Tinderbox Music

I’ve hired them for a couple things over the years. First was a college radio campaign for a full length studio album around 2009 – 2010 or so, and from the reports they sent me — it was working. Although I received not a single piece of outreach from a single radio station anywhere. And I wasn’t calling up the stations myself to verify anything in the reports. It didn’t result in any direct ROI. I feel like a campaign like this would have worked a lot better for someone who was already an established touring act. It won’t do much for someone who’s more a local songwriter type looking to break out. I think I paid somewhere between $ 1500 and $ 2000 for the campaign and had to ship out hundreds of CDs all over the country on my dime. Wasn’t the best decision on my part to even do the campaign at that time in my career, and Tinderbox… well they obviously weren’t going to turn my business away. Lesson learned with that though.
The other thing I hired Jon to do was on the music licensing side of things. He took an immediate liking to some heavy rock music I had finished work on in 2014, and we came to an agreement by the end of the year that he would put together some 15 or so licensing contracts from some real heavy hitter companies (I won’t name but they are all companies and shows you have heard of) — have my songs in their production libraries on a non-​exclusive basis. He told me it was highly likely that my music would be used. And the placements, while not credited much of the time, pay very well. My friend who wrote the songs with me and I put up the $ 800 or so Jon asked for in return for his help with all of it. It’s been about a year now… and I still don’t see any activity in my ASCAP statements for the songs, which are all fully registered.
I’ll make sure to come back and revise this review if I do start receiving any paid placements, but I have to say I’m very disappointed nothing has come through. Certainly wouldn’t have paid $ 800 and spent all the time working on it for zero ROI if that had been the proposal. In the end, I understand that the music industry is tough, and not all songs are good for all applications, but I was made to be under the impression that these songs we went into contract with were a perfect fit for the shows they were being included in the libraries for. It’s a drag since even one decent placement would have paid for the licensing. as well as the college radio campaign I did years ago.
I gave Tinderbox a couple shots, and this last time left me and my writing partner really empty handed. Jon’s a good guy, straight shooter (that’s mainly why I’m leaving 2 stars instead of 0), and it was a thrill to think that our songs were at least being considered by huge shows and production companies… but Unilocal!is about business and my unprofitable music business experience with Tinderbox has left me no choice but to let others know that I wouldn’t hire them again to represent my work.