Sound Engineer
Web: arenawaves.com
Contact: [email protected], 310-926-2532
Most Recent: Arena Waves
Sound engineer and industry veteran Jeri Palumbo’s most recent project is Arena Waves, a partnership with music library FlikTrax to curate custom-licensed music and cutdowns for broadcast sports, e-sports, television, gaming and advertising. The company offers a catalog of readymade cutdowns for bumpers and highlights as well as music created in-house on-demand. At Arena Waves, Palumbo comes up with marketing strategies and works directly with the company’s staff composers and session musicians to create music to fit the style her clients are looking for.
Palumbo worked throughout 2020 to prepare for the company’s launch, while the COVID-19 pandemic left sports stadiums virtually or completely empty all year.
With 30 years’ experience, Palumbo developed her first engineering skills as a kid growing up in a musical household. “My parents were musicians, and when I was little, we all had reel-to-reels and tape machines and cassettes. We were always recording, and I would cut stuff and splice. I never thought of that as a profession. That was just the way to preserve the silly things we were creating,” she says. “Then I had an early job as an arranger and contracted for an indie artist. I was constantly in the studio, sitting there while an engineer was tracking and doing the mixdown, and the engineer was the magic. The music sounded totally different once the engineer got their hands on the tracks. I was completely enamored with the digital technology.”
Arena Waves officially launched in 2021. Palumbo says one of the company's unique qualities is that it make sure its composers and musicians get paid. “The paradigm in the business has shifted so much that artists just don’t make money the traditional way anymore, so we want to help with that,” she says. “The second thing is, we really are a bottom-up instead of top-down system. We want people’s feedback so we can mold this catalog into something they want to use.” •
