The Invisible Man

Growing up in Los Angeles, there was no mistaking that Jeremy Wineberg was meant to work in ​the music business. He was conceived at a Michael Jackson concert. At age five, he attended his ​first show, Sinead O’Connor at the Wiltern. By the time he was ten, he’d bought PA speakers, a ​guitar, and a mic at RadioShack…to transform his bedroom into a recording studio. “Maybe there ​was a part of me thinking I would be a rock star,” says Wineberg, who today boasts a collection ​of more than 3,000 vinyl albums spanning half a century. “But what excited me more were ​logistics and production.”

At any moment, Wineberg can unfurl an infinite scroll of stories and professional achievements. ​Each one is fascinating and always points to a North Star guiding all his ambitions: connecting ​people with sounds that will enrich their lives. His latest venture, Sounds Cool, is no less intriguing. ​As a holding company, it will license music, expand towards NFC (or mobile contactless) brand-​integration partnerships, and produce creator radio and apparel. But for now, it’s launching as a ​company that explores how sounds shape our thoughts and actions — offering inexpensive ​audio (everything from ASMR to melodic songs, much of it produced in-house) to businesses ​and influencers so they can strengthen and expand their brands.

Although the younger Wineberg would go on to ​become a tech-savvy visionary in the industry ​who’d quite literally move the cultural needle, his ​beginnings were distinctly analog. When he was ​18, he transformed his hairdresser’s salon, The ​Cutting Room, into one of the coolest DIY venues ​in Santa Monica, where new bands such as Haïm ​and Maroon 5 played. “There were literally 300 ​people in line — they just wanted to be in the ​club,” he recalls. “I remember when Hasselhoff ​came through to the front of the line with his ​daughter and was, like, ‘Here you go, guys. Here’s ​200 bucks.” Of course, the spot operated ​blissfully free of city codes and was shut down ​after one incensed mom called the cops. And ​that is how the legend of Jermey Wineberg was ​born.

As far back as he can remember, Wineberg’s life orbited around music thanks to his father, a ​business manager for everyone from Quincy Jones and Olivia Newton-John, to Babyface and ​Goldenvoice. As a teen, he interned at a pair of management companies, Caliente (who repped ​Madonna) and The Firm (whose roster included Backstreet Boys, Limp Bizkit, and Rooney). Later, ​inspired by the tunes playing in Melrose’s Fred Segal store, he co-founded the company Invisible ​DJ — its name a nod to Anna Wintour’s preference for unobtrusive event DJs — with one of the ​store’s buyers. Their aim: to forge a lucrative relationship between indie music and fashion. ​Wineberg was just 21 years old.

THE MUSIC TEE

In that pre-Spotify world rife with illegal ​Napster downloads, Invisible DJ licensed music ​for highly profitable compilation CDs for ​brands like Ron Herman and Juicy Couture. ​Invisible DJ also signed artists such as Mighty ​Six Ninety to deals that included placement in ​fashion boutiques, where cultural influencers ​shopped. After inking a band T-shirt deal with ​LNA, a clothing label for the NYLON magazine ​set, the music company’s brick-and-mortar ​reach would become transatlantic, from ​Nordstrom to U.K. mega-retailer Selfridges. ​Labels loved Wineberg, because he added a ​tag with an album-download code to each T-​shirt sold, which boosted Soundscan numbers.

As the LNA partnership prospered, Wineberg ​realized he’d found his calling and headed to ​New York, where he’d graduate with an MBA in ​Music Marketing at NYU’s Clive Davis School. ​The subject of his thesis presentation, which ​was attended by Steve Berman, VP of ​Interscope, was well ahead of its time: bands ​becoming brands.

Despite his early successes, Wineberg never lived in a bubble, always making it a point to study ​the zeitgeist around him. Noticing the rise of blogger culture and the music industry entering the ​era of album downloads, he started Opus Label in 2012. There, he famously helped Perez Hilton, ​who was at peak popularity, release compilation albums (which licensed emerging acts such as ​Bastille, Icona Pop, and Ryan Beatty) and stage pop-up shows around those bands. “The common ​thread was a person relating to a person,” he explains. “And that’s the difference between a ​celebrity, and a creator or influencer.” This observation, too, would prove prescient.

Monetizing online fame was, at that point, still a bit of a mystery, and Opus helped crack that ​code. More influencers asked for their own iTunes mixtape albums, with some, such as YouTuber ​JC Caylen’s mix, selling 10,000 units in one weekend alone. Leveraging this foundational success, ​Wineberg started to focus on social media personalities (who supplanted bloggers in relevance) ​by co-founding the company Heard Well, which would ultimately shift towards streaming music. ​There, he’d work with YouTube creators such as Noah Beck, Sam and Colby, Tana Mongeau — all ​releasing compilations of licensed music that helped shape their careers. Says Wineberg, “So it ​was like, you make a compilation of music you like, we package and develop the product, and we ​make you a brand.”

“Everyone’s running around for years going, ‘I can reach a billion people!’ But no one knows what ​engagement is. No one knows what that means,” he continues. “It’s kind of like NFTs, except that ​sunk quickly. Everyone wanted to be part of it, but no one knew what was going on.” Heard Well ​inked radio deals (Fox, TuneIn), podcast deals (Castbox), and publishing deals (Sony ATV, ​Hipgnosis). Then the pandemic hit. And Wineberg started to reconsider it all.

