Founded in 2004, Songs to Your Eyes offers over 450 CD releases covering all types of music, but focuses particularly on cues for visual media. Songs’ tunes have been used to support the visual impact of TV shows such as Desperate Housewives and a variety of car commercials. Yisraeli certainly has an eye for building his library, having recently hit a 20,000th cue milestone. He talks to Studio/Tracks about finding a profitable niche in the competitive library business and what kinds of genres his company is seeking from contributors.
Preview “Killer’s Ball,”  from Indie Rock Instrumentals, Vol. 2
Songs to Your Eyes, an interview on founding and growing the TV and Film-tailored company with CEO/founder Opher Yisraeli
 
How did you get started in your career and decide to launch Songs to Your Eyes?
I have a dual background: a masters degree in finance on one side and I’ve been really heavily involved in creating music on the other. My involvement in writing music and the music business, then moving to LA, got me exposed to the model of music libraries. I was looking for an outlet for my own music, which wasn’t necessarily pop music, it was more electronic and obscure, not stuff that lends itself to radio. It can be hard to find a label for that type of stuff. I was just looking to make some money on the music I created and libraries seemed like a possible avenue.
 
I signed a contract with a music library I really liked. From them, I gained an understanding of how they market their music in the U.S. and also target the global market. I liked that with a music library you’re not bound to only work with one style of music, which always bothered me with record labels. I thought I could do it. I knew a lot of artists and music supervisors. I started to sign artists and get my name out there at shows like NAB and ASCAP. I quickly learned how to categorize and package music in a way that post production companies and ad agencies and supervisors could take this body of music I have and find what they needed relatively easily.
 
You seem to have a strong focus on helping the clients.
I tried to put a lot of attention and details towards the things that make it comfortable for clients to integrate a new catalogue into their working. There are so many music libraries out there. People need to trust the companies on copyright issues, etc. If they come to us for help or recommendations, that’s a whole other skill set. Not everyone understands that it’s important to give clients exactly what they need and not waste their time. If you don’t have something, say you don’t have it-they’ll end up respecting you way more than if you send them something that’s not quite right.
 
How do you feel about the progress of your library so far?
It’s a work in progress. I never expected this to grow overnight and it’s been five years and I’ve been very happy with the progress because every year has been better than the previous one, despite the economy and increasing competition. The people that work with us stay with us and we’re able to constantly get new people on board and keep getting better at what we do.
 
It seems from your Web site that you place a heavy emphasis on submissions. Are there certain styles you tend to look for more?
There are a few styles that I would say tend to get used statistically more often than others. We’re very active in the film trailer market-for that we always look for various types of orchestral music, much of what’s called hybrid orchestral music, which is a fusion of orchestral elements with modern beats. It has a rock edge to it.
 
We’ve also done a lot of comedy and romantic comedy related projects. We’ve licensed a lot of music for promos and trailers for Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty. They always look for quirky, fun types of instrumental cues.
 
Then, we do a lot of car commercials. We work with the agency that does a lot of work for Mitsubishi and other ad agencies that work for Suburu. We’ve done Porsches in the past. And for those, we tend to look for upbeat energetic pop rock-current pop rock. This is mainly instrumental.
 

Do you have any new or recent catalogues?
We recently launched a Latin-only catalogue. This also gets used for the comedy; it has a feel-good vibe. This is a niche we’ve found that a lot of libraries don’t have-good quality authentic Latin music that’s played by live musicians who are from Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Miami, etc. So we released 15 new CDs this year just for the Latin catalogue.
 
How does your licensing work usually?
All of our music is registered with ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, depending on which company the writer is affiliated with. On the licensing side, we offer really flexible options, really depending on the client’s needs. For clients who come to us wanting one song for one project, we offer what’s called the needledrop license. Depending on what they want to use the music for, they’ll get a quote for that song only. For clients like production companies, who will produce an entire series of a cable show requiring a lot of music, we’ll offer them what’s called the blanket license agreement. We’ll let them pay one flat fee and let them use as much as they want for their productions. They’ll still have to report the usage, but on the upfront it’s one fee.
 

Do you still write music yourself?
I really don’t have that much time. In the past year I wrote two songs, which actually strayed far from what I used to write. I picked up an acoustic guitar and went and jammed with my son. It kind of happens only about once a year when I really get inspired to write something. Before I made a living out of it, but now it’s just when I really feel it.

Where does the name come from?
I did a brainstorm and at the time we started, I thought I would focus more on vocals for TV and film and I thought of a phrase that would describe music for a visual medium.