Grayson Sanders on Music Licensing & AI

Justin Levinson (00:00.738)‍

Hey everybody, my name is Justin Levinson, host of the Agency Side podcast. I'm very excited today to have Grayson Sanders here with us. He is a CEO of Cordell, which is a collaborative music licensing platform. Really exciting stuff and exciting to hear your story, Grayson. Thanks so much for being here today.

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Grayson Sanders (00:22.998)‍

Yeah, thanks for having me, Justin. Appreciate it.

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Justin Levinson (00:25.31)‍

Yeah, so I guess getting right into it, how did you end up here in this particular space?

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Grayson Sanders (00:33.752)‍

Well, I started my career as a composer. I was originally in classical music actually, and had going into college, I've been kind of focused on becoming a concert pianist and realized pretty quickly into school that that wasn't the path I wanted to follow, but was deeply passionate about that, just the traditional classical music world. And then that was my foray into the New York City scene when I was in NYU.

got entrenched in the experimental, experimental kind of, not only the composing side, but also the art world. So we were doing, we formed this art collective at the time. We were doing a bunch of interesting, basically pop-up events and art installations. And at the time was kind of involved in the tech side as well. And so just through that experience of being in the city and having navigated that side of things.

I was just trying to figure out ways to make money, to be honest, because none of that stuff does. And I was very fortunate enough to be in touch with someone that I had gone to school with who had moved out to Los Angeles and got involved in the music publishing industry and had basically asked me if I'd ever heard of sync licensing. must've been like 22 or something at the time. And I hadn't, of course. And then fast forward.

I was composing and doing some work in that space, happened to be pretty fortunate to find some success there. And that led to me coming out to LA and starting the sync licensing agency back in 2015 called Safari Riot. And so throughout that experience, we were representing talent across all medias, but focused especially on entertainment, entertainment marketing. And just...

From doing the process the traditional long way day to day, we saw a lot of the inefficiencies and challenges that I think many people experience in this space and led us and a few other partners to thinking about ways we could possibly chip away at some of those frictions and that led to a quartile. So of course we can talk about what quartile is doing to try to attack those things.

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Justin Levinson (02:53.656)‍

Well, maybe just for the novice, obviously I am a music guy. I got all this music stuff behind me, but maybe you can just briefly explain if the folks don't know what sync licensing is all about.

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Grayson Sanders (03:07.49)‍

Yeah, of course. So in a nutshell, anytime that a piece of music needs to be paired with visual content of media of any kind, that could be television show, a film, TV advertisement or video game. There has to be a license in place for that. at the higher professional levels, there's a whole industry behind navigating that process. And it's a

hybrid of a creative and a legal process to pitching music into those opportunities because it's a very valuable marketing placement for a lot of artists to get that song put into that position in that content that then finds a bunch of eyeballs. then, of course, maybe the middle and lower tiers of the marketplace where you just have a lot of

folks reaching out to bands they like and asking if they can use their song. There's not really an infrastructure in place to support those people doing that process above board way, first of all, but also in a way that empowers the artists who own those rights to get paid fairly. So yeah, in a nutshell, it's basically anytime music needs to fit visuals, a sync license is required.

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Justin Levinson (04:29.006)‍

Yeah, awesome. Cool, maybe you can, I'd love to learn a little bit about a quartile and exactly what you guys bring. I know you had mentioned that there was some friction and some way that you guys may be solving some of those issues. So what is it exactly you guys are doing over there?

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Grayson Sanders (04:51.052)‍

Yeah, so without going too into the weeds on the current process of how things work in sync, basically not only does someone need to figure out who actually owns the rights, which in and of itself is a big challenge. In many cases, if you come upon a song that you like on a streaming platform or you get a hold of an audio file that someone has sent you, it's not even...

that straightforward of a process to figure out who owns all the shares. And in music, you know, one song might be owned by multiple companies and especially popular songs, that song could be owned by 10, 15 different rights holders. And so in a sync license, you need to get approval from all those parties, first of all, to use that song. And you also need to, in some cases, negotiate with all of them for a fair price for their share.

