Music Licensing Start-up Hummingbird Music Opens Its Doors

Music licensing start-up Hummingbird Music is attempting to disrupt the production music industry with an innovative new business model that keeps artists and composers doing what they do best while giving film makers, brands and programme makers access to music of a far superior quality than that of any other company offering pre-cleared, affordable music.

"I appreciate this is quite a statement" says Nick Payne, founder of Hummingbird Music, owner of The Works Music and Sound and an experienced music producer and music supervisor with first hand knowledge of the industry he is trying to shake up. "There has always been a negative stigma attached to ‘off the shelf’ music and clients tend to only ever see it as a last resort’ says Nick who goes on to to say ‘we believe we have found a business model that not only gives music users access to a far better quality of music, but also allows composers and artists to further develop their careers without signing everything over to one company".

Hummingbird Music is bridging the gap between production music libraries and the traditional and somewhat cumbersome process of licensing copyright works represented by large publishing companies. "Labels and publishers are signing less and less material these days due to the large drops in revenue from physical sales, we are giving artists who we believe would normally have landed a recording and/or publishing contract the opportunity to generate an income from their music through licensing deals without the need for traditional representation" claims Nick.

Hummingbird Music represents the works of artists and composers non-exclusively. This allows the artist total freedom to promote their works and themselves independently of their association with Hummingbird Music and could in turn see the artist using licensing opportunities created by the platform as a springboard into the public eye. "Artists are allowed to remove works from the system at any time, provided of course they are not already under license or being considered for a license by one of our clients" explains Nick. "This freedom has enticed many artists and composers to let us represent their catalogue who would never have signed their works over to a traditional music library. As a result we have film scores by some prolific composers and some incredible songs by artists that you simply wouldn’t come across for licensing elsewhere".

Coupled with the access to great content is the use of technology employed by Hummingbird Music which enables all tracks to be licensed through the website at the click of a button. The site also allows the user to upload their film and audition music instantly to picture. 

Ideas can be shared with colleagues and clients through the website and dubbed quicktime movies can be downloaded instantly by the user. "We’ve set about making the process of finding the right track as quick and easy as possible" explains Nick. "It’s also a lot of fun seeing how quickly your film can change when you apply a new soundtrack to it. All this can be done on our website very quickly and with the minimum of effort". 

Hummingbird Music offers the ability to work directly with it’s artists / composers if a client would like changes made to a piece of music, further enhancing it’s strength and unique position in the market place.