HISTORY
The Origin: A Belief & a Church
Assemble Sound was founded in 2015 with a pretty simple guiding hypothesis: we could foster sustainable artist development by creating a physical studio space that facilitated collaboration.
Whereas formal “artist development” has historically been the business of the major music industry, we thought we could replicate that development infrastructure in a city with little major music industry presence by simply connecting musicians and the various resources and knowledge those musicians represent in a physical space.
We turned this hypothesis into a reality in March 2015 with the purchase of a historic 1872 church in Detroit, MI, which had sat empty for nearly six years in front of the iconic (and then-abandoned) Michigan Central Station. We immediately moved into the building, and despite its lack of plumbing, heat, a dilapidated roof, and the 5,000 pounds of bird shit in the steeple, we fell in love.
We also got to work. We invited in artists and started installing plumbing, removing drop ceilings, and building makeshift studios wherever they would fit: Writing rooms in bell towers, closets, and behind the altar, a Studio A in the pastor’s office, a live room upstairs under the vaulted ceiling, etc.
The Business: A Licensing Catalog
As we built out the space, we put desks next to the pews downstairs and started working on a catalog of music that we could represent for commercial licensing opportunities. It didn’t just comprise of songs made in the church studio, but included music from independent artists all over Detroit and Michigan, old and new. It was this catalog and our sync licensing clients that kept the lights on in those early days (still do!); not just for us, but for a growing roster of artists making music in bedrooms, basements, and warehouses all over the city and the state.
Programming Growth
As our sync and music supervision business grew, so did our scope. Our free studio residency grew from a few select artists to dozens of artists, chosen annually, working in our studios on every genre of music 24/7.
We launched a free public music industry panel series, “Assemble U”, hosted song reviews and release parties; and eventually we started managing a few artists who were growing out of the space.
We watched artists go from playing local shows to touring the world. We watched songs made in the church closet rack up millions of streams and get used in content by global brands. We watched friends sign record deals with dream record labels, get covered by national publications, and play name-brand festivals. Despite the occasional frozen pipes, leaky ceiling, and constant noise bleed between walls, we were watching an insane back-of-a-napkin idea become more and more of a reality every day.
Change and Evolution
By the beginning of 2020, we had saved up enough money to do two things – Start an independent record label, and begin our long-awaited renovation of the Church campus.
Those two undertakings took very divergent paths a few months later when a global pandemic disrupted everything. Our construction project stalled for nearly three years while we worked out of three different temporary studio spaces around Detroit.
Pricing inflation made construction impossibly expensive, and in 2023, we made the brutally difficult decision to sell our original church home so we could invest in our continued mission and the future of our company, including our eventual new home.
In parallel to that change, we found early success as an independent record label doing what we have always loved to do; identifying incredible artists and helping them become the best versions of themselves.
In an effort to do that at a greater scale, we struck a deal with Atlantic Records and started a joint venture record label, something that would have seemed almost unimaginable in our early days as a DIY space. As our label expanded, so too did our supervision and sync licensing company, adding an original music department with a composer roster that actively services some of the most influential brands and storytellers in the world.
Ten Years and Beyond
This year we celebrate 10 years of Assemble Sound. That still feels insane to us.
We are so grateful for every artist who has ever written a song in one of our DIY studios, every client who has ever licensed a song from us to help us keep the lights on in said studios, every fan who has ever bought a ticket to a show, every artist partner who has entrusted us with their releases, every industry partner who has helped us make those releases increasingly impactful, every Assemble Sound team member and intern and friend that has worked behind the scenes to make this ecosystem function.
Over the past decade, we’ve given away hundreds of thousands of hours of free studio time and put millions of dollars into the pockets of creatives, the majority of whom are from a place the music industry has so often overlooked. We are really proud of those contributions. We haven’t always been great, but we’ve always strived to be better. We haven’t always been perfect, but we’ve always strived to grow.
We started Assemble Sound with $20k and a huge dream. It took A LOT to turn those two things into a decade of meaningful work, but perhaps more than anything else, it took a community of people who cared and continue to care. That’s the same community that is going to make the next 10 years possible, and for you, we are grateful.
