History In The Making

Jingle Punks was launched in the summer of 2008. It was created to fill the void created by stock libraries that refused to deliver relevant and hip content. Named one of "America's Most Promising Startups" by Business Week in 2009, our client list has grown to include ABC, NBC, Comedy Central, Vh1, MTV, Bravo, TLC, Starz, History Channel and A&E. We also service many of the industries top advertising and branding agencies.

At any given moment one of Jingle Punks catchy and unique tunes are being transmitted across the 1000 channel universe and getting lodged into people's brains.

• Jared Gutstadt

  CEO & Co-Founder

  Jared Gutstadt started Jingle Punks Music after spending a decade balancing a dual career as an editor by day and rockstar by night. After years cutting and composing for many of the TV industry’s top networks, it was apparent to Jared that the media had a ravenous appetite for dynamic music collections that would change and grow to reflect cultural trends. Jared also found that the way in which a library is made accessible to a client also would determine how often such a collection would be used. Because a source such as this did not exist he knew there was an enormous opportunity for him to take the lead.

  After meeting Dan on a crazy night out in NYC (The Black Keys, margarita fights, Beatrice Inn - ask him about it sometime), the two exchanged ideas on how an idea like this could be developed. Dan and Jared put their collective years of experience to work almost immediately and within two months had a working prototype for the Jingle Player. The rest, as they say, has been history.

  Jared plays many instruments, has two sons named after famous rock stars, conducted a symphony with members of the New York Philharmonic and has a 2010 ASCAP Award for “Most Performed Film and Television Music” for the theme to the hit show Pawn Stars.

  
  

• Dan Demole

  COO & Co-Founder

  Prior to that fateful night in 2008 when Dan & Jared's partnership was formed at a Black Keys concert in Brooklyn, he had a not so normal career path in getting there. Dan worked for Electronic Arts & Smiling Gator Productions where he developed cutting edge video games and also spent a few years working for both military contractors and private banking firms where he was responsible for developing massive relational databases.

  He'll tell you his real work was done just prior to arriving in the city, when he spent nearly two years traveling with only a backpack and a camera across 5 continents surfing the best waves of his life, achieving inner peace alongside the Dalai Lama, climbing to the roof of the world on Mount Kilimanjaro and seeing a ton of great music across the globe.

  Despite his best efforts to escape it, the inner geek continues to shine through. Dan was the chief architect of the original Jingle Player, but has passed the tech torch on to Abel and the development team so he can focus on business development and the challenges of scaling Jingle Punks.

  
  

• Brian Wahlund

  VP of Brand Strategy

  Brian Wahlund comes to Jingle Punks having successfully criss-crossed the worlds of television, film, commercial production and branded entertainment for the bulk of his Hollywood career.

  Having met CEO Jared Gutstadt in 2005 in NYC while Co-Executive Producer at FUSE, the two immediately struck up a personal friendship focused around Brian's groupie-like following of Jared's old band Group Sounds - and through a shared love-hate relationship surrounding Jared's insistence on using the edit suite as a personal storage locker for his amp collection.

  Brian's body of work includes supervisory rolls in properties on Fox, ABC, NBC and MTV among others, along with a stint traversing the world in 2006-2007 running branded content for a litany of Red Bull's global properties. He's been brought on to craft strategy to continue to grow Jingle Punks both here in the USA, in Los Angeles where he's based, and throughout the world.

  
  

• Matt Chambless

  Director of Creative Services

  Matt Chambless, a Memphis native, is a 10-year music industry veteran. After having attended the University of Memphis’ Jazz program Matt’s break into the industry came as a touring drummer for the band Ingram Hill. During his tenure with that group he had the opportunity to share the stage with such acts as the Black Crowes, Maroon 5, Lifehouse, Jason Mraz, Jonny Lang and many others – as well as landing two Top 25 singles in Billboard’s Adult Top 40 chart and one record in Billboard’s Top 25 Heatseeking Albums.

