SphereTrax is changing the tune for composers and musicians through ethical music licensing

One of the harsh realities of being a composer or musician is you're always waiting to get paid; whether your music appears on the radio, in tv commercials, in film soundtrack or scores, or games, you can expect delays. 

You usually receive payments from licensing platforms quarterly or biannually. Until you receive notice, you have no idea which track is being used and how much you are getting paid.

Sefi Carmel is an award-winning London-based composer, sound designer, producer and mixer who has been creating soundtracks for films, TV, commercials and games for over two decades.

He's worked with artists such as David Bowie and Massive Attac and created scores and soundtracks for Disney, Universal, Buena Vista Miramax, Scott Free, BBC, MTV, ITV, National Geographic, Discovery, Sky, Five, Channel 4, BSkyB's cross-platform gaming channels and many more.

He's well aware of the challenges that not only face artists, but ad agencies, tv and film studios looking for music. In response, he founded Spheretrax. 

SphereTrax is a search engine and marketplace for music and a digital platform of soundtracks and songs for use in cinema, TV, advertising, trailers, games, VR, AR and the metaverse. 

The platform features music from 170 composers with over 5000 tracks submitted from places as diverse as Australia, the Virgin Islands, Fiji, the US, and the Middle East.

I spoke to Carmel, who explained that in the music industry, record labels typically receive the lion’s share of the returns, leaving artists with a heavily diminished share of the royalties.

Additionally, less established artists rarely have sufficient presence on existing platforms, meaning their work is not sourced for film and gaming soundtracks as often.

"SphereTrax puts the artist in the centre of the value system where artists get the lion's share of the revenue. The artists get at least 50%, sometimes up to 75%, of what their music is generating." 

Unique Features of Spheretrax

The platform also fills a crucial gap — no other platform currently licenses tracks for use in immersive formats like Dolby Atmos, which is used more and more in games and immersive film trailers. 

The platform also makes it easier for people to find music through the use of machine learning.

Carmel explained how someone might visit the platform looking for tracks for an orange juice commercial. Spheretrax uses assistive AI to help find the right track and can be tailored for mood, specific instruments, and other specifics.

I love horror films, so I played around with it and got a bunch of great music: 

I could add moods such as action, adventure, aggressive, cinematic, dark, futuristic, and heroic and instruments – from an oboe to bagpipes. I have the choice of cultural influences and genres. Further I can weight all these metrics by degrees to make some more of a priority than others to provide a more precise search. 

It is also a real-time SAAS online collaborative video editor which allows users to drag & drop the licensable tracks directly to a timeline. Users can then share frame-by-frame commentary, share their projects with creators and more. Users buy the music on the platform, and the creator gets paid once processed. 

Choose your own adventure

Platform users can also request bespoke music and receive a bunch of new tunes in a matter of days.

Carmel recalls:

"Last week, one of our composers created music for an advertisement for the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Theatre show for the West End."

Despite its early days SphereTrax has garnered industry interest with "over 35,000 unique visitors to the site, over 500 people registered and started looking for music on the site including folks from companies like Netflix, the BBC, Disney, and Sony.

"So we feel there is some traction," shared Carmel humbly.

The company has raised £350,000, which Carmel explained funded the website. In addition

"It also enabled us to hire a Head of Sales and Marketing that came to us from Apple Music and a Head of A&R. We were also able to send our Head of Sales to Cannes Lions, to schmooze with the big agencies."

Moneys well spent. A seed round is also on the horizon.