Founded by the principals of Sterling Sound, Studium 33 provides software services that improve digital workflow for the music production business. Over the past 20 years the business of music production become more challenging for everyone. The volume of projects has increased, production teams are larger, clients are less organized, budgets are lower and deadlines are tighter”.
Collectively, these places a huge burden on studio operations. Whether a one-man show or a large commercial studio, the same workflow and administrative tasks are required for every project. These include file transfers, archiving, estimating, booking, approvals, invoicing, collections and financial reporting.
Studium 33 develops software services that improve digital workflow for the music production business
For over fifteen years Sterling Sound has been developing software solutions to run studios. For the first time these tools are available for license. Deploying software at one of the world’s busiest studios gives the luxury of constant feedback from both staff and clients. It allows for continual refinement of features and user experience.
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Meet Our Team
Studium 33 is the culmination of almost twenty years studying the music production workflow and developing systems to improve it. I am excited about the opportunity to offer process and reliability to a highly decentralized business.
Digital audio files are the lingua franca of the music production business. Consider the sheer volume of files created and transferred between artists, recording engineers, producers, mixers, mastering engineers, and record company executives on any given production. All this workflow is accomplished with a few ad-hoc tools. There are no integrated systems to manage any one stage of the production process, let alone across all stages.
People that license Certified Transfers™ and Certified Archives™ will experience a more streamlined responsive workflow. Imagine the power if record producers adopted Certified Transfers for all studios and collaborators on a project. The metadata, transfer history and long-term access to files (from the very first tracks recorded to mixing to mastering) could be viewed and accessed through one application.
I've been developing software for thirty-seven years. At eighteen, just out of high school, I cut my teeth at Digital Equipment learning mainframe programming in FORTRAN and COBOL. From there I moved to Lotus Development and later Iris Associates developing for Lotus Notes. When Lotus was sold to IBM, I co-founded several startups in the Boston area including Groove Networks (acquired by Microsoft), Glassbook (acquired by Adobe) and Director (acquired by YouTube).
In 2003 I met Murat, beginning a five year collaboration developing workflow systems for Sterling Sound. One of these was eMastering, Sterling's MFT (managed file transfer system). Revolutionary for its time, eMastering became the backbone of Sterling's electronic workflow for fifteen years. Many of the ideas for an integrated file management system came out of this experience, but the development hurdles were too great before cloud computing.
In 2009 I was recruited by my old boss and partner Ray Ozzie who had just been named the Chief Software Architect of Microsoft. For eight years I worked on various development teams including the Azure Cloud Platform team. In 2017 Murat and I reconnected and sparked up the old discussions. It was immediately clear that we could harness cutting-edge technologies from Electron, Node.js, Firebase, Azure SQL Database and Azure Blob / Archive Storage to build a fast, secure and highly scalable transfer and archiving service for digital files.
The result is Certified Transfers™ and Certified Archives™. What I'm most proud of the ease of use. With just a few clicks anyone can request files from other people, send files to other people and receive files from other people, with automatic metadata capture and long-term archiving built in.
As a working designer for more than 25 years, I live to enhance brands and products through captivating creative. My approach is human-centered, and my best skill is the ability to solve problems by combining functional ideas with enough visual magic to excite.
I learned typography by getting press ink on my hands and learned film lighting and contrast in the studio and dark room. When I discovered pixels and a peripheral, I became insatiably consumed with not just static media, but film, music, and animation. This ‘renaissance-man’ streak enabled access to many facets of the creative industry.
In the early 2000s, I jumped into agency work and print advertising. I naturally moved towards interfaces and marketing concepts, helping startups at various stages—from securing VC funding to consumer launches. Independently, I became a sought-after designer in the Boston music community, took part in multi-media installations, and founded a motion design and 3D animation studio delivering for brands such as Nike, Marvel, ABC, NBC, Amblin, MTV…
I met Murat in 2002, shortly after moving to New York, and we quickly bonded over the appeal of some work of mine he’d come across—we’ve been working together ever since, branching out from Sterling Sound and shipping a wide spectrum of products for a broad range of clients—from the Rolling Stones to Rolling Stone magazine.
Today, I lead product design at a publishing company, delivering unique archive experiences for top publications such as Esquire, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and others.
I’m also art directing for content platforms such as Netflix. Working with production companies from initial concept though production and delivery, I create title sequences, set designs, and visual effects.
Having always been pulled into the orbit of music production, I’ve enjoyed working closely with top engineers, producers, artists, and audio hardware/software creators. The deep understanding of their creative process has led to Certified Transfers™— I believe our system can greatly facilitate and improve the audio professional’s day-to-day workflow as well as provide future peace of mind.
