that was the early start and at some point after four years there, I mean I just felt like the institutional kind of you know, environment wasn't really something that was really for me was, you know, very vertical, as an embassy can be, I mean quite institutional, and I wanted to be closer where, you know things happen. The problem was that, you know, I mean in 2005, the industry was going into one of the deepest crises it ever had, for the reasons we know, like you know, napster and Casa and illegal downloading, so it wasn't exactly the moment for you know, going and woofing a record label and with this, you know, activities at the French embassy, I met one artist that was very influential for me. That is Benjamin Biolay. He's a good friend for me. That is Benjamin Biolay. He's a good friend.

Speaker 2: 6:51

Benjamin is a very strong today mainstream figure in the French scene, with some global also impact. He has been considered somehow the contemporary Serge Gainsbourg and he produced and wrote for, you know, françois Zadie, for all the legends, even for Aznavour and Henry Salvador. So he's a songwriter, producer and artist. And we did a concert with him and he said, hey, I've just been dropped off by Virgin EMI and he was signed to EMI. It's like'm doing a new record. You want to come back to Paris and walk with me? And I said, yeah, sure.

Speaker 2: 7:32

So I was based in Buenos Aires at the time. I was doing also some music, journalism, writing, reviews, interviews, interviews, and so we went back to Paris together. He offered me this kind of A&R job and we did a record that was a double record called La Super, at the time signed on Naive. It was his first non-major album and it went double platinum. And then I met the person that signed him originally. That was the head of A&R at Virgin EMI Europe, thierry Planel. That became also a great friend and Benjamin said hey, I want you guys to work together, you're quite like-minded.

Speaker 2: 8:18

So I got all this mentorship from a really talented, uh, skilled, a&r legend and by the time I was also, you know, I knew many filmmakers, people that were young filmmakers doing well in advertisement somewhere in film, and they knew I had connections and they knew that, um, I knew I knew their labels and they were quite frustrated with sometimes having to work with bespoke studios.

Speaker 2: 8:52

It wasn't kind of the sound, the craft that they were expecting. They felt like the stories were a bit, you know, diminished by just hiring a musician to produce something on demand and that the power of actually being able to use a real artist, like someone that has released music. When I say real artist, I mean someone that released music out of necessity, out of the desire to express a musical sensibility, story, experience and connect with an audience, versus someone that is being hired just to produce music for a visual media piece. And it's a very decent and honorable job. But I think the main difference in between what I call real music is that it has been done and recorded out of an artistic necessity and the other I mean, and then you can hear that and the pairing of that music with visual media always, you know, brings an additional layer of purpose or depth that is hard to find when, when you just hire someone to execute a job, at the end of the day, but there's such a great deal of like creativity from your side of it.

Speaker 1: 10:05

I think music supervision sometimes can be an art form which is not always, perhaps fully understood by, even by those that create music, for example. I mean, you know, you've overseen projects, you know for some big, big, big brands over the years Chanel and Prada, also filmmakers. You know, like Jim Marmush, and you know what have you learned over the years along the way in terms of the creative aspect of kind of the alignment of the right piece of music with the right visual.

Speaker 2: 10:36

I mean yeah, it's a tricky question because many people think music supervision is about, you know, just sitting down and listening to tons of music and saying, hey, this is it and that might be, you know, part of the story. But I always saw music supervision as a translator's role, because you are a stakeholder in the decision. But at the end of the day, there's a filmmaker, there is a script writer, there's a producer. So you have all of these stakeholders that actually called you and your role is to understand their vision, to understand their taste, to understand how you can bring them value which is different than purely your own taste. So what's best for the scene is not necessarily what you like the most, and that nuance, I think, is very important. So the way I see it is when that magic happens and you actually convey all those desires music being so, so subjective, you know, and everyone having their own taste and stories with different artists and when you bring that piece of music to that 30 seconds ad or 30 seconds or one minute scene. And there is an exercise I always do just play the sequence with the reference track and play the sequence with the music that we finally licensed it, and the wow effect and the plus in emotion or intensity of impact that the perfect song brings is something really hard to achieve. But at the same time, when you nail it, you know it. So I would say to answer to your question, yeah, there is not a recipe. We are translators.