As you can imagine, that's just not that scalable of a process when you're dealing with the volume of where content production is today and where it continues to develop. So it is a multifaceted challenge. It is not just the detective work of figuring out who to talk to, but there's the legal process of

actually going through that negotiation and contract. And then it's like, how do you even value those pieces? And you know, what is even a fair price? All of these things create a solution or create a challenge that has thus far prevented the music industry from kind of really accessing certain areas of the content space that it wants to. And that is, you know, really keep trying to keep up with, like I was saying, the volume of work content production is going.

And so what quartal does, what we've been focused on is for the last six years, building the solution that will help the music industry scale with content production. so our underlying technology, what we call a collaborative rights management system is basically a technology that can support the multiple owners of a song being in one environment together. So let's say that

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Grayson Sanders (07:08.864)‍

you know, I own the master recording and then there's three publishers that publish the publishing rights on a copyright. All four of us, if we're on Cordell with our catalogs, we have mutual visibility over that song that we share together. And then we built functionality that helps each of those parties take action when there's a license. And so the new technology that we're getting ready to announce, which we're very excited about is called Instant Clear.

and it's taking that underlying system and now adding a transactional component to it. now that means that end-to-end licensing from contracts and payments are going to be functional in this environment. And so that's a big milestone for us and something that we're very excited about for our rights holder community.

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Justin Levinson (07:58.208)‍

Yeah, you still have to be involved as like a broker in this as well. You're getting all these parties together. Are you still are you still like involved in the negotiations a lot?

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Grayson Sanders (08:11.262)‍

We are not. No, and that's what's very important for a technology that's going to actually try to fundamentally change or evolve the process. can't be functioning as a middleman. It can't be putting itself in the middle as an agent. It needs to be able to be a transparent layer that keeps the music rights holders in control of their own rights.

and gives them that latitude to be able to negotiate if they need to for their individual shares, but then provide the buyer on the other side a much more streamlined contract and payments flow so that they don't need to worry about all of these parallel streams of separate contract negotiations and paying out five different people. Imagine you license 10 songs that are owned by a collective 50 rights holders.

That's 50 different invoices that you might need to be managing. And so if I'm not a sophisticated licensee, like a big network or film studio, that's just not really something that I can take on, right? And so that's what's preventing that among some other things is what's preventing a lot of licensees or buyers from licensing the music they really want to license, which are these bands and artists that they care about.

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Justin Levinson (09:36.256)‍

Yeah, maybe you can walk me through like a, you know, how it all starts from like when the client, you know, connects with you. mean, I guess, how are they finding the first how are they finding the they want the song? Are they going to you from the song in your library? Or they how is that whole thing, you know, working from top to bottom when they approach you?

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Grayson Sanders (10:02.475)‍

Yeah, yeah. So we have two kind of paths by which a licensee might engage with us. The first is actually signing up for a free account on the platform, which looks and feels a lot to them like a traditional DSP. So it's laid out a lot like a familiar discovery experience, like they would be on Spotify or Apple Music, except the platform is

heavily geared towards the experience of looking for music for content. So it's geared towards the agency, the brand, the music supervisor, rather than just a casual music listener. So if you're going, if you're finding music on the platform and using it as a productivity tool, we, you know, we have, we now have hundreds of companies doing that every day, that's an easy entry point. You have all the rights holders at your fingertips and you know, can, you can dive in that way.

But we also acknowledge that there are other platforms that can benefit from providing music access to their user bases. And so we wrap this all up in an API as well. So there could be other platforms and services, even social media platforms that have had experienced challenges licensing music at scale for their brand clients. They can utilize our technology in their platforms and for their end users.

And what that basically means is they're getting the rights legally cleared for them through our system. So they don't have to worry about any of that. And then when the payments come back, they come through a single pipeline back to us. And then we handle the royalties for all the music companies. So they don't have to worry about that either.

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Justin Levinson (11:48.61)‍

Wow, that's pretty interesting. Your library, the you do have a library of your own music you were saying correct of like the of all artists that you work with.

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Grayson Sanders (12:01.08)‍

So we don't represent any artists. We are a technology company operating a platform that's basically a marketplace, right? So the music rights holders, very reputable labels and publishers, brand name companies that you would probably know, they're the ones who are using the platform directly on their side.

