A maxim I hear repeated from entrepreneurs across all industries is "do one thing, and do it really well."
For some, it's a lesson a mentor intervened with early on, and for others, it's a lesson learned the hard way, forcing them to take a step back and rewrite the business model.
Josh Collum is a partner at Sorted Noise, a Nashville-based music start-up that produces music for television, film, and advertising.
For Sorted Noise, a Nashville-based music startup, it was more the latter. Over the past few years, the company has phased out some operations and decided to focus on a single thing, a decision that has positioned the company to enter 2015 primed for growth.
That one thing: making music for pictures, whether that is television, film, advertisements, video games, etc.
As Josh Collum, a partner in Sorted Noise who oversees business development, described it, "Last year is when we really kind of tipped."
After seeing success with his own band by licensing music to television shows, the company decided around 2009 to purposely focus on replicating that, and set out to create a network of music supervisors and artists built around "syncs."
Synchronization (syncs for short) is when a copyright holder licenses out music to be played on television shows, movies or advertisements. For artists, syncs are becoming a more valuable tool as revenue streams from traditional album sales and radio play slow down.
Today, the Sorted Noise network includes executives from networks like ABC Family, The CW, and NBC, and 15 local artists. Collum said the company is on track to double its artist roster this year.
"A lot of shows, networks, films, etc., have done a good job showcasing the music they use and making it easy to find — and [the app] Shazam has helped too — so it's become more tangible for artists to understand," Collum said. "It's not some vague idea."

He added that music schools are beginning to teach classes on music supervision now, so younger artists are aware of the business value syncs can bring.
Sorted Noise describes itself as a creative and licensing team, eschewing both the "label" and "publishing" names, although to be fair, the outfit has elements of both. Syncs aren't new in the music industry, and major labels have entire departments focused on it, but Collum argues that Sorted Noise has two advantages.
First, the company owns the copyright for most of the music it syncs, allowing the process to move more quickly with approvals needed from just one party. Second, he thinks the process of working with Sorted Noise is just a lot more fun.
Because Sorted Noise artists typically create custom music for pictures, the creative process often starts with a meeting between a show's music supervisor, the Sorted Noise team and the artist.
Take for example, a young Sorted Noise artist named Ben Eggebrecht, stage name My Red + Blue, whom Collum and I bumped into while meeting at Crema this week. Eggebrecht already had an EP when he joined Sorted Noise, so the company reps those songs through more traditional licensing agreements, but the real value they can add is through custom sync opportunities. After signing him, Sorted Noise took Eggebrecht to Los Angeles to meet some of the music supervisors they work with, over a series of drinks, lunches and "hang out" sessions. The idea is that supervisors seek out artists, rather than a song, which can lead to repeat business, and for artists to really understand what a show is looking for with music.
"Music supervisors are very creative people," Collum said. "We like to create those personal experiences for them."
Unlike royalty rates, which are set, the value of a sync varies depending on the placement, but it can range from a few thousand dollars to upwards of $100,000 for a high-profile advertisement. Sorted Noise artist Holley Maher made upwards of $250,000 last year, largely through eight well-placed syncs she secured, including one for a Nutella ad valued at around $100,000 alone. On the television side, if your partnered with a show that has a rabid following, like ABC Family's "Pretty Little Liars" for example (which Sorted Noise works with), it can lead to huge exposure for an artists, as the music is often featured on Web and social media pushes.
Not every artist wants to be a sync artist, or for that matter, will be a successful one, and the Sorted Noise team has developed a blueprint of sorts for identifying a good sync artist. Interestingly, country artists, the genre Nashville is known best for, don't typically make good sync artists, Collum said.
"Country writing is so specific, it's so geared toward story-telling, that it doesn't always work for syncs," Collum said. "For a sync to work, music has to support it and the lyrics have to write around the scene. You can't get super specific around towns or places."
The company also has plans to explore some international deals this year. Collum argues that operating globally is a big opportunity for Nashville's music industry ( read more on that here).