Speaker 2: 12:36

Lots of skills, not only, like you know, knowledge, musical knowledge, because you also need to make sure that you propose and suggest things that you can then license within budget. I mean, having a great idea that you can afford is extremely frustrating for everyone in the chain, so you rather not put in front of the filmmaker or the creative director something that you know will not fit the budget. So it's that. It's a mix of creative input, being also a bit of a psychologist, understanding everyone's agenda, then having negotiation skills and then also legal skills to be able to redline and defend or find a balance in between the right holder's requirements and your client's legal compliance, and all of those skills are combined. So it's quite 360.

Speaker 2: 13:26

And that's just coming back to the beginning, how I ended up building to Young After journalism, after A&R and after meeting all these filmmakers. For me it was the most exciting space where I could actually combine a bit of everything I was interested in in one discipline which at the time was also very emerging. I mean, you know, I mean, as you know, the record music. The recorded industry, I mean, didn't do really sync until it kind of collapsed. Many artists thought that it was selling out just to place the music on an ad, or even films were mainly bespoke soundtracks. So sync was really not a thing like in the early 2000s. It was really emerging and with sync music supervision and sync departments and labels and publishers and sync agencies and sync reps and the entire ecosystem that we have today yeah, that's a very good point.

Speaker 1: 14:24

Wow, so there's a lot changed in the time that you, since you started doing this up until the point we're at now. I mean, you mentioned earlier about that kind of that dark period of, like you know, piracy and and there's almost like a sense of artists going. I don't want my song to be aiding that visual over there. That's not why I wrote it, or whatever it might be. If we skip forward to let's think about, because you've identified some problems in the current state that we're in right now, in the mid 2020s. So let's talk about the state of sync, the sync licensing industry in general, because there is a surge of visual content that requires music. What are the current problems that you've identified that need solving?

Speaker 2: 15:10

well, I would start saying that now it's, I feel, one of those kind of inflection or I don't know if that's the correct word in English points in which there is lots of chaos and many things happening at the same time and the outcome is not clear yet. But when I started, I mean you had an emerging like sync market, with artists and managers and labels and publishers starting to change a bit their mindset, saying, hey, there is a vertical where there is some money left. Now that physical sales collapse and that synchronization, let's investigate that because we need it to survive. And at that time, at the same time, the mindset was changing Historically. That was part of the legal affairs team I mean, it was at the bottom of the company. I mean no one really knew who was in charge of that and you sent a fax or call and then someone would say, hey, well, send me the details.

Speaker 2: 16:18

But it's true that at the beginning, when I started, we had very, very I mean much fewer projects and the projects were higher budgets and they were like longer kind of in terms of the execution timing. And when the client wanted to license a song, they will typically want a recognizable copyright, so they would want the endorsement or the you know the traction of a track that was familiar to the global audiences or the market that they were targeting, or you know if it was a film, you know the storytelling. It was rare for a client to come and say, hey, I want this niche upcoming artist. That didn't happen. So the first thing I would say is that in the early beginnings you had way more less volume and also typically a more formatted kind of demand, which was typically exclusively mainly for big copyrights. That, of course, drastically changed over the last 20 years and nowadays you have millions of opportunities daily and that comes just basically, it's a translation of you know how content production evolved, both in film, in series, in TV, with the streaming content that allows them to, you know, touch, have touch points and a more kind of intense, constant campaigning kind of model. And of course, they cannot spend six figures on each one of those assets that will live for one or two months. We live for one or two months. So we saw brands producing you know four assets, five assets a year to some of our clients producing up to 300 assets per year, including one or two big TV series, global, but I mean most of it is like medium and long tail, and I think that's a great opportunity for music supervision, for licensing, for right holders.