  After 10 years on the road Matt made the tough decision to leave Memphis behind and settle in New York City where he immediately met both Dan and Jared – and having shared a similar musical journey with Jared and love of film and pontification with Dan, bonded instantly with both.

  In the fall of 2009, after almost a year of freelance work at Jingle Punks, Matt came on board full-time, bringing with him a wealth of knowledge in what not to do - something that only a decade of life on the road can teach you - along with a keen creative sense and an aptitude for the “artist experience.” Matt heads up the Creative Services department, and he’s also the creator of the Jingle Punks logo.

  
  

• Bill Markt

  Director of Catalog

  Bill has been composing music and playing in bands since he picked up his father's guitar in fifth grade: Cloning Louis, Excited For That, Coals & Ashes and CROSSFIRE, to name a few of the bands. In May of 2009, Bill returned home to the great city of Cleveland with a degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Days later Bill hopped on a plane to NYC and took over for his predecessor Vaughn Schoonmaker. Vaughn’s impressive work made him a tough act to follow.

  Bill is currently a music classification expert, composer, and performer for the Jingle Punks team. Some of his recent work is featured on the History Channel and MLB Network. Viva la Jingle Punks!!

  
  

• Shota Ike

  Director of Music Supervision & Licensing

  Born in Tokyo, Japan, Shota moved to the good old U.S.A. with his family when he was just two years old. He grew up in a small town called Darien, CT. For as long as he can remember, music has always been his biggest passion. The story goes that way back when, as a young boy, he watched Yo-Yo Ma on Sesame Street and fell in love with classical music. Being so small, he was encouraged to take on the violin instead as it seemed a better fit at the time. Well, Shota's grown up and so has his music. He's been fortunate to perform twice at Carnegie Hall and at Tanglewood.

  He continues to play violin, as he has for the last 18 years, and now brings his experience to the Jingle Punks team. In addition to performing he composes music for film, television, and commercials. He also produces Hip Hop. He's had his music placed for brands such as Nike, Uniqlo, Verizon, and Smirnoff as well as in film. He's excited to have just joined the team and looks forward to shredding violin with Jingle Guy.

  
  

• Colleen McNally

  Senior Music Supervisor

  Originally from Chicago, Colleen relocated to NYC in 2008 to attend NYU for their Music Business graduate program. While going to NYU, she interned at several record labels before finding her passion for music supervision while interning at MTV, ultimately leading to Jingle Punks. When she’s not pitching music at Jingle Punks for various shows and Ad work Colleen can be found checking out both new and old bands around the city.

  She loves knowing the semi-obscure (to most of the population) band she hears in the back of a commercial or on your favorite TV show and loves to tell herself (and anyone in the near vicinity), “I knew that band before 90% of the people here”, a secret she’s hard pressed to admit. Colleen is excited to continue growing as a music supervisor at Jingle Punks and is currently taking bets on what the next Jingle swag will be.

  
  

• Liam Farrell

  Junior Music Supervisor

  Hailing from upstate New York, Liam has been singing and writing music since he was old enough to count to four. As a thirteen-year old, he stumbled upon a beat up Les Paul at a garage sale and has been playing in bands ever since. While attending Syracuse University for Music Industry, Liam formed a band that has released two full length albums and a slew of demo's. The band, now called Hunters & Runners, is currently based in Brooklyn and playing shows regularly.

  Liam joined the Jingle Punks team in 2011 as a music tagger and came on as a full-time Punk in July. He enjoys strong coffee, tough politics and has a weakness for fine Mexican food.

  
  

• Abel Martin

  Senior Developer

  Abel started his adventure with Jingle Punks in 2009 as a freelancer, working on our website refresh project. In Fall 2010, he could no longer resist our siren song and joined the team. Abel continues to help us deliver fantastic features to our artists & clients using his wealth of web, desktop and mobile development experience.

