Sound Should Be First
Henry Skelsey, VP Marketing at Songtradr, makes the case that sound is consistently the last thing brands think about in a campaign when it should be the first. He arrived at Songtradr with experience spanning Walmart China, A.T. Kearney, and the tech growth world, and spent his tenure productising a business built on eleven acquisitions into a coherent market proposition, including the TikTok sonic identity.
“Sound and music is often the last thing thought about in a given advertising campaign. Sound is where the most powerful emotional connection to a brand is built.”
Henry Skelsey served as VP Marketing at Songtradr, the global music solutions company whose work spans sonic branding, music licensing, AI-powered music discovery, and independent musician rights. During his tenure, Songtradr’s London team designed the TikTok sound, believed to be the most heard sound in human history, and Henry led the brand consolidation of six Songtradr B2B brands into the unified MassiveMusic identity.
Henry began his career at Walmart China, where he helped launch the Sam’s Club e-commerce business and worked directly with CEO Andrew Miles on the ten-year Sam’s Club strategy. He went to business school, spent two years as a management consultant at A.T. Kearney, and then joined the technology growth world through GroundTruth, where he oversaw growth strategy and operations for the largest business vertical. He joined Songtradr in late 2022 as Director of Product Marketing before being promoted to VP Marketing.
At Songtradr, he inherited a company built through eleven acquisitions, including Massive Music, Big Sync Music, Music Cube, and Bandcamp. His core work was productising a bespoke service business into repeatable, scalable offerings, including the Music IQ product, which provides brands with a research-backed analysis of their sonic brand identity and a roadmap for correcting or strengthening it. He also led the 2025 consolidation of all six Songtradr B2B brands into MassiveMusic, achieving 1.5 billion in reach within 24 hours of launch.
“Marketing, advertising, sales, it’s always about human empathy. technology will always try to remove it.”
“Sound is usually last on the brief. It should be first. That is where the deepest emotional connection is built.”
Brands that consistently use brand-aligned music in their marketing are statistically more likely to be remembered than brands that do not. Henry’s case is that this is not a peripheral creative consideration. It is the mechanism through which the most durable emotional associations are built. The TikTok sound is the extreme version: a four-second sonic identity that now plays more than any other sound on earth. Most brands are leaving that same potential untapped because the brief goes to a media planner before it ever reaches a music strategist.
“A fully customised solution for every client is a product marketer’s nightmare. Growth is about replication.”
Songtradr’s growth came through acquisitions, which meant it arrived on Henry’s desk as a collection of world-class capabilities with no shared language. The job was to listen to enough successful client engagements across those acquired businesses to identify the patterns, then build repeatable frameworks that a sales team could pitch without a four-hour explanation. The Music IQ product is the clearest output: a research-led analysis of a brand’s sonic identity, standardised to the point where it can be priced, staffed, and delivered consistently.
“I want aggressive curiosity. A click-through rate above benchmark should eat at them until they understand exactly why.”
Henry’s hiring framework starts with one question: does this person have an internal compulsion to understand why things happen, or are they satisfied with the surface number? The distinction matters enormously in a company where no product is static. Songtradr’s entire offering is sonic, which means every asset is attached to moving content and the measurement challenge is fundamentally different from any other marketing context. The people who thrive are the ones who find that challenge interesting rather than frustrating.
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