New production music library Fold has launched with a catalogue of music from labels and publishers including Warp, Mute, Domino and Hyperdub. It also says it is offering a new kind of deal that is fairer to artists and composers.
“All of our music is new and unique to Fold - it is either unreleased music from artists that hasn’t found an outlet yet, or it is new and specially composed directly for us”, explains Paul Sandell, formerly of Domino, Sony and KPM. He is a co-founder of the company, alongside music supervisor Chris Shirt and Lo Recordings’ Gavin O’Shea.
“We want to see the catalogue get used in a multitude of places”, Sandell continues. “From brands wanting to find great independent music to showcase their products, films looking for the right music to needle drop, TV series wanting to add authenticity, podcasts, radio, everything. From A24 movies to YouTube videos of cats - from Burberry to Hollyoaks - it will all work”.
When production music libraries commission new music, they have traditionally taken ownership of most of the rights in that music (in the UK, all but the performing rights in the songs, which will normally go the writer’s collecting society). However, Fold is taking a different approach.
"We are offering royalty splits to composers that are the best in the industry and, in trying to make the industry a fairer place, are going against production music tradition and norms by not taking copyrights away from the artists who create the music”, says Sandell. “It is a tough economic world right now for artists and we want to do our bit to make it fairer”.
Shirt adds: “We also believe that a more artist-friendly and ‘conscious’ approach to the production music model can help brands, ad agencies, content makers and music supervisors to have peace of mind when working with music and the artists within this space to help ensure their projects, from top to bottom, can be constructed in a mindful way”.
Artists with music in the Fold library include Steve Mason, Red Snapper, Slugabed, Shackleton, JK Flesh and Daniel O’Sullivan. Listen to a library sampler below.