Chris Small
VP Marketing, Soundstripe
Chris and Soundstripe’s mission is to
“Keep Creatives Creating”
Soundstripe was founded by lifelong musicians struggling to make a living in the modern music business.
Most of our team comes from the the industry either as a composer, producer, touring or session musician…
Being in Nashville, TN provides unique insight to the challenges professional musicians face in making a consistent stable living.
After several years writing and producing music for large brands our Co-Founders realized the opportunity
coming from the explosive growth in video content creation coupled with the need creators have in accessing
high quality music for their productions.
Traditional music licensing presents incredible roadblocks for video creators. License costs,
intellectual property laws, and consistent quality music are challenges that the modern video creative need
resolved in order to keep creating.
Soundstripe
levels the playing field by removing these barriers, and they provide unlimited access to high quality songs for any
video use for just $15/month.
Soundstripe consistently provides us with exciting suggestions and intriguing questions.
Chris:
I’ve often reached out to the team at ClickUp with feature ideas
or questions, and I always receive a quick, friendly response. I’ve only been using ClickUp for a few months now,
but the constant rollout of exciting features and improvements has meant that I actually watch my inbox for that
weekly email with the ClickUp updates!
Thoroughly enticed, we decided to dive into the Soundstripe platform
and see what they’re creating.
Me:
Hey Chris! We’d love to hear your
perspective on the needs your company fills. How does Soundstripe appeal to its audience of musicians?
Chris:
Hey Wes! Initially we focused heavily on filmmakers that made
a living from producing video content.
This ranged from wedding filmmakers, advertising agencies, churches, narrative based filmmakers, etc…
What we discovered is that each of these segments faced the same challenges I described earlier.
Our internal goal has been to remain consistently focused on providing the best customer care,
the best quality music, and at the best price to our members.
More recently, we’ve introduced Soundstripe PRO (https://soundstripe.com/pro) which takes our service to
third party technology products, enterprise organizations, education institutions, and businesses that need
custom music branding solutions. Our mission is the same but we will be focused on addressing the unique
challenges these segments face when it comes to incorporating music into their business.
That’s incredible, you must be part of a rockstar team.
What would your day-to-day look like at Soundstripe?
Great question… haha! This is a tough question because every day
is different. Our company is growing fast. Until now, the marketing “department” was a two person team that
consisted of our Co-Founder and myself. Communication is easy when there is only one channel between
decision and action. :)
I would say there are a few task related things are always consistent every day I come in to work:
I first create my daily to do list and attack the most challenging one early in the day.
I spend time replying to emails and messages.
I make an effort to spend most of my attention on revenue generating channels.
I plan for things coming down the pipeline.
I’m grateful that we will be hiring for several new positions in the coming months. This is going to be a
monumental change for the productivity and growth of Soundstripe in practically every way. Btw, know of any
A+ marketing talent? ;)
Haha you’ll be the first to know if we discover more rockstars!
So, what project management system was in place before ClickUp, and what was the biggest factor affecting your
team’s productivity?
Before using ClickUp my task management and workflow was very unorganized. It’s actually slightly embarrassing
but I used a combination of Apple Notes and Wunderlist to manage my daily ToDo and any planning I had for the week.
I’m fairly confident that I’m the only person on the planet that could keep track of it all... haha!
As our team scales I needed a solution that can also grow with it. I don’t want a solution that is 80% effective
in keeping everyone on the same page… I need a project management product that allows the whole team to work the
way each individual wants to work while also allowing us to see big picture scope of what’s going on.
Soundstripe Music Collections
We set out to learn how a startup in today’s fast-paced environment full of pitfalls and competition has been able
to use ClickUp to stay ahead. First, we took a look at how Soundstripe structured their team to leverage
customizable features and statuses.
Unique Take-Aways
Proper content creation
Create single tasks to host entire creatives. Soundstripe masters this with subtasks for each item required to get
the ball rolling. Using priorities with due dates, they quickly see what items are most important right now.
Another huge advantage ClickUp provides is collaborative assets (images,
videos, and docs). Soundstripe adds images and videos when they comment in their activity feed so that the whole
team can discuss the item and even assign action items to each other via assigned comments.
Customization
Because Soundstripe is using ClickUp to manage their entire team, they use an individual Space for their
Development and Marketing groups. In addition to this, they’ve set up personal Spaces that contain the Projects
they individually take ownership of. This gives each member of the team complete control over what statuses and
features they use.
Soundstripe uses agile project management in their website’s development, so it was no surprise to find backlogs
and sprints throughout this Space. They’ve also created their own set of custom statuses to send their tasks
through for each Sprint. The GitHub integration allows tasks in this Space to be associated with Soundstripe’s
repositories and all commits linked with certain tasks are automatically logged in the task’s activity feed for
simple issue tracking. Great work guys! A prime example of our favorite project management methodology being used
to the fullest.
Multiple Assignees, Priorities, Time Tracking, and Tags
Space Statuses:
For their marketing Space, they’ve set up a hierarchy with Projects for each channel they utilize in getting word out.
The content-lifecycle statuses they use force a thorough process each task must go through before it is released
into the wild.
The Slack integration allows task management from within Slack, so you can set assignees and change task statuses
without leaving the conversation.
Space Features:
Multiple Assignees, Due Dates, Priorities, Tags
Space Statuses:
The most unique thing about Soundstripe’s setup are their personal Spaces.
These let the team keep up with their ownership items and de-clutter the public Spaces!
Space Features:
Multiple Assignees, Due Dates, Priorities, Tags
Space Statuses:
On the hunt for music to accompany your visual media? Soundstripe is THE place to go. Want to share your music
with production companies all around the world? Apply to their marketplace. This is the absolute best way to
connect musicians with producers in the visual media.
If you produce content for film or TV and need to satisfy all of your music needs, Soundstripe’s Spotify-esque
library of content gives you the tools to discover, listen to, and download the tracks that fit the tone of your
work. YouTubers may find this especially useful for background audio in their videos!
The Team
Travis Terrel
Co-CEO and Co-Founder
Micah Sannan
Co-CEO and Co-Founder
Trevor Hinesley
CTO and Co-Founder
ClickUp, Slack, and GitHub make the perfect startup toolset.
Actively manage tasks within Slack through ClickUp's simple unfurling feature, and automatically track
commits and branches in your tasks with our GitHub auto-association.
We want to keep things completely customizable. Some people
believe there should be only one person responsible for a task, whereas others want to promote
collaboration and team spirit! ClickUp gives you both.
Manage everything on your plate by organizing tasks with
levels of importance. Sort or filter your tasks by priority to quickly see a list of what’s most
important to you now!
Sign up for FREE and start using ClickUp in seconds!
The everything app, for work.
We analyzed the time saved by over 4,000 teams after switching to ClickUp to manage their projects. That's 52 days back every year!
