In 2013 we became frustrated by the inherent challenges that occur between musicians and non-musicians when communicating about music. The conversation between a composer and a creative media professional is typified by a clash of vocabulary that makes briefing composers a vague and sometimes frustrating process – for both parties.
We wanted to fix that and Filmstro was born!
Music technology – specifically tools for music producers and composers – had been steadily evolving with additional time-saving features built in to many plugins and software instruments.
One of these was a common feature based on an XY pad that would allow for the manipulation of sound across 2 variables (the X and Y axis).
Taking this idea to its logical conclusion we wondered if it would be possible to manipulate an entire piece of music and separate it into its constituent parts so that we could accurately label each part with a new language for music; thereby allowing a conversation to take place that would help non-musicians describe music, by using art-terminology instead of music terminology.
We wanted non-musicians to be able to ‘see’ music.
When we started speaking to producers, directors, agency creatives and other professionals, it quickly became apparent that we’d found something that solved filmmakers’ problems.
We designed the very first piece of technology to work on iOS – specifically on iPad – and it was a fantastic experience as one could move all three sliders simultaneously and have a lot of fun and control over the music.
However, at the time, there were very clear limits of what kind of editing functionality we could offer for iOS (and web audio was in its infancy) so we decided to build the product for more powerful desktop devices.
We raised some seed money and dedicated 2015 to building Filmstro V1 with with a core team of three people.
In 2016 we raised some more money, took on proper premises, hired a team and started telling the world about Filmstro!
At launch we were also the first stock audio provider to offer content with a subscription model; something that has now been adopted industry-wide.
Since launch we’ve been honoured to help hundreds of thousands of content creators tell their story with music. We’ve also had the pleasure of working with some wonderful partners over the last several years, including iris nation, Adobe, Apple, Unity, Unreal, Cinema5D, FilmRiot and many others.
We’ve created a version of our software as a plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro and are excited about future collaborations with game-engines, or other NLEs like Davinci Resolve.
Join me to become part of the journey!
