Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to What Up Pitches. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

What Up, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

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. By consistently producing high-quality music that reflects our diverse backgrounds and experiences, we set a precedent for inclusivity and equity in music production. We’re leading by example, which is so important, especially with women music producers still being far outnumbered by men. 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.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Yes, definitely! What Up Pitches is a multi-cultural, women owned music production house and boutique music licensing agency based in L.A. and Chicago. We do custom work and curate a catalog of mostly one-stop songs by indie artists from around the world. We’re all professional musicians ourselves, bringing different skills to the table, which has definitely been an asset for our ability to create quality, genre-bending custom work quickly.

Celia Rose is a folk-rock, singer-songwriter and mother of three who has performed in places as varied as Haiti and Rwanda. She 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 for ABC, ads, movies and other shows. She’s an incredible vocalist and has sung for world-renowned Jazz artist Stanley Clarke’s Grammy nominated album. Thanks to that connection, we now get to rep part of Stanley’s Clarke’s catalog on an exclusive basis!

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. Since we’re artists ourselves, we offer artist friendly deals.

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. This way our artists can learn how to create music that we can safely license to our clients and they can learn how to protect their work and collect backend monies owed to them.

We are 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!

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

We kept seeing each other at sync licensing events in L.A., which led to co-writes and collaborations. Eventually we realized we worked together really well and would be stronger as a team, so we decided to join forces!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

During the pandemic we started hosting Listening Fiestas and panels with music supervisors on Zoom; we were surprised at how well attended they were and realized that everyone was really missing the community of in-person events. We started our “What Up Pitches” Facebook Group as a place to build that community and we now have a vibrant and supportive group of 5000+ and growing. We love seeing collaborations and co-writes develop there, and invite everyone reading to join us there at https://www.facebook.com/groups/whatuppitches/. We still host free Listening Fiestas and panels throughout the year, and you can sign up to our mailing list at whatuppitches.com to hear about the next one!

Our advice would be to share your expertise at something that you care about, and that will help you to find your people on social media.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.whatuppitches.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatuppitches
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/whatuppitches
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whatuppitches/
• Twitter: @whatuppitches

Image Credits

@thebigpigstudio (Feature image called “WUP Team (brick wall)

Amanda Prorak (Team pic at Step & Repeat)

What Up Pitches