Speaker 2: 18:41

But there's a huge, huge um barrier, which is that our process didn't change in 20 years. So you don't call anymore the legal affairs that is at the bottom of the, you know, in the, in the, in the basement office of the major company. Now you know you call the sync team, but still is an entirely manual process. So you need to identify your song. You need to then go and browse pro databases to try to find the ownership composition of that song. Then you need access. I mean, I'm lucky enough to know all of these players and then I have their emails and we did business together. So for you know, for me it's not something that takes much, but I, for someone that is interested in that song, I mean they might not even know how to start, and then you read the chart manually, but it happens that the song has five publishers. So you have five individual conversations with each one of the publishers plus the master owner, and the master owner tells you that there is a sample. So you add another master owner, which is the co master owner, which is the core master owner and so on. And finally, your role, because this is not a group or a common negotiation. You need to have individual negotiations. You will obtain approvals for each one of these stakeholders and then you will be able to present the final figure to the client. So you understood already the problem. I mean, you have time and money to do that when you're talking about bigger productions and bigger budgets, but you don't when you have 5K and three days to find a song.

Speaker 2: 20:08

So the outcome of that is nowadays you have this chaotic environment in which library music, stock music, became really strong. It's a very powerful industry. I mean the latest data is that they did $1.3 billion last year versus $650K combined for all record labels, combined majors and indies. So that gives you an idea of the volume of placements they are achieving, plus also the libraries from the tech giants. So Meta has their own music library, which many of our clients complain in terms of the quality because they feel it's a bit, you know, generic. I don't know what's inside of it, but I guess it's kind of a variation of a stock music library. Then you have TikTok. It's kind of a variation of a stock music library. Then you have TikTok and then now you have the last nasty bad actor, ai, unlicensed AI generated. So there are a few trials going on and, depending on the outcome, I mean clients are being corporations and, mainly on the licensing side, are being cautious because of course, they don't want to have the liabilities, but I mean it takes one or two judges to say that's OK and then those platforms will start offering licensing services as well.

Speaker 2: 21:36

That chaos, that jungle. I mean you have initiatives in the commercial music space, platforms, tools that are emerging and that are trying to streamline so to make the access of, you know, commercially music released artists, licensing process a bit more friendly, seamless, less, you know, less, less, less, less blagged by frictions, I would say yeah, yeah, so, so, so that's that's a bit the overview and I think it's it's a huge. It's a huge, as I said in inflection. I mean you know, uh, it has huge consequences, both economical and cultural, because I mean sing defines what you listen to every day, I mean in your social media feed, in your screens, I mean at home, and when you watch a Netflix documentary. It has a huge, huge impact and I think many people don't really realize that.

Speaker 1: 22:35

Yeah, that's a good point. So, with so much of that stock music, library music you know becoming such a dominant factor in, in, in on an editorial level, um, in the current era, you have created a potential solution in the form of your new venture catalog, which is a collaboration between you and approximately is that, 50 labels and publishers. Uh, could you tell us a little bit about that platform and what its goals are towards a more sort of sustainable music licensing ecosystem?

Speaker 2: 23:09

yeah. So the catalog is a is the first. I would say um and I say this with with you know, with lots of happiness it's the first true end-to-end music licensing marketplace where you can actually log in, browse, search with advanced features like audio similarity filtering that any other library stock music company has today so state-of-the-art tech and then actually find the track, get what we call a sync track profile, which is basically the artist's biography, the metrics of the track, like streams, shazams, plays on YouTube, et cetera, an audience breakdown, so you have a picture of who's behind that song, which is really important for some editorial context, and then you can playlist that, you can put that to your video and then, whenever you're interested, you just can place an offer and if the offer is accepted by all the right holders, that happens in the backstage, in the backend of the system, so you don't need to worry of how many they are, you don't need to send endless emails. Then you receive a consolidated answer and you can just simply press license and then the system will auto-execute and generate one single invoice and then all the corresponding agreements. You just need to pay, download your WAV file and sync it to your production. So this is a quite disruptive workflow and mainly because of the quality of the partners we have, which are partners that we have a true collaboration, longstanding friendship and many years discussing together how to improve a system that needed an upgrade. So among them we have all the indie giants Beggar's Group and Ninja Tune, domino, oh wow, city Slang. We have also most of the European genre-defining labels, imprints I would call them like Compact, like Soundway that does reissues, like Mute Song. On the publishing side, we have also some very niche and specific repertoires like Tambourines en Sur in Denmark and Taxi Gosh in Switzerland. So those are really niche underground labels but that have outstanding quality.

