Musical screen gems from Screen Archives Entertainment

I’m convinced each and every day that Oasis clients do the best work in our industry.  Of course I’m tickled pink when Oasis clients get signed to major labels or have their music featured on network TV

Ingrid Michaelson • Keep Breathing •  Grey’s Anatomy

but as often as not we’re working in what’s called “the long tail”–in genres, niches that the mainstream may not even have considered. That is often where you’ll find the Oasis family creating great stuff and thriving.

In that spirit, I want to briefly shine a spotlight on a unique Oasis client and the work it does, which just blows me away.

Screen Archives Entertainment (SAE) is one of the largest distributors of soundtracks and movie music in the world. Just as fascinating, SAE produces exhaustively restored film music recordings under its own label, working with major studios, composer estates, and universities to preserve music that would otherwise be lost to deteriorating celluloid.

The seed of the company sprouted when entrepreneur Craig Spaulding opened a retail store with a sideline in eclectic music LPs. Spaulding cultivated soundtrack contacts across the globe and soon became known throughout the U.S. as the place to go for obscure and rare scores.

He sold the store, but kept SAE as a conduit for preserving rare recordings, focusing on pre-1960 Golden Age films with cherished soundtracks. Universities and studios soon came calling for Spaulding expertise in creating restorations that captured the excitement of each project — from the inclusion of the composer’s own personal notes to the finest mastering of the music, to the effective marketing of the final product.

Today SAE has contracts with composers, their estates or heirs, and major record labels to for these lovingly produced soundtracks for collectors, released in limited quantities.

The lure of these recordings is intriguing.  Even if you’re not formally a student or collector of this work, it is transformative to hear these soundtracks as you go about your formerly mundane daily life. Nothing, for example, makes a morning commute more triumphal than hearing one of these classic soundtracks surround you on your ride.  Just don’t be tempted to jump the gap if you see a drawbridge is going up–no matter how the music swells, I still suspect that only works in the movies, folks.

Juno film coup by Oasis client: How it came to pass

Have I got a story for you! It’s about an independent (extremely) musician I’ve worked with forever here at Oasis and how his song “All I Want is You” came to be the centerpiece of the opening sequence of the movie Juno (the extended, hand-animated sequence where she’s walking along and drinking SunnyD).

He’s a singer-songwriter named Barry Louis Polisar. He is a very, very nice guy. More to the point, he’s a great example of someone who doesn’t wait for the world to give him a lucky break in the clichéd “I’m going to be a rock-star someday” style. Instead, he shows up for every gig on time, he tracks down every lead. He self-publishes. He performs at schools and libraries all the way from his hometown (near Washington, DC) to Fairbanks, Alaska. He really, truly, keeps himself open for opportunity to come his way. And it does.

Now, after a lot of years in the business he is suddenly, and on an impressive scale (the Juno soundtrack has sold 600,000 copies in the first 3 months alone) truly an “overnight” success. I call his story:

Be Open to Possibilities

–OR–

How one Oasis client got a killer break because of his great attitude and our Tools of Promotion.

Here’s how it happened:

Barry manufactured several CD titles in the Micah-running-things-out-of-his-basement days of Oasis. For each title he qualified, like all Oasis clients, for our Tools of Promotion program: radio broadcast promotion, Brick & Mortar distribution, and more. But he was such an early client of Oasis, we hadn’t added the iTunes/online component of the program yet.

When we did, and he heard about it, he sent us a nice note asking if he could get certificates for all his titles retroactively – the hand-embossed pieces of paper that, back then, we would have required to get into the online part of our program.

Now a lot of people would just chalk their timing up to bad luck, and assume a company, even Oasis, would leave them in the lurch. But because Barry had faith and wrote us such a nice note, I went to the mailroom

(AKA, my living room), got out the embosser, and hand-made five certificates for Barry and put them in the mail.

Fast-forward 7 years… Jason Reitman, the director of the movie Juno, is trolling through iTunes, where Barry is featured, thanks to those retroactive Oasis Tools of Promotion certificates. Reitman mis-types the title of a song he thinks he wants for the film and hears Barry’s song instead.

He emails Barry and asks if he can use it for the film. One hit movie, 600,000 soundtrack copies, and a flood of worldwide licensing requests later, and there’s your happy ending to this very nifty story.

Micah Solomon
President and Founder
Oasis Disc Manufacturing

P.S. Want to get your music in the Oasis Tools of Promotion? It’s included, at no extra charge, when you manufacture CDs with Oasis! Click here to receive complete information – plus you’ll get ten new tips on thriving in the music business and our brand-new catalog.