Again in 1998, Matthew Yost and Jason Donnelly (aka DJ Puzzle) had been working at Sonic Foundry placing loops onto discs. That early-stage expertise was the beginning of the pair’s 20-year journey into the understated world of background sounds, sonic libraries, and sound loops.
In the present day, their firm, Soundtrack Loops, is powering sound libraries for main platforms and corporations like Antares, 1010Music, Acoustica Mixcraft, Roland Cloud, Recording Academy Grammy Museum, and Storyblocks. It’s possible you’ll not know the identify, however for those who’re in music, you’ve most likely encountered their sonic creations.
Donnelly recollects the pair’s early days at Sonic Foundry as a ‘enjoyable time,’ including, “We had been reducing and modifying loops for merchandise, and that’s sort of how we received launched to every little thing. Again then, producers needed to rip audio discs to edit the loop off of them. We had been a part of a revolution that was going to alter all that by burning loops to knowledge discs and promoting them for reasonably priced costs.”
Yost remembers what it was like earlier than streaming MP3s surfaced. The pair had to make use of Actual Participant as a result of that was the easiest way to stream audio for demos. “I nonetheless bear in mind making MP3s and it being like a giant factor,” he provides.
Donnelly and Yost went on to construct the primary platform that allowed artists to hearken to loops earlier than paying for them. That manner, patrons knew what they had been getting, and customers not needed to order CDs with sound loops that arrived within the mail — hoping they preferred the collections. By 2005, the duo had been additionally among the many first to supply downloadable packages as a substitute of bodily CDs.
Quick-forward to 2023, and Yost and Donnelly have been within the sport for over twenty years. With an intensive catalog of audio loops, Soundtrack Loops has crossed main milestones throughout its evolution, forging partnerships with producers and tech producers.
The trendy day music loop enterprise is huge and multi-faceted. Artists, producers, and even app builders have distinctive sound necessities to fill their sonic scopes. Most are burnt out making an attempt to bake music into the infinite nooks and crannies of their productions.
Offering options for that drawback, Soundtrack Loops presents expertly formatted royalty-free sound packs for productions in a mess of genres and codecs. The corporate simply concluded a three-year tie-up with Berlin-headquartered music {hardware} firm Native Devices for his or her product Sounds.com. Only in the near past, Soundtrack Loops joined forces with DMN to additional broaden their imprint.
Talking about extra present partnerships, Donnelly explains that know-how firm 1010Music supplies samples and loops inside its digital audio merchandise, and Soundtrack Loops is the pressure behind it. “Soundtrack Loops designed all of the presets for 1010Music’s Razzmatazz drum synth,” Donnelly relays, including, “Their Blackbox comes with a bunch of our samples and loops in it. Then there’s Lemondrop and just-realized Tangerine — extra 1010Music {hardware} gadgets that characteristic our sounds.”
Soundtrack Loops additionally tied up with Antares Audio Applied sciences, an organization best-known for growing Auto-Tune — the skilled commonplace for pitch correction. Antares Audio creates a spread of {hardware} and software program options, backed by Soundtrack Loops’ libraries, to convey musicians and artists inventive audio instruments for manufacturing.
Earlier this yr, Soundtrack Loops paired up with Soundware, a supplier of VST (Digital Studio Know-how) plugins for music producers.
Different partnerships embrace StoryBlocks, a supplier of high-quality inventory movies, audio clips, and pictures. Soundtrack Loops’ sounds are additionally featured on Roland Company’s Roland Cloud.
Moreover, Soundtrack Loops’ partnership with Audiokit, a swift audio synthesis, processing, and evaluation platform, has resulted in Donnelly and Yost’s craft showing in a number of iOS apps. Donnelly additional added, “We additionally licensed a bunch of drum samples to keyboard participant Jordan Rudess for his new iOS app, Jam With Jordan, an immersive audio-visual synthesizer that you could play in your telephone or pill.”
Soundtrack Loops’ complete catalog can be absolutely appropriate with Apple’s digital audio workstation Garageband, ‘to reap the benefits of all metadata and formatting that you just obtain within the Apple looping utility.’ Jason provides, ”These prefab loops are broadly utilized in compositions by artists.”
Discussing the corporate’s plentiful and important partnerships, Donnelly reveals they’ve additionally licensed tens of hundreds of loops to Mixcraft — a digital audio workstation for Home windows. Soundtrack Loops’ audio is now bundled inside Mixcraft’s workstation.
The corporate additionally simply launched their new model, Array Sounds.
Based on the duo, Array Sounds will convey a further suite of companies to artists. The model’s first product is a VST synthesizer known as Double Scoop — apparently themed with pastels and desserts as its core motif.
The Double Scoop launch comes alongside the launch of an AI-focused platform full of usable loops and sound results. These sounds will probably be pre-cleared to be used by machine studying and AI builders to coach AI music creation software program — with out infringing on copyrights.
If a producer or artist regarded below the hood of their music at this time, there’s a excessive probability they’ll discover a loop from considered one of Soundtrack Loops’ 300+ sound packs.
The corporate presently supplies a number of codecs to go well with creators, producers, and app builders, with their catalog containing 70,000+ loops, or wav information — appropriate throughout all DAWs.
The duo behind Soundtrack Loops has made an unbelievable entrepreneurial journey — from clipping audio for loops to constructing an organization that’s trusted by mega-giants in music tech. Earlier than Soundtrack Loops, Donnelly additionally based Peace Love Productions in 2001. Collectively, the duo says they’ve provided ‘slinging loops and sound design for the reason that very early 2000s.’
Based on Yost, considered one of their most important firm targets stays fundraising and charity work — giving again to the group.
Soundtrack Loops can be an integral a part of the ‘Sonic Playground’ set up on the Grammy Museum in LA. Hip Hop America: The Mixtape Exhibit is a fiftieth anniversary celebration of hip hop that launched on October seventh, 2023, and can run by means of September 4th, 2024.
As a part of the exhibit, attendees on the Grammy Museum will be capable to expertise loops and samples by Soundtrack Loops. “We loaded up 4 iPads with 42 loops on every utilizing Ampify’s Launchpad app. We selected iPads and Launchpad as a result of it simply appeared like the best answer for our wants,” Donnelly mentioned, including, “Individuals can select from Increase Bap, Outdated College, Lure, and G Funk. They’ll combine and match loops to create their very own devices on the fly proper there within the Sonic Playground and we expect that’s manner cool.”