Henry Skelsey, VP of Product Marketing at Songtradr Group, on how their team designed the TikTok sound, why sonic brand identity is one of the most underinvested areas of modern brand building, how to productise a complex consulting practice, and what the acquisition of Bandcamp means for independent musicians.
"Our mission is to maximise the value of music for all. Whatever your music problem is, we can probably help."
How the team that designed the TikTok sound thinks about sonic brand identity, and why music is one of the most underinvested levers in brand building
Henry Skelsey joined Songtradr Group when it had eight brands in market and was in the process of integrating them into a coherent whole. The company had grown through eleven acquisitions across the music industry, from Massive Music to Big Sync Music to Music Cube (a music AI company) to Bandcamp, with the mission of maximising the value of music for everyone who creates, uses, or experiences it.
In this conversation Skelsey talks about the discipline of sonic brand identity, the science and art of identifying and defining the role music plays in how a brand is experienced by its customers. His team at Songtradr designed the TikTok end sound, the few-second audio signature that plays at the end of every video on the platform, which he believes is now the most-heard sound in human history. He also discusses the productisation challenge: how to turn a bespoke consulting practice into repeatable, scalable offerings that can reach more clients without losing the quality of the insight.
"Songtradr is a music solutions provider for businesses, agencies, rights holders, musicians, and fans. Whatever your music problem is, whether it is choosing the right song for your holiday campaign, composing your sonic logo, understanding your sonic brand identity, or on the rights holder side, trying to find ways to better capture the value of your rights holdings, or as a musician making sure you are paid appropriately and your music is being marketed correctly."
Skelsey describes a company that sits at multiple intersections: the creative economy of music and the commercial economy of brand, the technology of music AI and the craft of sonic identity strategy, the needs of individual independent musicians and the needs of the world's largest brands. The common thread is music, treated not as entertainment but as a tool with commercial, creative, and strategic dimensions that most organisations have not yet learned to use effectively.
"We designed the TikTok sound, the sound at the end of every video that you hear on TikTok. That sound came from us. Our team in London worked very closely with the TikTok team to really capture their essence. It is now, I believe, the most heard sound in human history."
The TikTok end sound is a case study in what sonic brand identity can achieve at scale. The sound is heard billions of times every day across every country where TikTok operates. Every person who hears it associates it with TikTok. If it lands correctly, which it clearly has, it creates an instant, positive, recognisable brand signal at the end of every piece of content the platform hosts. The scale of that brand impression dwarfs almost any other single brand identity element.
"As a product marketer, having a fully customised solution for every client is a product marketer's nightmare, very candidly, because it is very hard to replicate and scale to the degree that we would like. Once we have had those conversations, understood them, had enough successful engagements, we can start to draw out where the parallels between those engagements are, where the patterns are, and then what I come in and really help with is what we call productise it. Creating repeatable offerings that are scalable in a way that we can achieve the business goals we have."
Skelsey is describing the fundamental tension in any professional services company that aspires to scale: the quality of the output is driven by the depth of bespoke engagement, but the economics of the business require replicability. The productisation process is about identifying which elements of the bespoke work are genuinely unique to each client and which are universal enough to be templated. Music IQ, which researches a brand's historic music use and translates it into a sonic strategy, is an example of a templated insight framework built on the pattern recognition from many custom engagements.
"We have had a research team internally for years. What they typically do is when we bring on a client, they do a research study to understand that client's historic music use and then how that use has translated into a sonic brand identity in the marketplace."
Music IQ is Songtradr's attempt to give brands a rigorous, evidence-based starting point for sonic brand strategy. Rather than making intuitive decisions about what music should accompany a brand, Music IQ gives the brand a picture of what their music has been communicating historically, whether that is consistent with their brand values, and where the gaps and opportunities are. It is the sonic equivalent of a brand audit, but applied to sound rather than visual identity.
"Bandcamp is the world's leading e-commerce marketplace for independent musicians, their music and their merch. Our goal with Bandcamp is to empower independent musicians to really achieve the career with their music they want to achieve."
Bandcamp represents the other end of the spectrum from the TikTok sonic identity work. Where TikTok is about deploying music as a brand tool for one of the world's largest platforms, Bandcamp is about giving independent musicians the commercial infrastructure to reach their audiences directly and keep more of the value from their work. Both connect to the stated mission of maximising the value of music for all, whether that person is a solo musician selling directly to fans or a global brand trying to define how it sounds to the world.
"A fully customised solution for every client is a product marketer's nightmare."
Host For those who do not know Songtradr, why do you exist and what problems do you solve?
Skelsey Songtradr is a music solutions provider for businesses, agencies, rights holders, musicians, and fans. Whatever your music problem is, whether it is choosing the right song for your next holiday campaign, composing your sonic logo, understanding your sonic brand identity, or on the rights holder and musician side trying to find ways to better capture the value of your rights holdings. We have grown through 11 acquisitions over the last eight years. We acquired Massive Music, Big Sync Music, a music AI company called Music Cube out of Germany, and most recently Bandcamp.
Host Size the business for me.
Skelsey We work with quite literally the largest brands in the world. The example I always use is we designed the TikTok sound, the sound at the end of every video you hear on TikTok. Our team in London worked very closely with the TikTok team to really capture their essence. I believe it is now the most heard sound in human history.
Host Give me your career journey.
Skelsey I started at Walmart China helping launch the Sam's Club e-commerce business. Went to business school, was a management consultant, then joined the tech world doing a mix of growth strategy and marketing in both B2B and B2C. I joined Songtradr about two years ago with the goal of helping understand how we start scaling our brand consulting. When I joined we had eight brands in market. We have spent the last 18 months really starting to understand how we bring those together and how we clarify to the market what we do.
Host How have you approached the productisation challenge?
Skelsey As a product marketer, having a fully customised solution for every client is a product marketer's nightmare, very candidly, because it is very hard to replicate and scale. But once we have had those conversations, understood them, and had enough successful engagements, we can start to draw out where the parallels between those engagements are, where the patterns are. And then what I come in and really help with is productise it. Creating repeatable offerings that are scalable. One example is our Music IQ product. We have had a research team for years and when we bring on a client, they do a research study to understand that client's historic music use and how that has translated into a sonic brand identity in the marketplace.
New leaders and insights. No noise.