And then on the buyer side, you've got agencies and brands and streaming networks and other licensees who are interested in procuring rights for the various spots where they want to be using the music. So we're just providing that layer that helps them transact in a more streamlined way. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (12:41.932)‍

Yep. That makes a lot of sense. You definitely solved the problem there. Do you feel like that way? What's your take on like, on like royalty free music? Do you feel like this in a way is a like a better way of connectivity for for the artist to be to make more money and to be treated better? How do you see the sort of

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Grayson Sanders (13:06.892)‍

Hmm.

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Justin Levinson (13:10.882)‍

I'd be curious on your opinion on that.

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Grayson Sanders (13:13.174)‍

Yeah, that's a good question. mean, you know, royalty free music certainly provides a specific service, a utility, right? Like I think one of the attractive elements of royalty free platforms are that the rights are very easy, straightforward. You can monetize your channels easily. You don't have to worry about any takedowns or claims. All of these things are kind of taken care of for you. That comes at a bit of a trade off, which is that

you know, most of the time in order to provide those rights to an end user, those companies have to own all of the rights to that music. as you, as you probably know. So, you know, sometimes what that results in is that in number one, they might not get access to the best artists and bands for those platforms to begin with, because those artists are most likely represented or signed by other labels and publishers. can't, you know, they don't have the liberty to do those deals.

but it also means that ultimately those artists are losing control of their rights. The ones that do do those deals, they don't have any rights over their music. you know, the, think the general sentiment towards agency over, over your own work and your copyrights, and especially the money that you should be owed. I think that's evolving. Certainly. we as Cordell, we sit on the side of wanting to,

put the music rights holder or the artist as much as possible in the driver's seat so that they are the ones who are getting paid the lion's share of the money that they're owed without needing to give up any of their music rights. So, you know, I'm not, obviously I'm not here to knock royalty free music. I think as I said, it's a utility, but what I would say is that we're really trying to focus on getting the music industry into a place where it can be functioning

If it wants to, as fast as the royalty free music space can function. And that is kind of like the competitive advantage that we're trying to bring. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (15:19.246)‍

Cool, that's kind of what I was going for because it seemed what I was alluding to because it seems like the one of the appeals of the royalty free music to the consumer is that there's not really any red tape and you can sort of just like get this and I get it quickly and it seems like you are solving that problem too where you are sort of expediting the process where you know kind of making the deal happen so people can

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Grayson Sanders (15:30.582)‍

Yeah, yeah.

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Justin Levinson (15:44.428)‍

you know, get the music that they want, but also that the artist gets paid fairly and is able to seem to retain their rights and have the multiple people that are involved in the art also, you know, get their piece of the pie as well.

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Grayson Sanders (15:56.76)‍

100%. Yeah. mean, ultimately, it's a very delicate dance. We're really trying to focus on both user experiences, the experience of the person who's maybe hosting a podcast and wants a song for their podcast or the agency that's producing a lot of branded content, unpaid media, for example, for their client. And they just want something fast and high quality.

And ideally it carries some cultural capital. So it's like, maybe they don't care as much about the plight of every individual stakeholder in that song they like, they just want the song. And so we're thinking about their experience just as much as we are thinking about the plight of those rights holders who are like, well, we really don't want to lose our rights. We don't want to leave money on the table or we don't want to lose control or whatever their specific concerns might be.

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Justin Levinson (16:51.318)‍

Yeah, fascinating. What does your team structure look like at Cordell?

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Grayson Sanders (16:57.336)‍

So we're engineering heavy. have, would say the team is three quarter technical. Right now there are 15 of us and yeah, small and nimble team, you know, experts, honestly, we've got an amazing tech team and then a really, really great advisory board that has, you know, reputable music supervisors as well as reputable music rights holders in the industry. so throughout our development,

We've really, really leaned on the community for feedback throughout this process. As I said, it's been six years and we all came out of the traditional space having had agencies before or having done this process really rinse and repeat the long way. But honestly, we wouldn't have been able to get to this point without such great people around us providing advice.

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Justin Levinson (17:54.37)‍

Yeah, how is it like, you know, strange for you to do you think you were going to be, you know, you sound like you had a very creative background playing classical piano and New York, that stuff, do know, is having the CEO seat a little bizarre to you sometimes? Do you feel like, do you always kind of feel like you're going to be also straddling being a business person as well?