  Before Jingle Punks, Abel worked for Tutor.com where he helped to improve the user experience for employees, clients, students and tutors. This ranged from creating productivity boosting internal tools to leading development on the company’s first iPhone app. Meanwhile his first iPhone app, Touch Playbook, was a finalist in the App Star 2010 awards.

  In the brief moments when he’s away from his keyboard, he enjoys playing Street Fighter, watching anything with a ninja in it and dunking with reckless abandon.

  
  

• Dan Burke

  Developer

  A former student of the Berklee School of Music, Daniel spent a number of his post collegiate years in the local Boston music scene, eventually drifting his way into web development; a not uncommon career trajectory. Initially, he started out as staff developer for Harvard University moving on to Zoom Telephonics. He then re-located to NYC to found Rustedladder, a technical firm focusing on web application design for small and medium sized business needs. However, after numerous years of successful consultancy, the temptation to combine his passion for technology and music was impossible to resist. So in late 2011, he gladly joined the excellent Jingle Punks development team.

  
  

• Jeff Peters

  Composer

  Molded by his days as a lobsterman and glue factory technician, Jeff had become a weathered professional at writing music in his free time. With a laptop, microphones and hand-me-down instruments he honed his chops by re-envisioning “We Built This City” in every musical genre. Through Jingle Bill, he landed a job at Jingle Punks and has quickly assembled a large collection of music and credits including tracks for General Motors, Coors Light, MLB Network, and ongoing projects for History Channel and Bravo. He hopes to one day write part 2 of “Big Bottom”, entitled “Big Top”.

  
  

• Rick Smith

  Composer

  Meet Rick Smith. A usual suspect in the Brooklyn music scene, Rick's background is in edgy, current and often provocative music. Rick is the singer and primary songwriter for both Brooklyn's Crooked Looks and Aaaction News. With a taste for fresh sound and mint chocolate chip ice cream, you may see him loitering around local NYC haunts, bumming cigarettes and "researching" the latest trends.

  Whether it's a wild and wiry dance rock track with searing synths and smashing beats or a subtle, gentle orchestral piece that invokes visions of the setting sun, Rick is your guy. As part of the Jingle Punks team, Rick brings an energetic and unique perspective on composing music, excessive coffee drinking and nautical knot tying.

  
  

• Ian Miller

  Composer

  Ian’s lifelong interest in music unfolded at a early age when he happened upon an old guitar and was compelled to pick it up. The proceeding was merely the beginning, as Ian dedicated much of his free time to studying and performing the guitar and piano. Honing his skills as a musician, Ian eventually delved into the world of electronic music, experimenting with synthesizers, samplers and music software.

  His passion with music took a more professional turn through his studies at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU. Interested in composing music for visual mediums, Ian spent his last year at NYU scoring various independent films, including a short film that aired on HBO and a documentary featured in several international film festivals.

  Since graduating in 2010, Ian continued to write freelance and is now thrilled to be composing for Jingle Punks.

  
  

• Jeff Jeudy

  Composer

  Jeff Jeudy loves bands. He especially loves to be in them. "I Love Monsters", Shelley Nicole’s "blaKbushe" and "Soulfolk Experience" are just a few of the bands he's done sound checks with over the years. His involvement in groups jumps all over the radio dial. Hip Hop, R&B, rock, indie, singer/songwriter and funk... he's musically fearless.

  He attended the School of Performing Arts (immortalized in “Fame”) as a fine arts major and later on moved to Los Angeles for 3 years, working in the administrative offices of a cemetery. Those folks were dead but he wasn't. He put in time at BMG Music and co-wrote the track "Baby’s Song" featured in the 2007 independent film Traci Townsend.

  Since June 2009 he’s been putting the rock in comedy as the Musical Director of the sketch comedy group AMERICAN CANDY. Amid his return to New York, Jeff’s musical journey landed him at the doorstep of Jingle Punks, where he is contributing as a composer alongside some amazing people... all living.

