Elad Marish, Michael Frick Launch TopShelf Music
TopShelf Music, a new venture from music industry veterans Elad Marish, Founder and Executive Creative Director of Swell Music + Sound, and Michael Frick, who leads No Friction, his own music consultancy, has opened its doors. The service consolidates the partners’ decades of artist relationships into a curated creative infrastructure for brands and agencies.
TopShelf is designed to address an industry-wide conundrum, Elad and Michael say: There’s more music available to brands today than at any point in human history. Streaming catalogs contain hundreds of millions of tracks. AI is generating thousands more per day. Every brief can be answered in minutes. “And yet,” says Michael, “advertising sounds less distinctive, less attention-getting than ever. We’ve built TopShelf as a direct response to that contradiction.”
Not another licensing catalog nor another discovery algorithm, Top Shelf gives creative teams what Elad and Michael describe as a “trusted filter instead of another search bar.” TSM consolidates the duo’s combined networks across composers, recording artists, independent labels, and creative partners into a single, accessible point of contact for CMOs, agency creative directors, production companies, and music supervisors who, they say, “are tired of spending hours finding music that sounds like music they’ve already heard.”
“The problem is not that there isn’t enough music out there,” says Michael. “The problem is that the volume has made it nearly impossible to find something that actually fits the brand, the brief and the story.” Adds Elad, “Everyone is picking from the same algorithmic pile, which is why everything is starting to sound identical. We created TopShelf because we fervently believe that relationships and editorial judgment such as we have can produce better results than filters.”
Both Elad and Michael frame the launch as a market correction rather than a startup pitch: "The industry has been optimizing for access and volume for fifteen years,” Michael explains. “The result is creative teams drowning in options and brands that cannot be heard above the noise. At TopShelf, we’re not adding to the catalog, we’re providing the layer that was always missing.”
The timing of the launch addresses a pattern that has become impossible to ignore. Deadlines are shorter and in-house creative teams are stretched. “What once required a music supervisor with deep industry contacts now theoretically requires only a subscription,” Michael points out. “And the word ‘theoretically’ is doing a lot of work in that sentence.”
Top Shelf, they say, operates on a different premise. “Curation is not a feature, it’s the product,” Elad states. “We believe that volume without filtration is the condition that created the problem. Our offering reflects actual relationships with artists and composers who want their work placed thoughtfully, not just frequently. For brands, this means access to music that has not already been licensed to three competitors. For agencies, it means a creative partner who understands the difference between a track that fits a brief and a track that elevates a campaign.”
The TopShelf partners add distinctive backgrounds to this new venture. Michael has a solid background in brand partnerships across Apple, Google, DoorDash, and Nike, as well as cultural programming experience with FIFA and the NBA. Elad, the former National President of the Association of Music Producers, contributes a catalog-side perspective built through years of working across independent and mainstream artist ecosystems. The partnership positions TopShelf at the intersection of brand strategy and music operations.
TopShelf’s initial focus will be on the advertising, branded content, and cultural programming arena, with a particular emphasis on campaigns requiring original composition and exclusive licensing. Prospective clients include production companies, creative agencies, and brand teams that work in a direct-to-client model without agency intermediaries.