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Grayson Sanders (18:05.943)‍

Yeah.

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Grayson Sanders (18:19.928)‍

Definitely. I would say when I was 22 eating bodega sandwiches, you know, doing my experimental underground stuff, I didn't necessarily think I'd be the CEO of a music tech company. It wasn't really the path that I saw. But I do think it was just, it just kind of organically played out this way. Along the way, realized that I was super passionate about this space. I was the beneficiary of, you know, some

some of the opportunities that allowed me to establish myself financially as an artist, which is just not so common. But I just felt like I was really lucky to have met the right people and to have fell into the right community, but not a lot. Not necessarily all artists and songwriters have that. So just through that passion, I think inevitably,

one thing leads to another and you're just, you know, then you're leading and you want to take that leadership role and just run with it. And then here we are, guess.

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Justin Levinson (19:29.71)‍

Yeah, I mean, we're definitely cut from a lot of the same cloth in that regard because, you know, I also was a musician too and I went to Berkeley and studied music and did some songwriting when I was a little bit younger, you know, but as I, you know, as you get a little older, you sort of want some of like that financial stability and then also the stability to be able to be creative at the same time, you know, just getting a steady paycheck and having more time, then you can actually play the instruments that you love more.

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Grayson Sanders (19:38.794)‍

cool.

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Justin Levinson (19:58.312)‍

And I sort of, you know, I know this interview isn't about me, but I sort of found that being an independent artist, actually gave me a lot of skills to help represent other people, like in the recruiting world that I do a lot of work in, because you're so used to pitching yourself, you know, and just saying, and looking for press and looking for management, looking for licensing opportunities and looking for this. you know, you get really good at

you know, showing your value in a cold email. But what I found is it's very, it was much easier and more profitable to be representing somebody else and pitching their talent and their creativity. And that sort of became my strength was almost like PR. And so yeah, the recruiting world also became a more lucrative thing and provided some more opportunity for me to, you know,

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Grayson Sanders (20:40.684)‍

Hmm.

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Grayson Sanders (20:46.008)‍

Mmm.

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Justin Levinson (20:56.183)‍

You know, just like you, didn't necessarily see myself going in this direction, but it's definitely really rewarding. Are you still able to, not to interrupt you with curious, are you still able to be creative or are still getting to play music and do that kind of stuff?

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Grayson Sanders (21:03.062)‍

Yeah.

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Grayson Sanders (21:10.124)‍

Yeah, yeah. mean, not nearly as much as I'd like for sure. Actually, my childhood piano that we had in my parents' house, I had shipped out from their place a few years ago into our space here. So I've got a grand piano I can walk in in the morning and play, which has been really nice. And I'm also into collecting vintage synths. So I've got some, you know, just a bunch of toys that I don't get to plug in as much as I...

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Justin Levinson (21:32.823)‍

Mm-hmm.

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Grayson Sanders (21:38.742)‍

as I'd like, but yeah, I definitely, I definitely get to, and I aspire to, you know, finding a time where I can work that more into my day to day. But in the meantime, I get to be around so many super creative people, which is amazing. And I would say just, just to leapfrog off your previous point, one of the benefits of being in this position now is that, since I'm not just focused on my own projects or my own work, I'm really

My scope, my visual scope is a lot broader. I'm interacting with so many more people across such a more diverse like perspective range that I feel personally pretty satiated creatively because of that. get to, you know, kind of dip in and talk to this really cool label in this country or this really cool composer in this country and hear their story. And that's not an opportunity that I personally would have had if I hadn't have.

been in this position from a more agnostic standpoint, if that makes sense. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (22:44.108)‍

Yeah. Have you had any of your music though in any license before or do you still do create your own music as well?

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Grayson Sanders (22:52.146)‍

definitely. that's kind of what I was alluding to earlier in the call is that I was very lucky to have had many, licenses of my music. And that is really what Lightbulb, the Lightbulb that went off for me was really like, wow, this is such a profitable avenue if you're able to actually understand what's going on here and.

actively exploit it. This is such a profitable avenue for an artist or a music rights holder. And that's what began my journey on really going under the hood on it. So yes, definitely was very lucky to have had many placements. And even though I'm not producing or pitching my own music at this point, I certainly get to watch other people succeed at it. And that's cool for me.

