Toronto’s ole music publishing company has rounded out its service offerings with a big move into the music library business, courtesy of ole clear and a new web portal offering access to more than 100,000 production-oriented tracks.

The new venture capitalizes on the publisher’s existing production catalogues from Nelvana; The Masters, ole’s new, diverse, in-house production music library; and Attitude, a label being produced by Los Angeles industry vets Cunningham and Lang (Chronic, Killer Edge). The company has also signed a Canadian sub-publishing and master licensing deal with U.S.-based MusicBox.

Says ole CEO Robert Ott: “We have close relations with a community of 40 television production clients who we see as a natural client base for the production library. I also think that in looking at the digital age and trying to assess where the business might be heading, there seems to be a need for one-stop, fully-cleared music. So for both of those reasons, this seemed to be a good move for us.”

” The more obstacles we can pull out of the way between the client and what he or she is looking for, the better.”


Ole clear features a remarkably friendly interface that allows users to search the catalogue by mood, genre, sub-genre, instrument or style from a long list of keywords. Users can also plug in their own search terms.

“The search system is very intuitive,” says Ross Hardy, ole’s Manager of Production & Online Services, “and it has a strong, creative workflow. It’s extraordinarily fast and very well organized.”
“The cornerstone of our business right now is to be leading-edge tech,” adds Ott. “We offer the highest level of automation so that an editor out there at 3 a.m. can get onto our online portal and peruse and buy licensed music with three or four clicks, with no intervention necessary. If our clients want music supervisory advice and the human touch, that’s still there too, but we want to make their jobs as easy as humanly possible.”

“One of the key advantages we’ve had as a company is that we don’t have any legacy to adapt to the digital space,” continues Ott. “We’ve conceived our business and our library within the digital space, and we’ve never gone through any kind of physical incarnation, i.e., circulating CDs, DVDs or hard drives.

“Our entire focus has been to deliver this offering virtually and to deliver it real time at the speed of thought. As fast as you can think about what you’re looking for, we can deliver it. The more obstacles we can pull out of the way between the client and what he or she is looking for, the better. Clear stands for transparency and 100 per cent cleared music, but it also stands for the shortest space between the idea of what kind of music you need and getting it.”