Top-Shelf Tunes

Brahmstedt’s label partners with musicians to provide tracks that uniquely suit commercial interests. Courtesy of Ken Brahmstedt

If you’ve watched a television commercial within the last 25 years, you’re probably familiar with the work of Ken Brahmstedt ’86 — even if you didn’t know his name until now.

Brahmstedt is the founder and creative director of Black Label Music, a Minneapolis-based music publishing com-pany that has provided iconic commercial tracks for products such as Lexus automo-biles, Reese’s peanut buttercups, Dove soap, Honey Nut Cheerios, Helzberg Diamonds, and more.

“We’re in the business of chasing and creating trends,” Brahmstedt says.

Black Label specializes in production music: tracks created with the intention of being licensed for commercial use. This line of work wasn’t always trendy, but neither was Brahmstedt. The son of two classical musicians and graduates of the UW’s Mead Witter School of Music, he came to the UW to study trumpet performance with the hopes of making it professionally in an orchestra or big band. He followed his entrepreneurial instincts elsewhere.

“I’ve been in one giant pivot my whole career, and it started at the UW,” he says.

After creating music for film and television, writing original compositions, and working in independent production, Brahmstedt made a final pivot that landed him in his current music industry niche.

“It was [considered] a dirty business,” he says. “The term ‘sellout’ was an insult hurled at anyone who would sell their music to commercial interest.”

But after audio-sharing titan Napster turned the LP industry on its head and streaming services squandered once-viable sources of revenue, production music became more attractive for aspiring musicians.

“A kid coming out of college today would aim their music at a sync [licensing] company like Black Label,” Brahmstedt says.

True to its name, what sets Black Label apart is the quality of its product. Unlike production-music behemoths whose million-track catalogs license for cheap, Black Label partners with musicians to record bespoke tracks that uniquely suit commercial interests, provide ambiance to film and television, and stand alone as streamable works of art.

“I made a conscious effort to concentrate on quality over quantity and to sink more money, resources, and energy into every production,” Brahmstedt says. “Everything that we create has to sound genuine.”

This commitment to authenticity is the catalyst behind his latest pivot: a record label. After inquiries regarding the public availability of Black Label tracks, Brahmstedt created Grey Label Records as a repository for music attributed to his arsenal of up-and-coming artists.

“I love trying new things,” he says. “That’s what fires the entrepreneur soul, in my opinion. You have to have a wacky desire to explore.”

Published in the Fall 2024 issue