Soundstripe Sessions

Jim Cook is a producer, director, and co-owner of CookHouse Media, a Nashville production company whose work includes campaigns for Qualcomm and Adobe. He and Jeff cover his punk band days in San Diego, 14 years selling cars up to GM at a Mazda dealership, the importance of music in video, and why weddings train better filmmakers.

Walker Beard is the CEO of Super Canoe, an Atlanta production company, and was head of business and legal affairs for Netflix's experiences team behind the Stranger Things Experience. He and Jeff cover playing in the District Attorneys in law school, why venues lose money on a packed calendar, Netflix House, and his upcoming docu-series about developing bands and the scenes they come from.

Teddy Cheek is VP of retail operations at Great Big Game Show, from the team behind The Escape Game, where he led marketing for close to a decade as it grew to 60 locations. He and Jeff cover his years in a Nashville boy band, artist marketing at Crowdsurf, how games get built at the Adventure Factory, the pivot to virtual escape rooms during COVID, and why he'd trade budget for NPS points.

Rebecca Rechtszaid is a Harvard Law grad who was senior director of business and legal affairs at Global Music Rights and lead counsel for creator programs at Meta before founding Rechtszaid Law in Los Angeles. She and Jeff cover why music licensing is so tangled, exclusivity and perpetual usage traps in brand deals, IP disputes between creators, and free legal help for artists.

Jennifer Pyken is an Emmy nominated music supervisor who won a Guild of Music Supervisors Award for This Is Us, with credits including Happy Gilmore, Felicity, and Workaholics. She and Jeff cover learning the job as a coordinator on Pulp Fiction, commissioning an original song for Hallmark's The Way Home, why clearance shapes what makes the cut, and the course she teaches aspiring supervisors.

Joe Koufman is the founder and CEO of Setup, an Atlanta marketing matchmaking firm that has made over 1,400 introductions between brands like Coca-Cola and Chick-fil-A and the agencies that serve them. He and Jeff cover his retail management years, why networking is the wrong word for what he does, replacing the four-month agency RFP with a one-week match, and his book The Connector's Compass.

Steak Shapiro has been a fixture in Atlanta sports radio for 30 years, including 17 as owner of 790 The Zone, and he now runs the content agency Bread & Butter. He and Jeff cover mailing cassette tapes to 14 program directors, writing the business plan that got him a station, building Atlanta Eats, and why the 30-second commercial is finished.

JR McNeely is Soundstripe's senior mix engineer, a Grammy winner who has mixed more than 300 albums over three decades for artists like Underoath, Relient K, TobyMac, and DC Talk. He and Jeff cover his path from studio janitor to chief engineer, his art-over-science approach to mixing, working with Soundstripe composers, and his one-man band YouTube channel where he plays every instrument himself.

Thomas Golubic is an Emmy and Grammy nominated music supervisor behind Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Six Feet Under, and Apple TV's Silo and Pluribus. He and Jeff cover his path from journalism into music supervision, collaborating with Vince Gilligan, why he presents multiple song options instead of advocating for one, and what makes a strong music brief.

Aaron Sprinkle is a senior staff composer at Soundstripe and a longtime record producer who produced MXPX's debut album as a teenager and later worked with Anberlin, Pedro the Lion, Copeland, and more. He and Jeff cover his self-taught start on Vashon Island, producing the mid-2000s emo scene, writing under a dozen monikers for Soundstripe's catalog, and why he calls himself anti-AI.

Matt McCabe is the creative director at Visit Big Bear, the destination marketing organization for Big Bear Lake, California, where he grew up and built his career. He and Jeff cover Big Bear's storytelling approach, the viral bald eagle webcam, adapting cinematic footage for social media, scoring projects with original Soundstripe music, and an upcoming documentary.

Ali Rogers is a filmmaker and visual storyteller behind PranaLens, known for cinematic work with 29029 Everesting, endurance athlete Colin O'Brady, and the Rich Roll podcast. She and Jeff cover learning the craft through weddings, capturing raw moments of struggle and triumph, scoring by feel, and finding the human thread in every story.

Paul Carpenter, founder of the Atlanta creative agency Plural and president of AMA Atlanta, has spent nearly 30 years in marketing. He and Jeff cover the evolution of agencies, why curiosity beats optimization, AI's impact on video and music, the neuroscience of storytelling, and the resurgence of indie shops.

