How Neophonic uses DISCO to make more time for creativity
Award-winning music supervision firm Neophonic has created unique soundtracks for hundreds of films, thousands of TV episodes, ads, promos, video games, and even amusement park thrill rides. They’re the go-to music supervision firm for HBO and have worked on Game of Thrones, Westworld, Veep, American Horror Story, The Newsroom, and Pose. Plus, films such as Bombshell, Bessie, and Eat Pray Love.
Evyen Klean founded Neophonic in 1980 and continues to lead a team of seven, many of whom have been with the company for a long time. Evyen and music coordinator Alex Stacey shared how DISCO has streamlined collaboration and saved them loads of time, allowing them to focus on the creative aspects of their jobs and life itself.
A disjointed system doesn’t work for collaboration
Neophonic’s old, pre-DISCO approach to managing and organizing files required the following steps:
- Receive WeTransfer link
- Click it
- Download the file
- Pull it up in Finder
- Drag it into their local file server
- Wait for it to upload
- Open it on iTunes to play it
- Organize it in iTunes
When it came to collaboration, different team members added files from different publishers and manually inputted the metadata. Then they implemented an arcane color-coding system to indicate who liked what songs. The team would listen to tracks together in Evyen’s office. He admitted, “It became incredibly confusing and difficult.” When sending files to clients, they’d drag and drop them into Box to create a link that would be emailed. Sound familiar?
“First and foremost, DISCO has organized all of our music in one place. Before, we kept music on the server and on iTunes. Everything was disjointed.”
Evyen Klean
Simplifying Neophonic’s process with DISCO
Their system worked until it didn’t. Once they were aware of a better solution, they knew they needed to upgrade. Evyen shared, “First and foremost, DISCO has organized all of our music in one place. Before, we kept music on the server and on iTunes. Everything was disjointed. I’d have to ask Alex for a track I didn’t have and vice versa.”
He continued, “Receiving all our music into one database without having to worry about file formats, servers, or hard drives is huge. The people servicing music to us can put it straight into our DISCO with the pertinent metadata. It’s super simple and saves a lot of time.”
Alex added, “So many other companies also having DISCO is so helpful. I’d say 65–70% of the people I work with are on there. If not, they’re familiar with it. All of us being on one platform allows us to move much quicker. It eliminates a lot of extra steps and waiting for stuff to download.” He added, “Being able to search among every audio file that Neophonic has received and uploaded made our lives a lot easier.”
Then there’s the time saved on ingestion. Alex said, “I’d spend 1.5 hours getting all the music ingested into our system and then another 20 minutes sifting through and picking out the best one. DISCO has freed up a lot of time to be creative and not have to worry about the logistical part of it.”
From the client experience perspective, Evyen shared, “I think they appreciate that it’s consistent and they don’t have to do anything other than click and either listen or download; they don’t have to have Box.”
Neophonic’s favorite DISCO features
Playlists: “You can make a playlist for a track to live in forever and access it without going back to an old email. You can edit it for round two without screwing up the first playlist and track those changes.” — Evyen
Inbox Upload Link: “The inbox link was a real game-changer. It was something I didn’t realize I needed but after having it, I couldn’t imagine going back. Only needing one link to send a brief to 10 different companies without worrying about tracking emails is amazing. With DISCO, we can tell publishers to simply click this link and drag and drop the audio files in there. I could tell that it was designed by people who know what we do because receiving music from a bunch of different people is such a big part of our daily rhythm.” — Alex
Tagging & searching: “Alex and I were working on a Muhammad Ali and found tons of one-off great sixties music, instrumentals, and jazz, funky stuff — one-stop stuff from defunct labels. We organized those tracks with tags so we can search for that stuff. It’s very eclectic but all I have to do is search for those tags rather than remember the project, go to the server, find that project, then try to find the supplier that sent us that track and see what my color code was four years ago.” — Evyen
Mobile app: “Sometimes I listen to music on my phone [on the DISCO app] in the car. That way, if a director is calling me up, I can quickly get to and reference something and listen to it without going back to the email that I sent them or pulling up DISCO on my computer.” — Evyen
How Neophonic is using DISCO Catalogs as an archive
Neophonic is using DISCO Catalogs to keep a log of every film and TV score they’ve worked on. That way, HBO’s promo department can access anything they need without asking the music editor for it. In the Catalog, they can see that a cue is 100% owned by HBO and use it for promo.
Evyen said, “We’re trying to set the table for efficiencies across the different departments that utilize music at HBO. That’s the job of the DISCO Catalogs as we see it. It’s cool that we can have the metadata and publishing information in there. It makes it really nice and easy for people to get to. A file can have the same name as the cue number and it can all be in order so they can see the parallel to the cue sheet.”
Once you came out with demos and really showed us how easy it was, I got it. Plus, basically, everybody came into my office and said we’re using this.”
Evyen Klean
What Neophonic’s transition to DISCO was like
Evyen shared, “I noticed it when several people started sending me DISCO links. Then my team urged me to consider it. At first, I felt like we didn’t need another thing. Once you came out with demos and really showed us how easy it was, I got it. Plus, basically, everybody came into my office and said we’re using this.” He added, “I realized how wicked it is when I realized I could simply go in and listen at my leisure without all of those extra steps.”
When they first tried DISCO, they gave everyone a week to poke around. They crowdsourced any stress points and worked them out together. Then they made a list of the things they couldn’t figure out, and that’s where DISCO’s team came in. Alex reflected, “Those meetings were really helpful for us. I think it was definitely a process because everyone was so used to working a certain way. Getting all of us unified had its challenges but was definitely worth it in the long run or even the short run.”
Evyen added, “Once it became second nature, it was great. The fact that we could come to you and say ‘this is the way we think’ and even though not many people worked that way, you were accommodating and helped customize our system and I appreciate that a lot. I mean, that’s a big driver in our enthusiasm for the product.”
He continued, “We work on a lot of projects at one time, we might be doing 40 or 50 different things. Every time we have a small obstacle, you say ‘okay, let’s figure it out. We’ll get it fixed.’ That kind of understanding is important for us to keep things efficient. With some products, it starts to become cumbersome the more features you add, but with DISCO, you seem to only add features that make it easier to work. And I think that’s really key.”
Adapting to music formats through the decades
We asked Evyen what it’s been like adapting to all the different formats for music listening over the decades. He said, “When we moved offices from Santa Monica to Culver City, there was an intervention. They all came in my office and said, we are not moving those 25,000 CDs to the new office. I’m all about the tactile and reading the liner notes, but I’ve grown up. I’m okay with just getting the audio of something. I’ll save my bottle of wine and music fan moments for my record player at home. I still collect vinyl for personal enjoyment.”
He further reflected, “Once upon a time, if we used a piece of music, we might get a reel to reel to send over to the stage to dub over. If it was stems, it’d be on a DA88. CDs did a good job of making things easier because they were so small. Digital downloading was another wave of convenience. Now it’s all streaming. I don’t know where you can go from there other than an implant. DISCO is providing a seamless format that everybody can participate in without eliminating the notion of Spotify or SoundCloud or something else.”