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Justin Levinson (23:48.366)‍

Yeah, no, that's cool. Do you are curious if you're I mean, every industry is affected by it. But is AI bringing any challenges or maybe offering anything beneficial to you at this point in within Cordell?

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Grayson Sanders (24:06.264)‍

Look, mean, well, I want to put it into two buckets, right? So you've got, let's talk about generative music first, because that's maybe the spicier one. Generative music is going to make, inevitably, it's going to make sync more competitive, I believe. I think probably most in the, let's say the lower middle or bottom of the pyramid. So maybe that's the royalty free, the

very, very high volume, lower value per license space. I think that that's going to make it more competitive. Certainly. I also think it's probably going to have an impact on the custom music world, which is very prevalent, especially in advertising the jingle writing space. I think that's, you know, that's certainly going to be a challenge to navigate. know of some of the larger multinationals agencies that are already experimenting.

in a pretty serious way with generative music, especially in iterative algorithmically served advertising. So yeah, I think that's certainly gonna play a role. However, the area that we're focused in as a platform is very much on, as you know, the artist side of things. So real authentic artists, especially artists that are even more established to work with a lot of big name rights holders.

Those artists carry cultural capital, right? They carry an awareness with the consumer. And I think that that's only going to make that cultural capital more valuable. Generative music is going to dilute by flooding the supply. It is really going to dilute the perceived value of music and it's going to amplify, I think, the importance of having some connection with a community online or a general awareness of your brand.

and that is going to be more valuable to the person who's seeking to use that music in their content because they want to be piggybacking off for marketing purposes, off of that artists cultural capital. So that's a long way of me saying, I really don't think the top or middle top of the pyramid is going to be disrupted that much by generative music. and so we're really, it's another impetus for us to.

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Grayson Sanders (26:32.856)‍

heavily focused on helping that piece of the pyramid accelerate their ability to make their music accessible to these buyers because these buyers are gonna be faced with, I put in a prompt and generate something in 20 seconds even though I know it's not by a real artist, this might fit my creative for this one thing, or do I go this route, I might be paying a bit more but I'm getting the real thing and...

it's not really painful for me to navigate that process. So that's the generative side. The other side is how AI in general, which is a very, very broad term, can be leveraged to improve the user experience of users in platform environments. And we are using AI a lot for that. in fact, we actually acquired an AI company last year focused on music and lyric analysis.

So that really improves the search experience and improves recommendations. any personalization algorithm that recommends you more of something that you might like so that you can discover more stuff like that, that is all machine learning driven. And we are leveraging that in a big way across the platform in multiple areas.

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Justin Levinson (27:54.04)‍

That's cool. Man, I like your take on it. It feels a little bit more positive than the doom and gloom I sometimes go through in my mind about where it could be going. But I do like, I hope that you're right about all that. I had a fella the other day told me he was a musician and he wanted to share his SoundCloud music with me. And I gave it a listen and...

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Grayson Sanders (28:14.263)‍

Me too.

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Justin Levinson (28:22.286)‍

After I listened to it, he told me that it was all done in AI. And I was like, wow, this is, I mean, I wasn't like moved by the music per se, but I was also felt like I'd been thrown a bit of a curve ball there when he told me it was his music. And then it was, it was all done that way. But yeah, Yeah, sorry.

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Grayson Sanders (28:40.891)‍

It is interesting. Yeah, sorry to cut you off. ahead.

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Justin Levinson (28:45.898)‍

no, it's a changing world. but I could see how it could be beneficial. I've always thought that like, you I'm noticing it like in Logic, for example, where you can go into Logic and you have your session drummer or your session.

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Grayson Sanders (28:47.711)‍

Hahaha

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Justin Levinson (29:12.344)‍

guitarists, session bass player. There are all these different tools now that I'm, you know, maybe I'm late to the game. I'm not a music production engineering person. I just kind of dabble with it for fun. I prefer to compose on a real grand piano upstairs as well. But I do mess around with it. And it is, you know, it can spark ideas and get you creating something that you might not have thought you could have done. You know, you can put an Apple loop in there and then you can start.

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Grayson Sanders (29:39.448)‍

Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (29:41.304)‍

changing the drum sounds, start adding things, putting in, shifting the pitches around with MIDI. And you can't really make something of your own that came out of essentially somebody's ideas and using AI tools that are within that program. I'm an open-minded person.