Speaker 2: 25:46

And yeah, I mean this is basically a project we we created, um, and started out of necessity because we were feeling, I mean, at too young, uh and I'm just discussing also with other colleagues at that level you know we were being unable to service the amount of content that you know was being. We can always service it, but we were not able to service it at scale and fast when it came to smaller budgets and tighter deadlines with commercial music. So we lost some of those briefs against bespoke studios that were doing kind of sound the likes of the reference the client had and in some other cases, you know some clients opting in for you know some decent library. But there was always, you know, a kind of a degree of frustration in going that road and we felt like, wow, I mean, this industry just created a billion dollar opportunity out of an inefficiency. I mean, what if we could just solve the friction? And it's a win-win for everyone for the brand, for the filmmaker, for the producer and for the audience. So there is so much great commercial music.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Why do we need to use music created for, especially for, visual media? We just need to connect those opportunities better with a more kind of, you know like contemporary process, uh, with artists different sizes. But in the platform we have everything. I mean we have indie icons like legends like lauren garnier or like bonobo, um noi, the quad rock band and, you know uh, eve tomorrow, ella miners and counting nightmares on wax. I mean you have big, big names.

Speaker 2: 27:41

And then we also have plenty of, uh, deep cuts from you know back catalogs uh, which which sound fantastic they are not hits but artistically speaking they are outstanding and also lots of really talented emerging artists that, um, you know for whom also, you know a few of these, like long tail, like smaller things, can really make a difference in them staying and continuing and recording an album or an xcp. So you know, I think, I think the impact can be really positive and that's what I mean with you know, seeing contributing with to a more driven and sustainable ecosystem. You know you cannot really count on on on streaming payouts nowadays, but if you get 5K and a few 5Ks a year through sync, then it gives you the chance to continue developing your career and hopefully at some point you will feel venues big enough and then eventually your stream numbers will grow. So that's how we can contribute to the ecosystem.

Speaker 1: 28:48

That's amazing, absolutely wonderful and what's really exciting.

Speaker 1: 28:52

Well, there's many things that are exciting about that, but one of them is perhaps some of the untapped catalogue of some of the artists that you've mentioned there before, whereby the fans might gravitate towards the touch point of the well-known songs.

Speaker 1: 29:04

But actually when we hear older catalogue that was more kind of classified as what people might call like album fillers.

Speaker 1: 29:11

But all of a sudden if they get a new home where they're aiding a visual content, a particular scene or a particular brand advert, whatever it might be, and all of a sudden you just hear that song completely differently. And that's happening as a result of you being able to free up that some of the clearance process for people and also have access to so you really it's almost like you're putting the art back into the artistic values of music supervision and injecting some of the powers into the artists and the labels that actually you know may well have stuff that's just kind of sat there, almost dormant to a certain extent, that will then become accessible through what you've set up. It kind of takes away some of the would it be fair to say it takes away some of the sort of the automated side of things and actually because you know the talent and the taste of supervision is back in the hands of those that do it rather than having to be restricted by you know, almost kind of like an old fashioned way of doing things.

Speaker 2: 30:15

Is that fair to say? Yeah, it is. I mean, I mean this system, I mean this platform catalog is not designed for the, you know the AAA heads, because those I mean, you know those are very sensitive copyrights and you know I do agree when a client wants a head, they understand that you know it will require some time and actually we agreed with our partners that I want them to keep on handling those manually. What we are talking about here is all those not necessarily failures, but all those singles that didn't have the impact that everyone was expecting from the bizarre, sometimes opaque reasons of the music industry. You listen to the song and you go this is a banger, but at the time it didn't have the impact. It should have All these album cards which are beautifully recorded, written and performed, and they're basically yes, I mean just and performed, and that basically yes, I mean just you know being forgotten. So that was a really exciting part of the work we have been doing over the last three years, like collaborating with our partners on their back catalogs and digging tracks. I discovered so much great music and I know quite well all of these imprints, but most of them have 20, 25, 30. Beggars just turned 49 years. So that's a lot of music. That's thousands and thousands of recordings and you cannot know it all, but that was a good you know.

