Introduction

Universal Production Music is a large music production company that creates and licenses tracks for use in movies, television, advertising, and media. 


With more than 4,000 active albums from 40 global libraries, the UPM catalog spans every genre and features original works from some of the music industry’s most innovative composers, artists and producers.

The biggest problem for Universal was the necessity to balance tools, communication, and timing. Take a look at how the company used Pibox on such a large scale and how this affected its workflow.

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The Challenge

Before Pibox, the average project management algorithm at Universal Production Music looked like this:

Just one track could take weeks to finalize. So for a large music production company like Universal, which must process multiple tracks daily, building a centralized system that lets you exchange files, communicate, monitor deadlines and keep checklists was a priority. The company found a fast and efficient solution in Pibox. Take a look at the results.

All the tools consolidated in one system

In total, Universal Production Music used to work with 8+ tools to wrap up just one project:


• Box/Dropbox – for deliveries
• FTP/WireDrive/FileMaker – for file exchange
• YouSendIt, because the external composer would eventually just send it like that anyway
• Email for communication
• Trello/MusicGateway – for communication and project tracking
• Excel – because everyone had to track stuff on Excel…


That meant hours of switching between different channels, not to mention the subscription fees. Pibox was initially designed to be a combination of a communication service, a review platform, cloud storage, and a data gatherer. So, implementing necessary features, making the entire workflow fully visible and comprehensible was a simple, almost intuitive process.

With Pibox, Universal is able to monitor every stage of production step-by-step, locate issues, and nip them in the bud by immediately bringing them up for discussion via communication channels. Additionally, all files were transferred and structured within the service, allowing to considerably reduce upload and download time.

Unrestrained creative communication

To ensure that Universal Production Music enjoys top-notch communication between managers and composers, Pibox created a separate channel for each track and equipped it with options to comment and provide instant feedback. It became a perfect addition to chat, allowing the composers to break every track down, second by second, leaving notes and suggestions for everyone to see. Moreover, Universal Production Music let other creative departments, such as Marketing, pilot Pibox, enabling them to work on their projects without any communication setbacks.

In addition to these improvements to the production process, the new system was very easy to learn and master, allowing Universal to spend less time training new employees and get down to business.

All data compiled into deliverables

Finalizing and submitting all the files in the right order is the ending point of each production process at Universal Production Music. It’s critical to keep content structured and placed in corresponding folders because the team needs to see how the end result fits the initial inquiry. Pibox solved this challenge by placing checklists directly into the file system. In other words, the team can now view the entire progress, the percentage of files added. 
This simple solution made the entire process of finalization much faster and allowed all the participants to synchronize their tasks within one list. It means that the manager no longer has to request to submit the content or constantly refer to a self-made list. Every member of the team now has access to a shared collaboration list with everything necessary at hand.
According to Universal Production Music, this change saved the studio’s producers days and even weeks of back and forth.

Repetitive tasks automated

At such a large company as Universal Production Music, there’s no end to processes that can be and should be automated. After a repetitive tasks research, the company implemented the following automation features:


• Automated content transfer between review channels
• Auto-saving checklist templates
• Bulk collaboration structure creation

Having replaced over eight key applications with Pibox, Universal Production Music was able to pick up the speed and let managers and composers dedicate themselves to creating more new, unique tracks each month. The company continues to use Pibox as a one-for-all communication and creativity channel to this day.