But I do think that like there is something that's really special about a person that's really playing an instrument, you know, when I play trumpet and I played in My my window the wind ensembles and we were all playing together and yeah We weren't all perfectly in pitch because yeah that fourth trumpet player. He really stunk and he played flat but we were still like doing it together, you know, and there was like

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Grayson Sanders (30:17.175)‍

Yeah.

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Grayson Sanders (30:31.978)‍

Yeah, yeah.

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Justin Levinson (30:35.374)‍

something really human about that. I have noticed that change even since growing up in the 90s that you don't hear people singing out of tune in recordings anymore because it's just our ears are so used to everything being 10 cents sharper, 10 cents, you know what I mean? Moving the wave file to being absolutely perfect, like to think about like

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Grayson Sanders (30:39.553)‍

Yeah.

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Grayson Sanders (30:59.052)‍

Yeah, yeah.

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Justin Levinson (31:03.97)‍

You know, I think that's the first thing when I'm listening to like recordings in the 60s and I'm like, ooh, sharp, flat, sharp, flat, ooh, I can't believe they let him keep that one, you know? My ear is extra, you know, sensitive to it because everything is so perfect now. Everything, every drum beat is quantized. Every, you know, sometimes it can feel a little bit sterile. So my fear.

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Grayson Sanders (31:12.983)‍

Yeah

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Justin Levinson (31:31.278)‍

is that if it got any more sterile, I don't know what would move me.

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Grayson Sanders (31:39.448)‍

Yeah, totally. mean, I even heard some staggering statistic about like 90. Don't fact check me on this because this is very soft facts, right? But I heard, fair enough, fair enough. So in that case, yeah, 100%, I'm gonna up it to 100 % of live pop artists are lip syncing in televised performances.

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Justin Levinson (31:50.798)‍

Don't worry, facts don't matter. It's 2025.

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Justin Levinson (31:59.106)‍

Okay.

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Grayson Sanders (32:06.808)‍

It was something like in the 90s or high 80s percent now, just because they are so meticulous about making sure that their brand is protected and that they sell that record and that that marketing moment is fully capitalized on. But as a result, like you said, it goes down this path of sterilization.

But I do think that everything is cyclical. I also think that if you look even at the decades of how things go between, you know, candy pop or like pristine bubblegum pop being sort of like the a la mode style and, you know, musical focus going back to alternative, that is always going in cycles. And so I do think inevitably generative music is going to have its moment.

people are going, then it's going to be moving into its own space and its own category. and like you said, even though it's impressive to listen to, it's not hitting that human chord. It's not pulling on that string because it's just, well, it's just purely derivative, right? It wasn't, it wasn't actually created within any intention. It's, it's, it's an amalgamation of, of training history that's generated that thing. So.

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Justin Levinson (33:28.462)‍

Yeah.

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Grayson Sanders (33:31.116)‍

You know, is that sufficient for an ad buy? It might be. It might be sufficient for a little advertisement because no one really knows or cares. But do I think it's going to like significantly disrupt and or destroy human made music? No, I don't. I personally don't. But maybe I'm an optimist.

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Justin Levinson (33:49.462)‍

Yeah, there is a... Yeah, no, I appreciate that. mean, there is definitely a... Some background music in an explainer video is much different from something that's cinematic and moving in picture. And so, yeah, I don't think you can really emulate that cinematic sort of emotion. I mean, in anything, even in like...

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Grayson Sanders (34:04.802)‍

Totally. Totally.

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Justin Levinson (34:16.59)‍

a lot of commercials, know, it's really, the music is what really ties the whole thing together. And it's important for the music supervisors too, because their taste, I'm sure, you know, really matters too. They're the ones that are sort of making a lot of these choices and editorial. I know they make a lot of choices of the music that ends up into these different pieces as well.

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Grayson Sanders (34:25.24)‍

Absolutely.

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Grayson Sanders (34:40.472)‍

Yeah, I mean, you see a lot of interesting startups creating point solutions with AI. You've got, you know, 11 labs doing really interesting things with voices. You've got companies that are doing programmatic sound design. So you load in the video and it's designs. does the underlay, the foley and the, you know, the background pads for you. Then you've got generative music and then you've got, you know, generative video. But I feel like talking to all my creative friends in those different disciplines.

