Thomas Tyler, CEO and co-founder of Rezonate Music Rights, shares his journey from finance to the music industry, highlighting his personal career pivots.
Thomas Tyler, CEO and co-founder of Rezonate Music Rights, shares his journey from finance to the music industry, highlighting his personal career pivots and the motivations behind building a business that empowers music creators.
You just got to put one foot in front of the other every single day. If you're doing something [music] to move the whole thing forward every day, you look back in 3 months and you will have moved it. And it's [music] sometimes incredibly frustrating because it doesn't feel like you're making any progress at all. But that confidence that [music] if you could give oneself back, that's probably the key thing I think anybody needs to hear who who wants to do something like this. >> [music] >> All righty, hello everyone and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So, today we have quite the creative the creative entrepreneur that you know, has the creatives, the finance, you know, background. So, a really good mix especially for what they're looking at doing which also has quite the uh the M&A / private equity approach. I mean, it's quite unique. So, we're going to be learning about
the process of raising money which is brutal. Also, building the team and the way that they're going out, you know, on the M&A side and and and why they thought about doing that. But quite the inspiring conversation in front of us. So, without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Thomas Tyler. Welcome to the show. Hey Alejandro, great to be here and thank you so much for having me. Very excited to have a chat with you today about about what we've built here at Resonate. So, originally born and raised in Birmingham. So, give us a walk through memory lane, Tom. How was life growing up for you? Life was great growing up in Birmingham. I'm a lifelong Aston Villa fan and we're third in the league at the moment. So, all things are good. Um and you know, I had a I had a great childhood there. Played a lot of music as a kid. Went to traditional school and also performing arts academy.
So, that was where my love of music really started and it's carried on for the rest of my career as well. And then you actually went to university in Edinburgh. You also went to California. I mean, you you shifted quite around and then you you landed in the city. So, quite the Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, went to university in Edinburgh, studied history and politics, but also spent a year at university in in California. And also did a stint at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. during that time as well. So, yeah, I got around a little bit, but after all that traveling, eventually graduated and forgot all about my creative and musical background and decided to get a job in investment banking at HSBC. Uh, and sat myself down on a trading floor for a decade in equity capital markets. So, that was my that was my first sort of real career was was yeah, trading equities in in London. And even
before that, I guess they rewinding back a little bit, where do you think that love for music came from? You know, how how did you develop that? Uh, it was really given to me and my brother and sisters by my parents. Some of my earliest memories are of playing music. I would have had a violin in my hand at the age of three. We would go to City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which is a very famous orchestra. We went to see them quite a lot. And so, and I had two brothers as well. We had a band together. So, music was just always in our house and around our house and it was it was it was the lifeblood of everything we did. So, it was second nature to me to be playing music all the time. I still got it here. So, it's it's it's it's an incredibly important part of my life and and it always has been. That's incredible. Now, going to HSBC, being there in the city for 10 years, I mean, how
how how was that for you? Because there you were more, you know, after capital markets and quite quite the the the the shift here of events. Yeah, it it is. Although, I think that equity markets at their heart in a sense are about about telling stories, you know, and there is a creativity to that. I think if you're a good equity broker, you're able to create and tell a story that is really about the equity value of that business that you are that you're selling into those clients. Obviously, there's a there's an empirical part to it. There's a there's a trading element to it. And that was fun. And look, it's an incredibly vibrant and exciting environment to be in when you're young. And of course, I'm a little bit older when I was doing that, it was still very noisy. I think currently trading floors are pretty quiet these days. Everyone's just typing messages to each other, but we were
still shouting across the trading floor to each other at the time. So, it was good. I didn't sing to anybody there, but but maybe I should have done. I made it I might have made more money out of my clients maybe. Well, you you you always wanted to be a musician. So, eventually that bug came back to you. So, so make us insiders there like, "What what happened? You know, that So, this not for me maybe. Yeah. So, after a decade of of that environment, I really felt like I I had to had to really lean back into the creative the creative side of my life and I left the city and decided to write an album and I took that time out. I wrote an album and and I I absolutely loved it. I mean, I I became a full-time musician for for two or three years and that's actually where I met my now co-founder, Ken Blackwood, who is a very successful UK music producer and he actually produced my album. So,
that's where we first met. So, we became great friends during that process and then I went on to be do do do do that release my album and and did some you know, TV and radio and touring and and things like that. So, I had that whole experience. I I approached it in quite an empirical kind of business-like manner. I think that my first business my first manager in music, I think he said I was the only artist that had ever turned up to a meeting with a SWOT analysis on himself. Um so uh so which I did which I which actually I thought was completely logical way to approach it, but apparently that's not typically how artists um go into meetings with with managers and record labels. So >> What's your What What's your thing more on the vocals, the instrument? What What What is your thing as a musician? So uh what I was doing at the time, if I remember this rightly, and it's quite a long
time ago, I was doing a kind of a SWOT analysis and then a sort of market analysis against myself versus other male sing singer-songwriters and giving myself a heuristic value. And then I pitched myself and said I said, "This is where I think I land within this scope, and this is where I think the market looks like." I mean, I was literally taking the way that, you know, I would see, you know, investment banking teaches you to think about market positioning and opportunity and then putting putting that analysis on myself and then presenting it to to kind of uh my music my my manager and then music music label executives and who were pretty bewildered by it because I don't think they'd ever had anybody come in and say that to them. Um so so yeah >> so singer-songwriter was your thing? Singer-songwriter was my thing, yes. So I I put myself in the kind of the John Mayer kind of camp,
if you will. Obviously not as good not as talented. Tom, honestly, we've done here 1,200 of those episodes, and we've never had someone, you know, with a background similar to yours. I know this is going to be crazy, and I'm putting you on the spot here, but could you just serenade us for like 15 seconds or so so that we can so that we can get a glimpse of uh of that singer and songwriter? So my my biggest hit was a song called Shooting Stars. So the chorus of that goes, I could be your shooting [singing] star. There you go. [laughter] I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Tom. That's amazing. Thank you. That's great. So So So okay, so, singer-songwriter, you meet your co-founder, he's the one that also produces your album, which is amazing. You do that for some time, but then you go back to to corporate and working at the London Stock Exchange. I mean, I I think that I mean, don't
correct me, but at least from a founder, you know, a founder is always a founder, and they creative is always going to be creative. So, I'm sure that that was a a little bit of a tragedy going back to to the suit and tie. My soul died a little bit that day. No, like, you know what? I think the life of a true sort of creative and and and making a living out of that is incredibly difficult. It's incredibly tough, and and it requires a lot of time, effort, a bit of luck as well. You know, I decided that I wasn't necessarily going to make it work as as as as as as perhaps it needed to from a sort of sustainable perspective. And you look, and these opportunities arose, and I I was very lucky. A lot of artists don't really have that. A lot of artists can't fall back on on those kind of opportunities. And then secondly, the role that that I performed there at LSEG was really working with…