NeedaJingle calls the tune on crowdsourcing music projects

An Australian startup is taking the crowdsourcing model to the music industry.

Sydney-based NeedaJingle, which launched this week, is a platform that enables companies to run contests and have recording artists from all over the world compete to have their tracks used in media productions, whether it be soundtracks, commercials, apps, or pretty much anything a company requires.

It’s basically 99designs for music.

It’s free for artists to sign up and since it opened its registration process in February, NeedaJingle has built a community of a few hundred musicians.

It charges a flat fee for companies to list their design contest, and then takes 10% of the prize.

The platform offers flexible music licensing arrangements with clients given the ability to customise exclusivity and duration, with licences that are worldwide and cover all media.

Of course one criticism of the design contest model is that many artists, in this case musicians, work in order to get a pitch together, but only the winner is reimbursed.

NeedaJingle founder Evan Buist says it’s a criticism he’s given a lot of consideration to.

“It’s something I’ve thought about and something that’s come up, but NeedaJingle is not overly different to the way professional pitches currently work,’’ he says.

“In an agency type pitching environment often they’ll invite a number of composers and sometimes there’s a demo fee, but more often than not the composer will just submit, hoping to win the licensing fee, and also the public performance and broadcast royalties.”

Buist says NeedaJingle is beneficial because it opens those closed pitch events to more artists, and also gives the client a broader interpretation of the brief.

“It’s an old fashioned industry, often reliant on networks, people will be fastened to composers that are good, and composers that they already know and have an existing relationship with,’’ he says.

“When a client commissions a single composer, you’re locked into one interpretation of the brief, but there’s always the potential for the misinterpretation of the brief.

“NeedaJingle opens up that pitch environment to the world.”