Speaker 2: 31:49

Also learning from the process, I think we, we live in this overabundance, like, yeah, I mean, you have everything on spotify, but do we need everything? I mean, if everything means 30 of the tracks ingested dating being like ai generated. Well, I don't want that, you know. So the way we think about catalog and we designed it is to empower, is not to replace at all. I mean this is a tool to help curators, to help music supervisors actually to do what they do best and like trim down all the mechanical, non-necessary tasks like you, like redlining a contract for ages, like chasing people on email. I mean they can actually find music, place an offer and actually refine their search until they find those perfect 30, 40, 50, one minute that they're looking for and then spend more time on editing that to make the picture with a tool that actually empowers their taste and their you know and their their intelligence, uh, rather than actually, you know, pushing them into all of this heavy and and plenty of friction process. So, um, yeah, I mean it is, I'm very excited. Um, we, we did a. We are currently in private beta so we gave the tool to, uh, friends, colleagues in the music supervision licensing space. So we, we gather already, you know, great feedback and we are formally launching to the broader audience on the 5th of november this year.

Speaker 2: 33:23

Um, but, yeah, I mean it is exactly what you said. I mean we have so much music that is actually outstanding, not created for visual media, but with the right curator and supervisor and creative that will identify that piece of music and put it in the right context, that we don't really need music specially created for visual media, right, I mean, with all those songs just there waiting to be used, to be monetized also by these labels and artists. Yeah, so it's really exciting. I'm quite impatient to see the impact we can bring, the type of opportunities that can be generated.

Speaker 2: 34:07

But we did already many deals during this private beta and one of them we were talking about Beggars was with a track called Confetti from the band Cold Cave. They are on Matador, if I'm not wrong, and that was an album they released in 2011, an album called Cherish the Light Years Fantastic album. As the name indicates, it's kind of, you know, post-punky, cold wavy and you know, we had a very tight budget, which was reasonable but tight, and then one or two days to find some ideas for a catwalk teaser. So the usage was very limited and we pitched it. Confetti, the band was great, the track was never licensed before, the client was extremely happy with the quality of the song and it was a win-win for everyone. So you know, I think we have more promising and success stories coming up in the next months. Let's see.

Speaker 1: 35:13

Oh, absolutely. I find it so exciting to think about this because you know you mentioned there about I mean you mentioned a lot of like really really impressive artists and labels and publishers there that can be able to step in and be very happy with this kind of arrangement. I'm just thinking about beggars. You mentioned matador there. I'm thinking about labels like 4ad. Some of the avant-garde music that they've put out, some of the you know really kind of genre bending music that they've released and distributed over the years, and you just think, wow, there there are so many gems out there that have never been licensed before with a visual aid. There's going to be so many great moments. So perhaps actually the answers in music supervision are not always about looking ahead and going what needs to be created, but looking back and going what can be used to great effect.

Speaker 2: 36:04

Yeah, I mean I'm fully fully aligned with you there. I mean you know all of these labels, most of our partners are, you know, cultural heavyweights. I mean they are the architects of our contemporary culture and music and you know that's why, also, I feel blessed and very thankful of their trust. I mean this was not only my effort. I mean we built this together. They had lots of input on many aspects of their trust. I mean this was not only my effort, I mean we built this together. They had lots of input on many aspects of the platform.

Speaker 2: 36:33

We discussed a lot, but you know it also tells you a story. I mean these imprints are all I mean forward thinking in the music they release, consistent. And also you know the ones that actually, in many cases, moved the needle of our culture. And you know the ones that actually, in many cases, moved the needle of our culture. And you know taking, you know, the initiative for disrupting the sync space with a powerful tool that streamlines the process, that helps buyers to, you know, erase frictions, is another proof of their understanding of, you know, of our culture, of our modern contemporary culture. And you know I couldn't be more thankful to them.

