Last fall, New York commercial audio house JSM hired John Forté, a mainstream rap artist formerly with The Fugees, to rhyme for spots - after he was caught with two suitcases full of liquid cocaine in Texas worth an estimated $1.5 million US.

"John was recommended to me by a former employee as someone I should check out. I gave him a listen and was just blown away," says Joel Simon, JSM president and executive producer, a man who was willing to take a risk on new talent.

After special arrangements were made with his parole officer, Forté wrote for Twix (via Grey, NY) and Kodak (for Olgilvy, NY) among others, before Simon brought up the possibility of recording a full-length album about his trouble with the law. I, John was released in May and went on to earn critical acclaim from reviewers around the country. "Trouble Again" featuring UK trip-hop pioneer Tricky, has already been licensed to Dark Angel and Forté continues to write for spots.

Simon "signed" Forté in a joint venture with Transparent Music, a record label in the same building. JSM invested facility time, production and spending money, and offered Forté the opportunity to work on spots while recording under a separate employment arrangement. With producer and executive producer credits on the album, JSM could potentially earn a lot of royalties but it's still a risk. "All this does is enhance our advertising creative," says Simon.

He's echoing a sentiment felt by many in the commercial audio biz. As track licensing gets more and more popular, audio spot shops need some claim to authenticity to compete with mainstream music publishers. And if recording and producing an album for another label isn't instantly valuable, having a published musician at the ready for spot work is.

Minneapolis audio house In the Groove has the same idea. They're looking at business opportunities with their new publishing company, Giant Client.

"It's just been brutal for the ad world," says Darren Drew, who founded In the Groove with partner Brian Reidinger. "We decided that what we do is music. That's our strength and we're going to explore all avenues."

Last October they needed an authentic hip-hop sound for the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) basketball series spots for Fox Sports Net. They called up Froggdogg, an alumni of George Clinton's P-Funk All Stars and a rapper on Eminem's Slim Shady who had fortuitously inquired about renting studio space a few months earlier. He rhymed for the campaign and has since been recording his own music when not working on spots. He's attracted three other Detroit rap artists ready to bring remix jobs to In the Groove.

A mid-western major label rep has already expressed some interest in signing Froggdogg and Drew expects to get some of the return by controlling the income stream through Giant Client. He points to the fact that a producer on the now infamous track "Who Let the Dogs Out" with just one percentage point of royalties would get a nice check every two weeks. In the meantime, his shop has a new level of composer on call.

"We got a call from St. Louis and somebody says we need some authentic hip-hop, not somebody trying to do it, but somebody who lives it. So, I called the agency and said, 'Well, one of our guys is in jail today.' These are the kind of guys that live it!"

That's the kind of authenticity you can't buy. Or can you?

Composer Paul Robb, who spearheads the Santa Monica operations of bicoastal music shop Face the Music, has a slightly different business model for his venture into the recording business. Two years ago the company hired former Virgin exec Natasha Ristic to run Bleep, an arm's length record label owned by Face the Music. Robb acts as creative director for the label and is also a signed artist under his techno nom d'artiste, Bitcrusher.

"We had to be careful about how we linked the two because there is still a certain stigma towards ad music and regular music, so we're just calling it a creative association," says Robb.

The announcement of the new label was carefully planned to be an understated affair. Face the Music sent a compilation CD of exclusively licensed tracks from Bleep artists (principally Paul Robb himself, under various pseudonyms and project monikers) to commercial editors all over the country.

"What we try to do with Bleep is exactly what other music houses didn't do. Other shops try to start their own in-house record label. It's almost like you're doomed to fail when you do that."

Business models like these are offering musicians new opportunities to eschew the traditional starving artist role while recording albums. And while some might say that commissioned music doesn't have soul, they'd be wise to remember that Mozart worked on commission, and the Requiem was certainly no flop.

Webfiles:
JSM> http://www.jsmmusic.com
In the Groove> http://www.itgmusic.com
Face the Music> http://www.facethemusic.com