Everyone's worried, everyone's anxious about it displacing them and for good reason. But if you think really think about like a near future where the entire thing from the video, the audio, sorry, the music, the sound effects, the VO, every single thing was synthetic. No human actually made it. It's like, who really wants that actually? Like, is that really gonna even connect with the audience? Right? I don't know. I don't know.

‍

Justin Levinson (35:36.142)‍

Yeah.

‍

Justin Levinson (35:39.982)‍

Yeah, it's, it's. Yeah, I was at a recruitment summit last week and the speaker, he compared AI to being to humanity, what basically us discovering fire was as a species. And I was like, wow, that's pretty, it's pretty heavy. But yeah, I mean, it's taken over, you know, our industry.

‍

Grayson Sanders (35:40.512)‍

Interesting times we're living in now.

‍

Grayson Sanders (35:57.784)‍

Interesting.

‍

Grayson Sanders (36:01.656)‍

Yeah, yeah.

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Justin Levinson (36:06.67)‍

as well for sure and sales and all and marketing. It's pretty wild, it's a pretty interesting time to be alive for sure. I'd be curious here, because we have about another 10 minutes or so, maybe you could tell us a little bit about your involvement in Safari Riot and what that was or is or what that is about.

‍

Grayson Sanders (36:28.748)‍

Yeah, yeah, sure. So after my composing days, when I left New York and came to Los Angeles, I was working with that friend that I'd mentioned earlier in the podcast, which, you know, his name is Jerry and he had moved out to LA prior to his masters. He was working at a publishing company. He introduced me to the world of sync. We had some luck together.

So then when I moved out here, we started freelancing together under that name, Safari Riot, doing pitch work and, you know, doing writing music to brief and really trying to expand our client network. And then pretty soon into doing that, decided to start representing talent ourselves. And so we had found a niche, we'd found a sound that seemed to be resonating. We'd had a bunch of success with it. So we wanted to start finding other

interesting composers and artists that vibed with that sound, who were down to kind of join, join the vision and cover more ground, basically work with more agencies, more clients. And, so that, that company, grew, and still around today. I'm not involved. I'm not operating that company. Jerry's Jerry is in charge and he's doing a wonderful job. they cover.

pretty much all medias still focusing on entertainment marketing heavily. So that's the trailer space, promo space, film and TV, but doing some advertising as well and represent a great roster. so yeah, headquarters is here in LA and have a great studio facility too. That's where the grand piano is. So I go over there and play it. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (38:09.038)‍

Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (38:15.756)‍

Nice. What sort of the, do you have any future goals in Cordell that you sort of can see like the next level in the business?

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Grayson Sanders (38:27.478)‍

Yeah, definitely. mean, so we've been up until quite recently, we've been very behind the scenes for the most part. We work with, as I said, hundreds of companies now, but all of that was via either word of mouth or just a very, very bespoke direct sales process of bringing people into the network.

taking their feedback. And now we are just starting to open up the scope a lot more broadly. So 2025 should be an exciting year. We're going to be making a bunch of announcements, announcing a bunch of the partners that we've been onboarding for the last two and a half years. so hopefully everyone will be hearing a lot more about Cordell in the next few months. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (39:23.598)‍

Cool. And outside of work, what kind of things, you know, float your boat outside of music and work? What do you do for your own personal enjoyment?

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Grayson Sanders (39:34.304)‍

Going to see live music. Love, you know, that's one of the benefits of paying a lot to live in a big city. You get to do cultural stuff. Yeah, so going to see music, going to see art. My wife and I are very active as well. We have a German Shepherd who's sleeping over there. so like to go hiking, take her out. But yeah, I'd say those are probably the three big things.

‍

Justin Levinson (39:41.55)‍

you

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Justin Levinson (40:03.362)‍

Any specific trails that you like to hike in the LA area?

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Grayson Sanders (40:03.584)‍

music and the others.

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Grayson Sanders (40:08.088)‍

Man, this is gonna be sad that all to Dino was our was our favorite area and we would we would go we would go all the time up to the dawn mine trail, which I know you're LA based we didn't talk about this

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Justin Levinson (40:13.795)‍

Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (40:23.608)‍

I'm in Vermont now, but my wife and I lived in LA for a long time, so I'm pretty privy to the neck of the woods.

