How Head Bitch Music Uses DISCO To Organize Tracks, Save Time, And Focus On Scaling Up
Based in Los Angeles, Head Bitch Music is an artist-built multi-service creative company offering fellow artists everything from studio time to production and mixing/mastering services. In addition to creating custom music, HBM also offers a boutique digital distribution service and music licensing and publishing services.
“The name ‘Head Bitch Music’ came out of being a young woman in the music industry,” HBM President Jessie Vaughn tells DISCO. “I was working with a lot of male producers. I’d bring in music projects all the time and then kind of get cut out of things. If I really advocated for myself, I would be labeled a bitch instead of a good businesswoman. So I thought, if you're going to call me a bitch, you're going to have to write your checks out to ‘Head Bitch Music’ moving forward.”
DISCO spoke to Jessie about the many ways she and the team use DISCO, including creating customized DISCO tutorials for new HBM employees, studying clients’ habits using assigned URLs, and using Instant Instrumentals in the hip-hop space. Jessie also lays out how DISCO has helped save HBM time — resulting in continuous sales success.
For instance, by optimizing HBM’s catalog track metadata, Jessie literally saves time — thereby clearing out space to meet her quarterly business goals. “I definitely have worked at other companies that did not have a source of truth,” Jessie says, referring to DISCO’s one-stop track-organizational platform, which everyone at HBM can access and refer to as they go about their day(s). “They were not utilizing DISCO to the best of its ability. Therefore you're missing out on money and your KPIs. It's hard to scale if you do not clean up your catalog and the rights that you control.”
Adopting a front-facing DISCO Catalog
HBM currently uses a front-facing DISCO Catalog on their website, which allows other DISCO users to browse the music they represent.
“I use it as an additional sales tool,” Jessie explains. “Ours is guarded, meaning like you have to have a DISCO and be approved by us in order to have access, but we have a discoverable Catalog for all music supervisors within their DISCO.”
She continues: “I try to do mood playlists, we have our featured artists… It is something that you have to consistently keep up with, but I find it to be so helpful. I had a supervisor come to me, and they were looking for some songs in a certain category. I sent them a playlist along with our front-facing DISCO in case they wanted to do a search on their own. They actually pulled a song that I didn't send, and that was the song they ended up licensing.
“I definitely feel like it's a no brainer. If you are using DISCO as your source of truth, a front-facing Catalog should be ready to go. Nothing's ever going to be perfect with any catalog management system, but understanding and identifying how you want to utilize the front-facing DISCO is really important for us.”
“DISCO is our source of truth”
Of using DISCO as a centralized platform across teams at HBM, Jessie continues: “A lot of time at companies, there are all these different sheets and manuals and applications that so many different departments are using because it makes sense for their workflow. But it's really important to identify the source of truth, meaning, if you could only look one place to fact check information, where is that information going to live? For us at HBM, DISCO is our source of truth.”
Because DISCO makes it easy to add metadata to tracks (songwriter information and publisher contacts), which anyone at your company can see and/or search, Jessie says she never has to leave the platform when pitching a song for sync. “We really make sure that all the metadata is very specific in all the songs that we have signed,” she says. “All the publishing information is there for me. I can copy and paste it really easily into an email, and then I can go and check those contract points easily. That's what I mean by ‘source of truth.’”
“I love assigning DISCO URLs to playlists”
As a self-professed data obsessive, Jessie says she loves how assigning unique URLs to playlists helps with HBM’s analytics. “I love assigning URLs to playlists. It's so helpful for analytics, data findings, and being able to articulate your success rate with your employer,” she says. “I'm really obsessed with data because I want to prove why I'm there.”
She goes on to say that she assigns a unique URL to nearly every playlist that she sends out to clients. “That way I can see, ‘Oh, my buddy Justin downloaded it.’ Understanding [analytics] has helped me work more efficiently, because if I can see that they aren’t opening a playlist numerous times, maybe I shouldn't be working on that anymore.”
DISCO Instant Instrumentals can come in handy in a pinch
DISCO’s Instant Instrumentals lets you create AI-assisted instrumental versions of tracks without vocals — a feature Jessie says is really helpful when her artists are traveling and not immediately available to send her an isolated track.
“Sometimes artists don't always send everything,” she tells DISCO. “Or maybe someone sent me something as a one-off, and now they're on vacation in Hawaii and they don't have their hard drive with them. Or sometimes older songs sometimes won't have an instrumental. I've experienced every single situation.
“Instant instrumentals come in handy when an instrumental is required for pitch, and you can create an instant instrumental when you're in a bind. I try to use it for a lot of hip-hop artists that we represent.”
“We absolutely adore Track Nesting because all of the files are in one song”
DISCO’s Nesting feature lets you group Versions of Tracks together so they appear under a single Main Track. It’s a great way to stay organized, and it’s something Jessie says HBM does all the time. “We nest all of our songs,” she says.
“We absolutely adore nesting because all of the files are in one song. For example, you've got your main file and then you can nest the instrumental and all the stems. It's just all together.”
Jessie adds: “The biggest tip I can give anyone who is nesting is to make sure that you're tagging all of the files individually before you nest your track, or else you're going to have to copy track information to your other file. Just make sure that you're working smarter, not harder.”
Creating DISCO tutorials: ‘Everything You Need to Know About DISCO’”
DISCO is such a critical tool within HBM, Jessie actually created a HBM X DISCO intro guide for all of the new employees coming in.
“I created this DISCO manual of, like, ‘Everything You Need to Know About DISCO,’” Jessie says, adding how her tutorials covered catalog management and data transfers. She has even been hired as a consultant to overhaul DISCOs at other companies.
“I have used this manual and brought it to every single company I have ever worked at, including my own,” she adds. “I have been able to implement this strategy everywhere that I go. I just would be so lost without it. I really do believe that if I did not go to the School of DISCO, I wouldn't have taken the initiative to do this.”
“We are obsessed with DISCO Inboxes”
DISCO Inboxes lets you upload Tracks and Playlists directly in your account without having to download and re-upload from another source. Plus, each Inbox has its own upload URL that can be shared with anyone, regardless of whether they also use DISCO.
“We are obsessed with DISCO Inboxes,” Jessie says. “We not only use them for our onboarding – for both our label side and our sync side – we also utilize them for custom music projects. So if I'm working with a network or a toy company, or whatever custom music client I have at the time, we actually create a specific Inbox just for that custom project that we send to our creatives.”
Jessie continues: “When they're sending us deliverables or demos, because we consistently change files out. I can just check that inbox and know that all the files are there and ready to go.”
Want to give DISCO a try? Start your free trial, click here.
DISCO. Where Music, Lives, Works and Moves.
DISCO exists to make music management simpler. We streamline the way music is shared, organized, and discovered so that business can move faster — and people can spend less time jumping between mismatched softwares and endlessly downloading and uploading files.
Built in 2016 by people who know the music industry firsthand, DISCO is a trusted ecosystem where labels, sync reps, supervisors, rights holders, artists and brands work more efficiently and seamlessly together. We believe in lifting the music industry up by giving it the tools it truly needs, all in one place. Learn more at disco.ac
