Swell started in 2009 because we wanted to be the place that does all the things — music, sound design, VO, mix, sonic branding — under one roof, without the handoffs. Michael Frick handles music strategy, supervision, and licensing on the other side. You send us a brief. We handle the rest. No back-and-forth between vendors. No creative that gets lost in translation.
Your Story, Our Sound. · swellmusicsound.com
Most post houses have great engineers but no real musical brain. Most music houses don't do post. We've always lived in the middle — and that's exactly where the interesting work happens. Founded in 2009. Based at Airship Labs in Richmond. Working with brands nationally since before remote sessions were standard.
We've got a permalance team of composers and engineers we trust completely — and Elad takes the fancy mix jobs himself. Analog at heart (Neve, Neumann, Gibson, the whole thing) and fully distributed since COVID. Send us an OMF or an AAF. We'll send you back something that makes the edit feel inevitable.
Michael is my partner on the music strategy and licensing side. He knows what labels will actually accept, what a track will realistically cost before anyone falls in love with the temp, and how to structure artist deals that hold up. He's done brand partnerships at Apple, Google, DoorDash, Nike, FIFA, and the NBA. He's the person you want in the room when the brief says "find us something like Perfume Genius."
We've done our homework. Here's what we heard — and where we come in.
Honestly? Your music choices are some of the best in tech advertising right now. You're not doing the thing where a brand picks whatever's trending on Spotify and calls it a direction. You're picking real tracks — Ratatat, Perfume Genius, Minnie Riperton — with intention. Songs that feel like the last scene of a film, not the opening of an app demo.
The thread across everything we've heard is warmth. Nostalgia. The feeling that AI is something you do life alongside, not something that replaces it. That's a genuinely sophisticated music brief — and it's the kind of thing Swell was built to extend.
Where we come in is the work a license can't do: original score that you own, sound design that makes a product moment feel like it was always supposed to sound that way, and a mix that holds up across every format you're going to need.
We've watched too many jobs go sideways because the music supervisor and the audio post house never talked to each other. The track gets locked, then nobody checked what it costs to clear. The mix gets delivered, then the music doesn't sit right in it. With Michael and Elad on the same brief, that doesn't happen.
Elad started Swell in 2009 on a surf trip to Mexico when the name hit him as a triple entendre. Former National President of the Association of Music Producers. He takes the marquee mix jobs personally — Nike, Meta, the Warriors, Atlassian, Cutwater, CrunchLabs. The team handles the volume. Elad handles the stuff where it really matters.
Michael and Elad co-founded Topshelf Music in March 2026. Before that he built brand partnerships at Apple, Google, DoorDash, Nike, FIFA, and the NBA — and ran No Friction as his own music consultancy. He's the person we call when the conversation turns to what a label will actually sign off on, or what an artist deal should look like. He knows the difference between a track that fits a brief and a track that elevates a campaign.
Most projects end up pulling from both sides — a licensed track plus original score, or supervision plus mix. But you can bring us any piece of this and we'll handle it.
Michael sets the music direction, runs the search, and brings you real options — not a single answer with no room to move. From initial brief through final selection, he's in the room.
Both sides cleared — sync and master. Michael negotiates with publishers and labels directly, knows what things actually cost, and delivers documentation that holds up. No surprises in post.
Identifying and structuring deals with artists and producers for brand campaigns — from concept through signed agreement, with knowledge of what labels and management will accept.
If you've never had someone think about music the way you think about creative direction, this is that. Michael builds the brief, aligns the cross-agency team, and gives your music a consistent point of view across every campaign.
Music written for the brief and owned by you. No clearance, no competing licenses, no "someone else already used this." Every genre. Every tone. We love to press record — this is the best part of the job.
Frame-accurate, narrative sound design that makes a product moment feel inevitable. We spent years sliding single sounds one frame at a time — it's the most obsessive part of this craft and we're genuinely good at it.
Send us your OMF or AAF. We send you back a final mix that makes the whole spot better. Every format, every delivery spec. This is what most of our client relationships start with — and why they keep coming back.
Remote via Source-Connect or in-person at Airship Labs in Richmond. We cast, direct, and edit — and we've been doing this long enough to know how to get a performance out of a VO session that sounds like a real person, not a spot.
We built the United Healthcare sonic identity alongside Turner Duckworth and Leo Burnett. Audio mnemonics, sonic logos, the whole system — designed to hold up across product UI, advertising, events, and every touchpoint in between.
7,500+ tracks that we hand-curated — not an algorithm's idea of what brands want. Pre-cleared, prompt-searchable, direct from the source. When you need something fast that doesn't sound like everyone else's fast option, this is it.
We've been at this since 2009. The work spans Nike Super Bowl campaigns, Meta's Reels library (500 custom tracks a year for seven years), the Golden State Warriors across four seasons, and a lot of the Bay Area tech world in between. We love all of it.
I've had a great experience working with Swell for voiceover and sound design. They're true pros who make the technical side easy to navigate and their friendly, approachable style makes the whole process enjoyable.
We love working with Swell! We're so happy to have found amazing audio post partners in the Bay.
Send us whatever you've got — a brief, a vague idea, a temp track you love and want something like. We get back fast. If it's a licensing or music strategy question, Michael is the better first call. Either way, you're going to hear from a real person who cares about this stuff.