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Grayson Sanders (40:30.08)‍

Okay. So yeah, there's a beautiful network of trails over in Altadena that kind of network around rivers and glades. And so that has been our go-to. And I think it will be a little while before we can get back over there.

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Justin Levinson (40:51.086)‍

Yeah, I always like going to Cadman. I don't know you've heard of that before. It's part of, it's one of the trails around the Griffith Observatory, but it's not like the main trail. sort of like a little bit like hidden back there. I don't know, if you're ever in that neck of the woods, check out Cadman. It's pretty, it's definitely my favorite when I'm not being trolled by coyotes going up. I enjoy it.

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Grayson Sanders (41:14.392)‍

Yeah cool, no I haven't heard of that one before. I'll check it out. We're on the east side of the city, we're over in Eagle Rock. So yeah, we try to get over to the San Gabriel's.

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Justin Levinson (41:22.667)‍

Okay.

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Justin Levinson (41:28.332)‍

Definitely. Yeah, we used to live in we were in Echo Park And we lived there for quite some time. We miss it terribly though, Vermont is a really beautiful and and It's a good place to raise kids and stuff. It's I miss a lot of that, you know, Burlington Vermont is one of those places where almost I mean not not every but many of the artists that you'd want to see in any

form comedy or music or anything, we are like the perfect place to skip over because of like New York, Boston, and then Montreal, you know, and I think a lot of, you know, it's partially because of the market, there's just not that many people and you need ticket sales to make it worthwhile to stop in a particular city. So quite often we miss out

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Grayson Sanders (42:04.952)‍

You

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Grayson Sanders (42:11.159)‍

Right.

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Grayson Sanders (42:23.009)‍

Yeah, yeah.

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Justin Levinson (42:26.254)‍

on a lot of really great talent. And when I lived in LA, it was just like, yeah, we were always going out and seeing great music and doing great stuff. So I plan on returning to LA sometime. It might be a senior citizen's move when I'm gonna retire in Palm Springs and then I'll be driving in on the, that's sort of my rough plan. But for now it's just surviving a bunch of little kids and just getting from here to there.

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Grayson Sanders (42:44.001)‍

Yeah.

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Grayson Sanders (42:57.367)‍

Totally. But Burlington's a nice place to live. It's a nice place to live. I went many summers. I grew up in Connecticut, many summers went up and hung out with friends in Burlington and had some hippie moments too.

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Justin Levinson (43:13.016)‍

Totally. It's definitely, I'm not like, Jam Band is not really my thing too. I'm not really Jam Band guy. I mean, don't mind it. Like I like all kinds of music and I'm not close minded to it at all. If I was going to go to see, you know, a fish or any Jam Band, I'm sure I would enjoy myself and find something I like. But I wouldn't say that I'm a, not the stereotypical, the culture of it is not really my bag. You know, I'm not like huge into that.

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Grayson Sanders (43:42.41)‍

Fair enough.

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Justin Levinson (43:44.214)‍

and there's, that's kind of what this neck of the woods is known for a lot is the lot of the jam band stuff. but it's all right. I do like being here, except for February when it's like beyond cold, which is right now.

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Grayson Sanders (43:58.962)‍

Yeah, yeah, that's real. That's real winter. But then you've got those beautiful summers and there's a lake there, right? Nice lake there. Yep.

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Justin Levinson (44:04.408)‍

Lake Champlain, We tried to make it a Great Lake once, but it just was not even close to being the size of any of the other Great Lakes. So we were disqualified quickly. But cool, man. I really appreciate you hopping on here and talking music. yeah, I would love to keep speaking with you down the line and maybe get you back on as a guest. I know you just mentioned a bunch of announcements and stuff that are coming up. Would love to chat with you further.

Really do appreciate your time today.

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Grayson Sanders (44:36.438)‍

Yeah, my pleasure. It was great to meet you, Justin. Thanks for having me.

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Justin Levinson (44:39.918)‍

All right, Grace, and have a good rest of your day. All right, bye.

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Grayson Sanders (44:42.232)‍

Alright, you too. soon. Bye.