  
  

• Trisha Lasar

  Head of Publishing Administration

  Originally venturing into the music industry as a teen in Australia, Trisha is a music-entertainment executive and co-producer with over 15 years experience in the US. Over the past several years Trisha has worked closely with well-known and award winning film and television composers of whom collectively are credited with scoring more than one hundred and fifty feature length films and documentaries, innumerable television commercials, a significant number of episodic television projects and they have collectively produced in excess of 180 library CD’s.

  Trisha has worn many hats in the music-licensing realm, from creative to VP of Music Acquisition and Management. She has been responsible for creating, acquiring and increasing the size of music catalogues for film, television, advertising, video games and corporate use. She is also credited with redefining standard composer agreements and licensing agreements resulting in a simplified and more affordable process for acquiring and licensing music. During this time she designed and oversaw the building of a fully integrated publishing database in addition to working one on one with many songwriters and composers to better educate them regarding the ins and outs of publishing.

  
  

• Michael Facciolo

  Director of Sales

  Michael Facciolo, or "Facc" (pronounced F-A-C-H ) as he is usually and affectionately referred by friends and colleagues, came to Jingle Punks as Director of Sales after spending the past 7 years accumulating a super cool and eclectic body of work experience in the Film, Television and Music Publishing spaces. Before joining the Jingle Punks family Michael produced the independent documentary hit "Don't You Forget About Me" (Alliance Atlantis) about reclusive 80's film director John Hughes. After the international release of his documentary film, he took a much needed, but lightning quick break from the film/tv/music world, to meditate with monks on an ashram in the Bahamas in order to "get back in touch with Facc."

  Realizing his true passion was in sales, he spent the next few years using his leadership skills to build highly effective sales teams spanning many industries. In between the hustle, he spends his time writing music on his Yamaha guitar, doing yoga on the beach and looking for love in all the wrong places. After a chance meeting with jingle Jared at the 2011 Toronto Film Festival, Facc happily landed in the Jingle Punks family to bring his unique skills, personality and enthusiasm to the greatest out of the box thinking company in the universe... Jingle Punks!

  
  

• Ben Offenberg

  Strategic Services Associate

  Originally from Greenwich Village, Ben’s first step into the world of music came through recording live DJ sets for dailysession.com, an Internet source for NYC’s underground music. Ben spent a year in London working for Soundlounge, one of the UK’s top music licensing agencies for branding and strategy. While playing in the North London pub scene with Indie bands by night, Ben was also working closely to create soundtracks for popular Oxford Street stores, as well as assisting with the development of a sonic branding partnership between Bacardi Ltd and Groove Armada.

  Ben’s love for live music and the emerging electronic scene has inspired him to DJ throughout the Los Angeles area. He has a degree in English and Music Industry from Syracuse University. As Strategic Services Associate, Ben works on both music supervision and business development projects – he could not be more amped to be on board.

  
  

• Mackenzie Reif

  Executive Assistant

  Born and raised in NYC, Mackenzie has had a passion for music since as long as she could remember. At an early age, it wasn’t unusual to have heard her humming or singing around the house. While it drove her parents crazy, they knew that one day she would end up working in the music industry. For high school, Mackenzie took her passion for singing, and put it to good use, by attending the prestigious “Fame” school. It was here, that her knowledge and interest for the music industry continued to grow.

  Since then, she has had more internships than humanly possible, gaining experience in many aspects of the production and post production world. While these positions ultimately prepared her for the real world, she could not have been happier to have finally landed her first real job at Jingle Punks. Mackenzie is excited to be a part of the Jingle Punks team, and is looking forward to what the future has in store.

  
  

• Maddie Gioia

  Licensing Coordinator

  Madeline Gioia, a native of Rochester, NY, grew up playing the alto saxophone, piano, and clarinet. She developed an appreciation for a variety of musical genres growing up thanks to the influence of her guitar-playing dad, but especially loves to play jazz, blues and funk on her saxophone. She attended Oneonta State College where she earned a degree in Music Industry and found an interest in accounting and the business side of the industry. After an awesome internship at Focus Features and through many great, helpful music industry connections, she found Jingle Punks.

