Ty Frankel on Agencies, the Music Business and Being Great
Ty Frankel took an unusual route into the agency world. He started producing hip-hop as a teenager and went on to build a music agency that made music for TV, film, ads and video games. Now he coaches agency owners. In this conversation he explains how licensing royalties work, how he used relentless, personal cold email to win almost every buyer in a tiny market, why systems can wait, and how he made his clients never want to leave.
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Topics covered
- From teenage hip-hop producer to running a music agency
- How the production music licensing business works
- Relentless, personal cold email to a market of 25 to 30 buyers
- Why systems and automation are a later problem
- Where Ty's coaching clients come from
- Retention through ease and real relationships
- Fundamentals over tips and tricks
Key takeaways
- Pick a business where clients will pay. Ty left beat-making for rappers because most of them wouldn't.
- In a small market, be relentless. Ty emailed several people at each company every two or three weeks with new music.
- Write casually, like you're already friends, and make the one ask easy: click the link and listen.
- Don't build systems at zero. Get a proof of concept and consistent results first, then systemize proven processes.
- To get to $10K a month, focus on offer, cold email and sales.
- An email list can be a top lead source. In one week, Ty booked 28 calls from his list of about 4,400.
- Make it extremely easy to work with you, and become real friends with clients. They'll fight for you inside their companies.
Show notes
🎤 From hip-hop beats to a music agency
Ty got into hip-hop at six, when his dad bought him a CD player and a stack of albums. He started producing at 14, and by 16 he'd produced songs for G Herbo and Paul Wall. But he realized almost none of the rappers he worked with wanted to pay for beats, so he switched to producing music for TV and film. Reading Rich Dad Poor Dad at 16 or 17 changed his mindset. He started using other people's time and money, built a team, and grew the agency to $50K a month.
🎬 How music licensing pays
Ty's agency was a music house. Producers, rappers, singers and engineers made modern music for TV, movies, commercials and video games in-house. Ty executive produced everything, often with eight to ten revisions per song. They sold the music to publishers such as Red Bull, Sony, Universal Production Music and Warner Chappell Production Music, who placed it with studios and game companies.
The agency got an upfront fee and then back-end royalties, shared with the musicians. Ty says his most recent royalty check, two weeks before the interview, was for $47,000, and they arrive about every three months. Because the music was so modern, he expects around $200,000 a year in royalties for the next five to ten years, tapering off after that.
📧 Relentless cold email to a tiny market
Ty says the production music business has about 300 to 500 companies, but only 25 to 30 pay anything upfront. His model depended on upfront payment, so he needed to work with nearly all of them. He says he ended up working with about 95% of the companies he wanted.
His approach was to have the best product, then email multiple people at each company every two or three weeks with new music. He kept the emails personalized, nice, casual and friendly, as if they were already friends. He knew that once they listened, the music would sell itself.
⚙️ Systems are a later problem
Michael says he's huge on automation and systems, but he sees beginners obsess over them at zero revenue. Ty agrees. You don't yet know the best process, and you'll probably scrap or heavily change most of what you build. Get a proof of concept, get consistent results with unsystemized processes, then build systems around what's proven.
Michael adds that your first offer probably won't be the one you stick with. He went from social media management lead gen, to Facebook ads for ecommerce, to B2B prospecting.
“all you need to hit 10K a month is offer cold email sales that's it”
Ty Frankel, 8:53
📣 Where the clients come from now
Ty doesn't run an agency now. He shut down the music agency in November 2020, and he wound down his cold email agency after four or five months because of opportunity cost. All his coaching clients come from his personal brand. About two weeks after launching the coaching offer, he shared a rough breakdown for the past week: 28 calls from his email list of about 4,400, seven or eight from Facebook and his Facebook group, and three or four each from Instagram and LinkedIn.
🤝 Make it easy, and make friends
Ty's top goal at the music agency was to make it as easy as possible to work with them. He wrote a handbook for his head of client relationships, with example messages for staying fun and positive, making things easy for clients, and handling tense situations calmly.
He also moved to Los Angeles, where most of his clients were, and spent time with them in person, from lunches to industry parties. Combined with music that was better than the alternatives, that made him irreplaceable. At bureaucratic companies, he says, a client who's also a friend will fight to get you more projects.
“if you make it super super easy to work with you and if you become friends with your clients like true genuine friends they're never going to want to drop you”
Ty Frankel, 14:02
🏆 The bar is low, so nail the fundamentals
Both agree the bar is surprisingly low. Michael shares that many hiring candidates don't show up to interviews and almost none send a thank-you note, so the rare VA who sent a personalized thank-you video got a raise on her offer. His wider observation is that beginners overcomplicate things, people in the middle chase tactics, and the best rely on fundamentals.
“it seems like the top of the top always don't have tips tricks or tactics they have really good fundamentals applied consistently”
Michael Gardiner, 17:17
About Ty Frankel
Ty Frankel coaches agency owners, mostly marketing agencies, on how to get from zero to $10K a month. At the time of recording he had just launched a coaching offer called Zero to 10K Launchpad and was planning a mastermind for agencies aiming at $50 to $100K a month. He also runs a Facebook group, 1M Agency Secrets, and had recently started a YouTube channel.
Ty started producing hip-hop at 14 and produced songs for G Herbo and Paul Wall at 16. He then moved into music for TV and film and built a music agency to over 70 artists, eight employees and $50K a month. He says it won four big industry awards and placed music with clients like Fortnite, NBA 2K, Mercedes-Benz and a Super Bowl broadcast. He left the music business in November 2020 and ran a cold email agency for a few months in early 2021.
Episode links
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