Lyric House Company Overview and Placements

Tim Wenger | January 1, 2014 | 0 Comments

by Tim Wenger

Getting your song placed in film or TV, and the royalties and respect that can follow, might seem like a far-off dream for many musicians, but if you have professionally recorded music that is both appealing and marketable, Lyric House is here to help. The Denver-based licensing, placement and development company has been helping artists around the world get their music to where it needs to be.

Founded in 2012 by artist Jessica Cole, the organization seeks find an suitable media-related home for appropriate songs. The entire team at Lyric House is musically driven, which helps them relate to their clients and better understand their needs. “We all have a musical background, so that’s awesome when we are getting to know our artists,” says Cole. “They realize that we’re not just business oriented, that they understand. I think it is a really nice, unique thing that we have.”

During their frequent visits Los Angeles to pitch their clients’ work, the Lyric House team represents Denver and helps spread the love by putting what our city has to offer up against the best of the best, often with great results. “When we go to LA and have meetings, the feedback is like ‘Wow, where did you find all these great artists and musicians,” says Roniit Alkayam, Sync licensing manager at Lyric House. “We’ll say we are from Denver, and people are surprised sometimes how much awesome talent has come out of Denver. Over and over again we’ve heard people say they like the quality of our music. It’s cool for all these Denver artists to compete with the national competition.”

The trips to LA and the international clientele might seem surprising enough in itself, but the legitimacy of the Lyric House team is made even more apparent when you look at how short of a time period they have been around. “It’s been about a year and a half that we’ve been active,” says owner and founder Jessica Cole, an artist herself who originally got into the line of work to market her own music. “We’ve definitely grown a lot in that time period. We have about eighty artists now, and about 30-35 of those are in Colorado.”

Cole and her team, consisting of Alkayam, Jonathan Lapides, and Krista Van Allen, run the entire operation. “We’re very focused in TV, film and ads placement,” Cole says. “We have a whole catalog of songs, over 1,000 songs now. Basically we focus on pitching all of those to national commercials, tv shows and films. We have our base in Denver, but we go back and forth to LA every few weeks. We have a presence there too, and we’re actually opening a branch in the spring in LA.”

“Aside from us pitching to TV and film, we also provide opportunities to write custom for certain opportunities that we get,” says Cole. “We’ll bring in some of our writers and pair them together based on their strengths. We have two writing rooms with instruments and a comfy couch, and us here if they want to chat.”

Professional presentation is key to get your song placed. The team will help a band or artist get their online presence up to par before attempting to place a song. “If a band is fresh, we make sure that their image aligns with the quality of their work,” says Cole. “Everything needs to make sense, we need to make sure the band has a good image online. If we place them and they are being promoted, people are going to look them up and they need to think about that.”

If you or your band are planning to submit to Lyric House, make sure your song is professionally recorded and produced. Cole and Alkayam recommend heading to the Lyric House website and listening to some of the work they have placed, and judging your work accordingly to see if it is on par with the music they are working with. “We have to make sure that the quality is there,” says Cole. “It’s always about the quality for us. It’s also about relevancy. If the song is current and it fits in the songs that we are looking for or the opportunities that we are working on, or we feel that the song is going to be a hit, then we can evaluate that.”

Colorado Music Buzz will be keeping up to date with the Lyric House team’s placements each month and will print the info here in this column. Below is a look at what they have done lately, and guidelines for submitting your own work for consideration.

Submission process:

Send best 3 songs to [email protected]. DO NOT attach mp3s – send Streaming / downloading link through box.com. Also include website and Facebook.

January Placements:

Mergence– “Harvest” on Shameless – Jan 19th on Showtime

Ally Rhodes- “Deadbolt“ on Giuliana & Bill on E!

Fire In The Hamptons– “Kisses Are Candy“ in Logitech Ad

The Reel’s– “Made For You“ in Lifetime movie “The Girl He Met Online”.

Ali Grayson– “Let It Go” in The Fosters on ABC Family

Monarrk– “Alpha” on Teenwolf January 13th on MTV

Denver Based artist placements

Aaron Wagner from Medic had a song in Switched at Birth on ABC Family.

West Water Outlaws has been placed on Esquire, E!, Altitude, and a Denver Start Up Week ad