Daisha McBride, the Nashville rapper known as The Rap Girl, turned a high school nickname into a career spanning freestyles with hundreds of millions of views, a Queen Collective documentary, and the BET Awards stage. She and Jeff cover standing out in a country-first music city, her fast and prolific writing process, going all-in as an independent artist, and the discipline behind it.

Scott Welch is one of the most accomplished managers in music history, having guided the careers of Alanis Morissette, Paula Abdul, Steve Perry, and Collective Soul. He and Jeff cover his path from merch truck to managing icons, telling artists the truth, spotting talent you can't quite bottle, the early mp3.com IPO, and his front-row seat to StubHub.

Aaron Mercer, co-president of Premier Music Group, has spent 30 years in Nashville shaping how music moves through advertising, film, and TV — from his early days at BMI and Sony ATV to leading a firm whose clients include Samsung, Adidas, and the NBA. He covers the nuts and bolts of music licensing, why AI-generated music is a legal non-starter for commercial use, and how a Chevy commercial broke the band Fun overnight.

Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter CJ Oliver has 180+ tracks in the Soundstripe catalog and sync placements on NBC, Hulu, and Netflix. Her self-taught start at nine selling her first instrumental, breaking past being known as the violin kid, producing across R&B and hip-hop, AI in music, and advice for young artists.

Leo Falkenstein is the owner of Consume Media, an Atlanta video company he founded 13 years ago that now works with Calendly, SalesLoft, and Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Leo and Jeff cover starting out in the Athens music scene, how AI is reshaping video production, turning one shoot into 25 assets, and why he calls the work video connection, not video marketing.

Noam Kroll is an LA-based filmmaker, director, and cinematographer who runs one of the most popular filmmaking blogs and podcasts on the internet at noamkroll.com. He talks about the slow build of a filmmaking career, working in a way that fits how he's wired as an introvert, and picking ideas worth committing to.

Dr. Erika Siegel is a naturopathic physician, acupuncturist, and founder of Nourish Me Clinic in Portland, Oregon. She and Jeff cover blending Western and Chinese medicine, the foundations of health, GLP-1 drugs, sauna and cold therapy, the link between wellness and creativity, and self-care as responsibility.

Nicole Shapiro is a Toronto-based cinematographer who runs N-SHAPS Production, shooting commercial and music video work for clients like Mazda, Adidas, and the Toronto Raptors. She came to filmmaking through an unexpected door: a kinesiology degree and a pivot to shooting basketball highlights in 2019. She and Jeff talk about building a DP career without film school and using spec work to land paid gigs.

Eric Sheinkop founded Music Dealers at 16 and scaled it into a licensing platform that placed independent artists inside campaigns for Coca-Cola, the FIFA World Cup, and the Olympics. Jeff and Eric talk through what dyslexia taught him about spotting patterns in broken industries, the PE deal that eventually cost him the company, and what he's building now at The Desire Company, connecting brands with verified subject matter experts.

Jonah Feingold is an independent filmmaker and entrepreneur based in New York who has made five feature films and over a hundred shorts. In this conversation, Jonah talks about his origin story, influenced by Hook at age two, his approach to creative work, and the business challenges of funding films in 2026.

Brooke MacLean is the CEO of Marketwake, an Atlanta based agency she bootstrapped to nearly 80 people over eight years and named one of the best places to work in the city. Her agency helps brands tell better stories, which leads to better results for their business. She joins Jeff to talk about what that actually looks like in practice, why culture became her competitive advantage, and why she thinks brands that lean too hard on AI are quietly breaking an agreement they didn't know they had with their customers.

Soundstripe staff composer Matt Wigton on his journey from Memphis baseball prospect to touring jazz bassist to prolific music library composer — over 1,000 songs, a Bridgerton placement, and his recent string quartet EP.

In the very first episode of the Soundstripe podcast, host Jeff Perkins sits down with all three co-founders — Micah Sannan, Travis Terrell, and Trevor Hinesley — to celebrate 10 years of Soundstripe and tell the full origin story.

The space between inspiration and execution, that’s where the real story lives. We sit down with world-class creators and storytellers to unpack the craft, creative decisions, the roadblocks, and the breakthroughs that shaped their best work.