Speaker 2: 37:14

I mean it's a privilege, it's an honor to be walking with such repertoire, to be honest, and we need to be very cautious also, you know, and that's another important aspect of the platform, I mean there is nothing, like you know, pre-cleared. I mean the artist still conserves. I mean and this is a very central piler I mean they do have consent so you can place an offer, but the artist is in his right to say hey, you know what I don't like this topic. I don't want to be associated with this story, I don't want to be associated with this brand, and we respect that. I mean it's, you know. But at least you get that answer fast and clear and a why. And you didn't spend three weeks trying to navigate a spider of rights, and that's fine, you know. I think any client can understand that. And then you have other alternatives and other artists that would be happy with your messaging or your storytelling.

Speaker 1: 38:07

And then you know, but that respect is at the core of what we've been and then you know, but that respect is at the core of what we've been, that kind of moral right. There is a really good example of the you know the ethical side that you referred to earlier. That's a really you know an important part, especially for a lot of music creators and whatnot. Fred, you're a fascinating guy. I appreciate talking to you. I've got one final question for you to see what you see, what you make of this. So imagine the fred of 2025. If you could spend 15 minutes with the fred from the year 2000, what would you tell yourself?

Speaker 2: 38:41

well, that's a good one. I was 20 years old in 2000. Um, yeah, I would say two things to him. Um, do some night shifts and don't sell your vinyl collection at the time, because I have a first pressing. I mean, among other things, I had a press, a first pressing. I mean, among other things, I had a press, a first pressing of around the world and some very valuable pieces of of music that I had. I had a trip and I had to sell. I mean, I sold, like you know, 150 records when I was 20. I also sold my lots of my cd collections. So that was the first thing I would say hey, you know what? Do three night shifts, go and walk at mcdonald's, but don't sell the records.

Speaker 1: 39:30

Wow, especially around the world. Wow, okay, crikey.

Speaker 2: 39:35

Yeah, and I had a first edition of that. I had a first edition of Chemical Brothers Dick Doss. I had some pieces from the era. I mean, I just bought them when they were out, you know. But I had to sell them at the time because I needed money for a trip, um, and yeah, I mean that would be my main critique and uh, I would say, you know, I had some hesitations at the time because it wasn't an easy one. I had. I didn't have like full support, uh, from my parents, just to live a very safe, like you know, kind of institutional life, um, you know, working in a for the french government, that seemed like for my dad. My dad was an engineer. He traveled around the world, I mean, he was. He thought music was a hobby for me and you know, I would just go and speak and say, hey, you know, don't you know what you want? Just don't, don't let these other voices interfere, just keep going yeah, that's.

Speaker 1: 40:38

That's good advice, very, very good advice. Good advice for anybody that's listening, in fact. Um, fred, thank you so much for your time, for your insight, for everything that you do for so many, and good luck with all of your projects going forward. Good luck with Catalog. I think once it's out of beta and it's into the world's hands, I think it will be an incredibly useful and pioneering disruptor. So I wish you well.

Speaker 2: 41:05

Thank you very much, johnny. I mean I hope the talk, the chat was useful and nice and really again thank you for having me Ah top fella.

Speaker 1: 41:17

Thank you, fred. What a fantastic interview. I just kind of found myself just, you know, captivated by many of the things that Fred said. One of the things that's really stuck out to me, guys, many of the things that Fred said, one of the things that's really stuck out to me, guys, from interviewing so many different people in so many different aspects of the music industries, is the people that are really at the top of their game, and Fred is a great example of that. They really care about what they do. It's far more than just work, it's identity, it's lifestyle. He is an advocate for art and he is an artist, and it's a real joy to have spoken with him there today in this week's episode. Okay right, I hope you've enjoyed a thing or two, learned a thing or two. Until next time, everybody, thank you for being here. Have a great day and may the force be with you. The Music Business Party being here. Have a great day and may the force be with you.