  Maddie hopped on board the Jingle Punks train in September 2011 where she started as an intern tagging music. Soon after, she started working on licensing and invoicing which she now handles full time. She loves the hilarious Jingle Punks crew and is excited for all that’s to come in the future.

  
  

• Doug Perkins

  Associate Sales Director

  After two years study at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, Doug Perkins went to Hollywood to finish up his music studies at Musician’s Institute, where he graduated as Guitarist of the Year. That led to 4 years as a staff instructor at MI and many years of session and live guitar work throughout the Los Angeles area.

  A side job categorizing production music for an early music search database clued him into the concept of music licensing, which lead him down parallel paths of writing & producing production music tracks for numerous music libraries while also doing sales. His work at Jingle Punks brings together his many years of experience and expertise in sales to the entertainment / production community, composing, recording, and international music licensing.

  Doug lives in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles with close to 30 guitars in his home studio, and his big red dog named Django (after gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhart).

  
  

• Tatyanna Wright

  Head of Business Developement - Asia Pacific

  Tatyanna joined Jingle Punks in early 2011 as Head of Business Development APAC. Her strong contacts in advertising and broadcast media led to leveraging new areas of development for Jingle Punks and introduced new partnership opportunities.

  Tatyanna has lived and worked in three continents, bringing a level of international experience that's been key to Jingle Punks recent successes. Prior to joining JP, she wrote and produced countless hours of television in the lifestyle genre for MTV Asia, Food Network, A&E and Style to name a few. She also worked for several years in advertising, producing international campaigns for JWT and D'Arcy on the Sprint and Cadbury Adams accounts.

  
  

• Kari Hollend

  Head of Business Developement - Canada

  Kari has been an independent Film producer for over 8 years. Her most recent feature, a documentary about the late John Hughes (Don't You Forget About Me), showcased her love of music, as well as film. She knows firsthand the value of the user friendly, accessible music database that is Jingle Punks.

  After utilizing Jingle Punks on the client side on a recent project, Kari was truly impressed, so impressed, that a few short years later she joins the team to leverage her love of music, her industry relationships, and her gift of the gab to spread the word in Canada that they too can have access to an easy to use, high quality, cool music database.

  
  

• Anthony Martini

  Music Acquisitions & Partnerships

  Anthony joined the team in 2008 after meeting Jared and Dan at their Lower East Side studio for an unrelated music project. Upon learning about Jingle Punks, he realized their service could help fill several voids he encountered in his normal dealings as an artist manager. Anthony knew that cutting edge music could be made accessible for even the most budget-minded client. The passion to provide "real artists" at a reasonable cost has become the calling card that sets Jingle Punks apart from their competition.

  At Jingle Punks his main function is to identify and acquire quality music for use in the Jingle Player. His solid relationships as a personal manager also help bridge the gap between various artists, record labels and network executives. Anthony has helped develop the careers of a variety of major label artists. After years of working alongside some of the biggest players in the music industry, he recently founded his own artist management firm The CMSN.

  Anthony's career in the music business began first as an artist, followed by stints in music distribution and a label before deciding to focus his talent on artist management. Whether it's packing cd's in a dusty warehouse or hanging with stars back stage at the Video Music Awards - he's been there. This real world experience helps round out the Jingle Punks team.

  
  

• The Jingle Guy

  Music Superhero

  The Jingle Guy is the offspring of the controversial union between one of the Neville Brothers and Patti Smith. Or it might of been Blondie and both Righteous Brothers. Or Mick Fleetwood and all the members of The O'Jays - no one knows for sure. Jingle Guy loves to give hugs, especially from the ladies and has been know to break into dance if the mood strikes him.

  You can usually find him wandering the streets of New York City where he's taken to spontaneous performances of his politically slanted haikus. He occasionally pops by the offices and composes some tunes for the Punks. In fact, he is rumored to have written the theme to History Channels, 'Pawn Stars.'