Evan Buist of Melodie: Your Startup's Secret Weapon? Building Relationships

Evan Buist is the founder and CEO of Melodie Music, a copyright-safe music licensing platform and publisher. Evan initially began his career working as an audio engineer. However, he found the music licensing industry to be difficult and confusing and created a platform to help bridge the gap between music artists and the entities that purchase the rights to their music. After some pivots as well as trial and error Melodie was created. The music licensing platform and publisher continues to grow and has worked with industry titans such as National Geographic, Fox Sports, and Nickelodeon.

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Episode Notes 

Evan’s background in music and how his previous company sparked his desire to create Melodie Music [0:20]

Music licensing is an archaic industry and Melodie works to create something intuitive and beneficial to musicians and content creators alike [5:35]

How to fundraise — Evan’s journey from Bootstrapping to leading a $400,000+ seed round of funding [6:30]

How to find talent and maintain content quality, Melodie’s approach to partnering with their platform’s artists [9:55]

Analyzing sunk costs, observing the changing market, and chasing new opportunities to pivot from one company to another [16:25]

Matching customer needs with pricing structure to provide a better product-market fit [18:00]

Meoldie’s use of an AI search tool that helps users search the Melodie catalog to find Melodie tracks to fit their need  [21:00]

Hiring the best and creating a network without a tremendous amount of resources [24:22]

The value accelerator programs offer for finding feedback and scaling [26:45]

Know your customers — an important tip for beginners [30:12]

Simplifying copyright law, navigating international laws, and various regulations [33:48]

Building relationships in order to market and grow a client base [41:00]

Be everywhere and talk to everyone — Evan’s advice for building relationships [46:01]

Melodie’s future and their goals to scale the business [50:20]

Evan’s advice to entrepreneurs: do your research and get advice from industry insiders [57:01]

Interested in high quality, authentic music for your content? Check out Melodie [58:35]