Audio Network, the first 10 years

By: Andrew Sunnucks

Date:: 19 Jul 2011

I’m often asked where Audio Network comes from and how it got going. Since we are now 10 years’ old, now seems to be as good a time as any to try and tell our story.

In the beginning
It all started in the summer of 1999 when Robert Hurst and I were in LA. We were both working for a major music publisher – me as the Media Director and Robert as the Finance Director.

At one meeting with a well known producer, we were given a particularly hard time about how difficult and complicated it was to license music for films and TV – he told us that clearing music was the most difficult part of the production process and more or less said we should be ashamed of ourselves for not thinking more about our customers.

Robert and I fled, chasten. We couldn’t help agreeing with him, but because of the complexity of pre-existing agreements and contracts with composers and agents around the world we couldn’t think of any way of making it right.

The Idea
On the long flight home we pondered the issues and concluded that the only way to solve the fundamental problem was to build an entirely new catalogue of music in which all the rights were held centrally and could be licensed without the traditional restrictions.

We decided a straight forward subscription model was the answer. Removing barriers to people using the music would give producers and editors the creative freedom to use as much music as they wanted and the extra usage would lead to better broadcast ‘public performance’ royalties for both the company and its composers. Performance royalties are paid as a matter of course by the broadcasters and don’t effect the producer in any way.

Full of beans, we rushed back to our board and told them we wanted to do it. We were greeted with deathly silence, a bit of shocked wheezing from an elderly colleague and white eyed horror from the lawyers.

So started a 2 year process of working out how we could make it all work and who would be needed to make the idea become a reality. Gradually each of the problems was resolved and we were ready to go.

Getting the composers
The plan was to create the best quality production music library ever recorded. This meant getting the top writers, producers and players involved. Since we knew we wanted to be a creative company we decided we wanted to be owned by creative people so we drew up our dream composer list and asked them if they wanted to be shareholders.

The first to embrace the idea were jazz legends Sir John Dankworth and Dame Cleo Laine who not only wanted to join as composers but also put the initial cash investment necessary to get the project started.

We were rapidly joined by other composer luminaries including Dame Evelyn Glennie, Tim Garland, Terry Devine-King and Paul Mottram. Every single composer on the initial hit list joined in and their commitment and enthusiasm encouraged the all important financial investors to put up the rest of the cash. The idea became a reality in July 2001 & Audio Network was born.

Early Days.
Initially things were tough. 9/11 stopped US musicians flying to the UK, some of the initial investment fled amid the global financial panic and the expensive process of recording a world class catalogue from scratch was a big drain on resources. There was no point in trying to get customers until there was music to give to them, so the first 3 years tried the patience of the long suffering investors who nevertheless kept faith and stood by us loyally.

The company’s staff grew and almost everyone who joined in the early days is still with us. Initially it was slow – people weren’t used to working in the new way and were suspicious that there must be some kind of a catch, but by 2003/4 we slowly turned a corner and broadcasters and more production companies started signing up.

A Different Way of Working.
As with anything new, the Audio Network way of doing things has been controversial in the music industry. There was a perception that composers would earn less money because Audio Network does not charge ‘synch’ fees (the initial fee to the producer for using the music). As time moved on and Audio Network composers became increasingly successful it became apparent that the company’s model works as well for the composers as it does for the music user and the company itself. Easy, straightforward access to the music has grown the market which benefits everybody.

There are still pockets of dissent but now most in the industry accept that other ways of working are inevitable and are necessary in the rapidly changing media world – and since all our composers want to keep working with us, we must be doing something right!

10 years on
Audio Network is now a global publisher with its own offices in most key territories and sub publisher arrangements around the world. We have 50 staff, 300 composers and around 40 submissions from composers wanting to join us every day. Although the company is in some ways unrecognisable 10 years on, it is also exactly the same and certainly its core beliefs haven’t changed:

•    The belief in recording the music ourselves with the best composers, musicians and facilities possible
•    Make things easy for customers
•    Building long term, close relationships with everyone we work with

The next 10 years
Now it’s time to make sure we continue to adapt as the media industry changes around us so we have some exciting new plans and ideas, watch this space and I hope you’ll see them starting to emerge in the coming months and years.