Meet What Up Pitches | Music Licensing Company and Music Production House

We had the good fortune of connecting with What Up Pitches and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi What Up, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
We’re all from different places and have very different backgrounds! Here’s the breakdown…

Celia Rose is a folk-rock, singer-songwriter and mother of three, originally from Alabama, but currently based in Chicago. She studied Elementary Education and French and has taught songwriting to people of all ages. She’s performed in places as varied as Haiti and Rwanda, has toured Africa as a Cultural Ambassador and has written songs for NYTimes bestselling books, TV shows, movies, ads and promos, including a theme song for the Kraft Heinz campaign “Let’s Make Life Delicious”, a theme song for the TV show “Call Me Kat” on Fox and a recent placement of her song “Gimme More” on an MGM+ promo.

Marie is originally from Costa Rica and writes and sings in both Spanish and English. Her placements include promos, ads, movies and TV shows (Netflix, Hulu, HBO MAX, ABC, Amazon Prime, VH1, MTV, BET, and more) . She’s an incredible vocalist, session artist, and has sung for world-renowned Jazz artist Stanley Clarke’s Grammy nominated album.

Pei Pei is a film and TV composer and classically trained pianist originally from Southeast Asia. With a composing background of over 25 years, she has scored Emmy nominated shows and feature films. She’s worked on numerous custom projects and main titles with styles ranging from dance pop to dark and dramatic, for clients including NBC, Fox, and Discovery. She mixes promos and trailers for clients such as HBO, IMAX and Lionsgate. She was also a professional slime maker and was commissioned to write the theme song and a custom EP for the Sloomoo interactive slime experience with 5 locations across the US.

These skills along with our diverse backgrounds and experiences have helped us to curate and build up our unique catalog of songs to pitch for sync licensing opportunities. In addition to working as a music production house and licensing agency, we offer educational events (both online and in person) to our community of indie artists, music producers and artist managers such as our music licensing conference WUP It Up. Celia and Marie’s backgrounds as educators have helped when it comes to planning and executing these courses. Pei Pei’s experience as a composer, music producer and mixer, Celia’s experience as a songwriter and Marie’s experience as a vocalist has allowed us to help our artists to improve their work so we’re able to sign and pitch their songs.

What should our readers know about your business?
What sets us apart from others is that we’re not only a women owned and run organization, but we’re also musicians ourselves who are constantly working hard to improve our own personal skills as composers, mixing engineers, singers, and songwriters. There are other music agencies run by women and there are music agencies with women producers on staff, but we don’t know of many who are doing both.

Another way we see ourselves as standing out is through our diverse backgrounds. The three of us have had such different life experiences and this has definitely been an asset to our company. Speaking several different languages and having lived, toured and worked around the world has not only expanded our minds and given us a global perspective which is essential when working in this industry, but it’s also given us access to contacts based internationally.

We got to where we are today by simply not giving up and by continuing to attend events and educate ourselves on the inner workings and changes happening in the music industry. We keep reaching out to new contacts, pitching our catalog, creating new music ourselves and adding new artists to our roster. Every day is another opportunity to show up, stand out and do our best. We got here by not being afraid to ask for help or to put ourselves out there when we were just getting started. There have definitely been challenges, but if you’re there in the room, you can’t be ignored, so honestly, just staying in the game and consistently showing up professionally is how we’ve overcome a lot of the challenges we’ve faced.

We’d love the world to know that we’re artists ourselves and so we offer artist friendly deals. We educate our community because we want them to know how to protect their work and how to provide us and our clients with music that can be properly cleared for placement opportunities. We’re also proud to amplify underrepresented voices (LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, neurodiverse artists, etc.), challenge industry norms (supporting women composers and producers is a major goal!) and advocate for greater inclusivity in general!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Definitely check out Hotel Cafe! Great music by great indie artists!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Music Needs Supervision
https://www.instagram.com/musicneedssupervision/?hl=en

We’d love to give a huge shout out to the folks working behind the Music Needs Supervision movement to unionize for fair treatment and change in the film and TV community. We represent indie artists, but we can’t place their music in shows without the music supervisors who work crazy long hours selecting and clearing the music soundtrack for their shows. They deserve to have the stability that a union provides.

Website: https://www.whatuppitches.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatuppitches

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/67563033/admin/feed/posts/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/whatuppitches

Image Credits
@thebigpigstudio
Amanda Prorak