He came up with the idea of Sounds Cool during a meeting with a music distribution company. ​“They’re telling me, like, how white noise and rain sounds on digital streaming platforms are ​putting people to sleep, and that’s the most streamed audio,” he says. “ASMR is on YouTube, but ​they’re not monetizing that anywhere else.” So he asked some creators to make music for Sounds ​Cool, and others to craft ASMR sounds. Both get uploaded into mixtapes made by influencers and ​companies, designed specifically for their audiences. In the end, everyone gets paid: the artists ​who made the audio, and the influencer/brands whose playlists get streams. “Why ask Alexa to ​play rain sounds when you can say, ‘Hey Alexa, play me Noah Beck’s sleep playlist,” Winberg ​notes, “And overnight have tens of thousands of his millions of fans streaming your sleep mix. Now ​that’s making money while you sleep.”

YOUR BRAND’S VOICE

Sound envelopes us everywhere we go, practically every minute of the day. This can be the ​pleasing strains of a melody, the calming hum of white noise, the thrum of an appliance or ​machine, or nature serenely making its presence heard. It’s continually shaping how we feel, ​how we think, how we behave. This is the inspiration driving Sounds Cool, a company devoted to ​the intersection of sonics and branding from storied CEO Jeremy Wineberg.

“I am now focusing on all sounds, on all different types and groups of people, and how sound ​integrates into their lives in so many different ways,” says the music-industry whiz. Sounds ​Cool’s name even points to its egalitarian POV. “I wanted something synonymous with ​everyone,” Wineberg says. “On the average day, you say the words ‘sounds’ and ‘cool’ several ​times.”

Sounds Cool is a culmination of Wineberg’s previous, buzzy ventures. Through Invisible DJ, he ​entwined music with merch to boost sales among the indie-fashionista set (think: Fred Segal). ​For Opus Label, he leveraged the fledgling blogger culture (think: Perez Hilton) to bolster new ​artists and curate pop-up festivals. With Heard Well, he helped emerging social-media ​influencers (think: Noah Beck) define their brand through curated, streaming playlists. All the ​above share two things in common. First, Wineberg correctly predicted the next trend in music-​industry profits, and second, they’re all focused on new-music discovery.

The idea for Sounds Cool came to Wineberg while meeting with a music distribution company a ​few years back. “I learned that the top streaming songs are white noise. Sleep sounds! This ​white-noise company they work with is making millions of dollars a month selling, you know, ​static sound,” he says. “So I went back to my creators and go, ‘Hey, do you want people to go to ​sleep with you, too?’”

Sounds Cool works with artists (some of them forging ​conventional songs, but others tapping into the ​lucrative ASMR space) to create audio that influencers ​and businesses can source to create license-free ​playlists. “We are in-house, making our own river ​sounds, our own calming piano sounds, and our own ​kind of listening experiences,” he says. “We own the ​music, so there’s no one to pay.”

These playlists can live in brick-and-mortar stores as well as in videos, but will also exist on ​streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, thanks to a distribution partnership with ​Warner Recorded Music. He’s also offering an NFC extension — a.k.a. that contactless technology ​that lets you pay by hovering your phone near a device — so consumers can access playlists ​(and other branded digital goodies) by tapping their phones on a physical product or store sign.

While influencers (like, say, Jay Shetty and Kendall Jenner) would curate playlists to further ​define and strengthen their personal brand, companies (such as Peloton and Sephora) could ​leverage Wineberg and his team to customize playlists for them to shape demographics and ​build brand affinity. “You’re making the money off the streams, and artists are making money off ​the streams,” he says. “You can also play it in your stores without the threat of a lawsuit.”

In addition to offering turnkey licensing, Wineberg’s company is pretty revolutionary, because it ​eschews casting a wide net to ensnare audiences — as most labels are wont. “You have these ​doctors who have millions of followers, and regular people who have millions of followers. That’s ​a conversation, that’s a business there,” he says, “because there are now these micro-​communities.” The typical label-and-publishing business model can be ineffective because it ​doesn’t reflect modern audience’s instinctive desires for authenticity, personalization, and ​connection. This also means that the concept of the music label is dated, because the future is ​in all things aural — anything that sounds good, aimed simply at making people feel good.

Wineberg sees big potential in Sounds Cool’s new frontier of businesses, because, as a lifelong ​music-marketing innovator, he knows that music has a rich impact on audiences. According to ​Pandora, music can influence the ways consumers shop, how long they shop, as well as the ​types of items they purchase. Meanwhile, Save the Music Foundation has cited the scientific ​studies that have proven that music taps into the same areas of our brain accessed for memory ​and emotion.

“Sephora: no musical connection. Zara: no musical connection. Urban Outfitters: no musical ​connection,” he points out. “This is a big piece of the puzzle for them. Sound is a very important ​part of your mood and your energy. It’s factored into how you do what you do. This is about ​lifestyle and better living.”

MUSIC AND ​SOUNDS FOR ​EVERY ​MOMENT, ​EVERY ​MOOD AND ​EVERY YOU.