The bad news: The music department kicked him out -- "for licensing my homework," as Anthony puts it. Improvising, he changed his major to business and took a few law classes. There was something to this whole idea of licensing, he figured, that could benefit musicians and generate good money, too. As he was working out his theory, corporate advertisers were becoming more and more interested in the power of music. Mitsubishi and Volkswagen, for example, each released ads that boosted little-known acts such as Dirty Vegas and Nick Drake onto the radio and the record charts -- and got serious buzz as a result.
But as anyone who brushes up against the recorded music business knows, there's a dense legal thicket between any piece of music and anyone who wants to license it: performance rights, composition rights, different rules for different countries. And if it's a hip-hop tune with three samples, the complexity level triples. There are scores of small companies that help pick songs for commercials or negotiate clearance deals and the like. Because this market has so many players, it's fairly disorganized, and pricing can be all over the map.
Rumblefish has placed songs on The Sopranos and on a forthcoming video game.
This is the realm Rumblefish entered, but with a twist: Anthony, a relentless networker, started to put together a stable of upstart independent artists from every genre he could think of; they agreed to let him represent their music to licensees in exchange for favorable terms. That way, Rumblefish could offer clients something different. The company would be happy to do a search for the perfect tune, but if getting rights to a hit single by a well-known band proved too expensive or complicated, it could offer something similar from its own network and do so quickly and nimbly because all the clearance issues were worked out in advance. (Now Rumblefish has more than 400 artists in its stable, including George Clinton, of Parliament fame.) The company has placed songs for use in JCPenney commercials, for The Sopranos and other TV shows, and for a forthcoming video game.
"It generated a lot of buzz," says a Pabst brand manager of Rumblefish's campaign. "They did it in such an authentic way."
Then Anthony hooked up with Neal Stewart, brand manager for Pabst Brewing's resurgent Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, for what became the first test of Anthony's bigger idea of music identity. Because PBR wanted to maintain a kind of grass-roots image -- and also because its marketing budget was lean -- the brand wanted to be associated not with hit songs but with up-and-coming local bands that connected with its product. Rumblefish researched the music scenes in two markets, Kansas City and Cleveland, identified a handful of appropriate bands, and executed a quasi-underground program that involved helping those artists cut singles (in PBR-branded packaging) that they could sell or give away as promotions. That way PBR was positioned as a supporter of local indie music -- a part of the scene rather than just some outsider trying to exploit it. Stewart used Rumblefish again for a similar project for another Pabst brand, Ranier, and is figuring the firm into plans for future online marketing because he liked the way this initial foray into music identity played out. "It generated a lot of buzz," he says. "They did it in such an authentic way." In other words, it made a connection for the brand -- music to Anthony's ears.
Another trait that can help a musician is comfort -- even hamminess -- as a performer. That can help an entrepreneur, too, and Anthony definitely has it. His goal for 2005, in fact, is to concentrate on doing his song and dance for as many big clients as possible, and he should be freed up to do that with the addition of Carr Biggerstaff, one of his board members, who has come out of semiretirement to serve as president and basically be the operator while Anthony sells. Biggerstaff, 47, is an amiable and low-key guy with deep experience in technology and marketing, having worked with Andersen Consulting and Intel, among others.
Fieldhouse, the Vesta CEO whom Anthony considers a mentor, thinks this is a critical step for Rumblefish. Much of the day-to-day operations of the company amount to research and detective work: networking with musicians and others to help meet obscure requests (from figuring out the coolest PBR-friendly bands in Cleveland to finding hip-hop tracks for a Nike project in Asia), identifying samples and sorting out the thorny legal clearance issues, and so on. Last year the company brought on a full-time lawyer, Stacy Ison, who specializes in music rights. Now Biggerstaff can oversee those issues, and 2005 should be the year, Fieldhouse says, that Anthony manages to identify 20 top potential clients to "attack" before the real competition emerges. Fieldhouse's company, Vesta, which provides back-end commerce technology for telecom companies and others, followed the same strategy. Rumblefish, Fieldhouse believes, needs to get its story out there: "There's been basically no marketing."
In the two years since that PBR test case, Anthony has sold his music identity concept in mostly seat-of-the-pants fashion. The closest thing Rumblefish has to marketing is the "fish car," a tiny, 100% electric vehicle that's been tricked out to resemble a fish and equipped with a thumping stereo system. (Anthony funded this, somewhat remarkably, with an obscure Department of Energy grant.) Tooling around in the fish car one day, he stopped next to one of the modified trucks that energy drink company Red Bull uses for its street team marketing. "Hey, fellow theme-car guy!" Anthony called out. This led to a conversation with the Red Bull rep, which led to Anthony getting Rumblefish involved in the company's Red Bull Music Labs events (where wannabe musicians learn recording technology and cut their own songs in five-day marathons in various cities), which in turn led to involvement in creating giveaway CDs for the company.
