From music library to music partner with a point of view.

Let’s start here: in production music, a lot of brands sound interchangeable. Everyone talks about breadth, quality, speed, and service. The result is a category full of similar promises, even when the businesses behind them are meaningfully different.

Upright Music had grown into a company working across music search, sync, licensing, and creative support for visual productions. But while the business had evolved, the brand had not fully caught up. It was still too easy to read Upright as “a large music library” rather than a more distinctive kind of music partner: one with human judgment, strong taste, and a broader role to play in helping clients get music right.

I was brought in to help clarify that difference and turn it into a sharper strategic foundation for the brand.

The work focused on defining a more ownable position in a category crowded with familiar language and recycled claims. Through stakeholder interviews, strategic framing, workshop facilitation, and messaging development, I helped shape the brand core, positioning, and narrative. A big part of the challenge was not just finding the right idea, but making it useful: something that could guide communication across the business, inform future brand expression, and support a more coherent website experience.

The helped create a clearer articulation of what makes Upright distinct: not just access to music, but judgment, partnership, and a fuller understanding of the role music plays in visual storytelling. The work gave the team a stronger way to talk about who they are, what they do, and why it matters, while creating a strategic foundation that could be used internally as well as externally.

In other words: less category wallpaper, more point of view.