Ireland-based startup plans move to Springfield

Mylene Besancon handles marketing for Ireland-based SongCat LLC.

A music production company started in Ireland – with founders from Germany and France – is in the process of making Springfield its base of operations.

Via SongCat LLC, which was registered in March as based in Springfield, the online producers hope to be fully operational in the Queen City next year.

Launched last August near Dublin, by couple Chris Erhardt and Mylene Besancon, their intention always was to bring the company to America. The question was where.

Delaware, Silicon Valley and Nashville, Tenn., were considered, but Springfield stood out.

“The startup community seemed strong with accelerators in the area, some of which we reached out to already. Also, Branson is known for the shows and music so, culturally, a music-related business model fits right in the area,” said the German-born Erhardt.

In a phone interview while working from Spain’s Canary Islands, Erhardt said the company plans to launch its local studio and headquarters by next summer or fall.

“We are a bit spread out right now. We have contracted with a few studios in the U.S., so we could work on a remote-session basis,” he said.

“But the long-term goal is that we have a complete studio set up in Springfield.”

The goal is to establish contracted studios around the country for artists to record and send their songs to the central studio in the Queen City.

Erhardt became familiar with the Springfield area during his senior year in high school as a German exchange student living in northwest Arkansas, near Fayetteville.

“I loved my year in the Ozarks, to be honest. I went to Springfield a few times because that’s what people in Arkansas do for fun,” he said with a laugh. “Our customers are 90 percent American. We always planned to go to the states at some stage. The U.S. is the biggest music market. Maybe Asia, Japan and Korea are at a similar level, but we don’t speak Japanese.”

Erhardt, a 10-year music producer who has worked on songs for Garth Brooks and Bret Michaels through SongCat, according to ChrisErhardt.com, developed a love for production in Texas, where he attended college. Returning to Germany, he worked as a songwriter and producer for Monika Ivkic, who finished third in the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest in Ireland, then relocated to Dublin to produce radio ads. Besancon used her MBA in marketing from Dublin Business School to help manage artists in Europe before connecting with Erhardt. She now manages SongCat’s marketing and public relations.

“Last year, we decided there had to be a simpler and cheaper way for songwriters to produce quality music without breaking the bank,” he said.

“We talked to a few musicians that we’ve worked with for years and years, and we basically put up a team of musicians we can trust and don’t charge a leg and an arm for professional work.”

On the team is Grammy Award-winning engineer Miles Walker, who has worked with such artists as Beyonce, Ne-Yo, Rihanna, Wiz Khalifa and Depeche Mode.

Walker, who is based in Atlanta, has signed on to mix records for clients seeking professional-level engineering.

Through the first year, Erhardt said the company produced about 300 orders, which typically means one song or a single session. SongCat offers basic demos with vocals for $200 to a full production with a session artist for $300.  

Because it’s an online production company, location can be irrelevant. For example, Erhardt said a performer might record vocals in their local studio and then send a file to SongCat for finishing touches.

“They can send us the raw vocals, and we can do the mixing and mastering for them. They are then free to just release it or if they have a label deal, they can release it to their label,” he said, adding nonperforming songwriters are clients, too. “They can come to us with an idea for a song. They might have the lyrics, the chord progression of the song and a rough melody that they sing into their iPhone or whatever. They come to us with that and ask us to make a full production out of it.

“They would never release that song on iTunes because they’re not performing artists, but they could shop that song to publishers or for film placement or TV placement. If it’s placed, a performing artist would take over that song.”

One artist, he said, hired SongCat in January with an idea for a song in the gospel-pop genre.

“We did exactly that, and she shopped the song. A label in the U.K. liked the song, liked the lyrics and melody and everything, but the artist it was shooting for was into electro-house. So, they basically turned it into an electro-house song,” Erhardt said. “It was nothing like what we produced, but it got enough attention to place the song.”

Erhardt estimates launching in Springfield could cost between $50,000 and $100,000.

Brian Kincaid, director of business incubator The eFactory, said he hadn’t yet been in contact with SongCat owners.

“That being said, we stand ready and willing to assist in any way we can,” Kincaid said via email.

Currently, Erhardt and Besancon primarily work out of the Canary Islands but utilize a network of studios. Erhardt said they are trying to launch the business in  the German and French markets before they move permanently “cross the pond.”

Besancon has yet to visit Springfield.

“Having moved from France to the U.K. to Ireland to Spain and soon the U.S., each move brought me new experiences and made me easy to adapt to new surroundings and keep an open mind, which benefits the company greatly,” she said via email. “Chris can talk all day long about how nice the Ozarks is, especially Springfield, in terms of art and culture, which fuels my motivation for this new adventure.”

Besancon plans to get her first look at Springfield later this year when they visit Erhardt’s former host family in Lincoln, Ark.

“She trusts me that it’s nice,” he said.