Most people in the music industry would be happy to have enjoyed the success that Barry Coffing has experienced in just one of the many facets of his career, as a songwriter, producer and singer. He sang, “How To Talk To An Angel,” a former # 1 hit song, in addition to singing, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” for the movie Moulin Rouge, and recording duets with Vonda Shepard for Catwalk and Winnie The Pooh’s Grand Adventure. Coffing’s songs have been covered by artists such as, Randy Travis, Michael McDonald, Cyndi Lauper, Tiffany, The Neville Brothers and Randy Crawford. Coffing has also produced songs for Lee Greenwood, Thelma Houston, Irene Cara, Gary Pucket, Maureen McCormick and Michael McDonald. It was however, when his songs began to appear in movies such as The Brady Bunch Movie, Mystic Pizza, Extremities, The Thin Pink Line and Richie Rich, that the seeds were first sown for his current enterprise as a music supervisor.  Today Barry Coffing is the CEO at Uprising Entertainment and the owner of Music Supervisor.com a highly innovative and very successful company that licenses songs to the film and television industries.  Because Coffing brings the unique perspective of someone who has worked in most facets of the music industry and therefore can appreciate the rewards, disappointments, and in some cases abuse, that artists and songwriters have experienced, in terms of being compensated fairly and in retaining ownership over the rights to their music, Riveting Riffs Magazine requested an interview with him, and asked him to tell us how his company is different. He was refreshingly candid with his comments and remained very accessible as we prepared this article for publication.

 

“Because I have worked on so many shows and things like that, I know both sides (of the music industry). I know what it is like being the composer and wishing that I can (get them to use one of my songs) and I also know what is like to be the supervisor who is looking for a song,” says Coffing.

 

After Coffing and three of his friends tried several avenues to secure positions as film supervisors, without receiving any bites, despite all four of them having extensive experience, “We decided to form a company called Uprising Entertainment. We had a thousand songs ready to go, but with one thousand songs we couldn’t find everything (when needed). We had a lot of problems in terms of finding (the right songs for films), so I built a front end from FileMaker Pro and it was searchable. Then with my partners, I got a little bit of oil money out of Houston and we built what is now Music Supervisor.com.  It is a dual service company. If you are a composer or someone who writes songs, you are able to go in there, list your stuff and then you are done. You don’t have to go in there to see who is looking for this type of music and you don’t have to find out who the supervisor is for (a project), because half the time when you find out, it is too late. You might get the wrong information or you ship the wrong song to the wrong guy. When it comes to music placement in film, everybody will tell you that they are the man. The producer will tell you that they are taking the music. The director will say I’m really involved, and you never really know who in the smoke filled room makes the final call. Obviously the supervisor has a very big input into it. Some of them are so powerful, that they dictate a lot of the stuff,” says Coffing.

 

So how is Music Supervisor.com different? Coffing says, “There is a tracking system that tells you every time that your song came up in a search, every time they have been listened to, every time a MP3 has been downloaded, every time it has been licensed, how much we owe you, and it tells you that your check is on the way.”

 

Coffing continues, “From a music supervisor’s standpoint it is just brilliant, because you can log in during the middle of the night and you can look for the music, download the MP3, try it out with your film, go, ‘Gee I like it,” and do the complete legal contract, (stipulate) the rights that you want, and ask for a price. In the middle of the night you can get it. You can do it on the dub stage at the last minute and be confident that you just made a deal for that song.”

 

The music industry is filled with horror stories of artists who either received bad legal counsel or were naïve and lost their publishing rights, while finding themselves locked into lengthy exclusive agreements with no escape clauses. Those artists will be cheering what appears to be a winning formula that Music Supervisor.com has come up with.