About us

SongLily is the brainchild of software law and music industry experts Les Borsai and Jodi Chall, who have discovered a new and innovative approach to market popular music to app and video game developers. Responding to the growing frustration voiced by developers trying to navigate the byzantine world of record industry licensing laws, SongLily was created to streamline the licensing process and give record labels a virtual marketplace to showcase and license their vast catalogs.

Today, even the savviest developers can find themselves baffled by the licensing process. It's not as simple as knowing who the singer and record label are; they must also know who owns the license for the song which can take days or weeks to uncover. The label will want to review their app and ask for their cut of the proceeds; for developers planning to create a free app, this cost can be a deal breaker.

SongLily is the only company on the planet that offers sync licensing for major label songs with an online click-through agreement and a flat fee payment. It allows record companies to market their music in a way that promotes ease-of-use and developers the ability to do what they do best - create kickass games and apps.

SongLily is based in San Mateo, CA.

Team

Co-founded by Les Borsai and Jodi Chall in 2012, and joined by CTO and head of engineering John Toupin, the SongLily team is the secret sauce behind the success of SongLily.

Les Borsai, Co-founder and CEO

Les Borsai's 25-year career in the music and entertainment industry has included every facet of artist management, publicity, marketing, co-op, advertising, and distribution. His Los Angeles-based company, gridMob, quickly emerged as a top iPhone app developer when it introduced iOKi, a franchise game, combining the best of music and gaming into an interactive, social media karaoke game with storefront to purchase additional songs. Borsai executed deals with EMI, Sony/ATV, Universal Music Publishing Group, Disney Music Group and Warner/Chappell. To date, gridMob apps have surpassed 10 million downloads.

Les Borsai Consulting was founded in 2010 with the mission of defining new business models for content acquisition from record companies and music publishers. While most mobile companies were still offering revenue shares to game and app developers, Les changed the model and convinced the record companies and publishers to accept flat fees for the use of their compositions. Clients have included Neowiz Games, Restoration Hardware, Conduit, UJAM, Dysonics, Membran Entertainment Group, Audiosocket, Monstrous, Biobeats, Peercover and Ripple.

Jodi Chall, Co-founder and COO

Jodi began her career as a litigator/trial lawyer at the top rated Minneapolis firm Meagher and Geer. She moved to California, (took another bar exam) and spent a year learning the Silicon Valley ways of the world at iManage. She returned to the practice of law and for the next ten years represented a variety of small business owners, musicians, artists, music managers, small record labels, film producers and start-ups. She left in 2010 to move in-house with gridMob, a client of hers at the firm and a company innovating in the mobile music space. After successfully completing catalog sync licensing deals with all the major labels and publishers and branding deals with artists and helping to launch three mobile karaoke apps (iOki, Lady Gaga iOki and Jason Derulo iOki), Jodi moved on to the software world. Jodi became legal counsel and eventually Director of Legal and Operations for Conduit, an Israeli-based billion dollar software company.

Jodi co-founded SongLily with Les in 2012. She manages all operations and financial matters of the company on a daily basis, handles all legal matters, including negotiating and drafting all label and publisher contracts and managing outside patent and corporate counsel. She also manages the process of ensuring every track has contracts and approvals from the label and all publishing interests.

John Toupin, CTO

John joined SongLily as CTO in January 2014. He brings to the SongLily team over 30 years of hands-on technical and management experience at a variety of Silicon Valley start-ups. In 1998, he hired on as the first employee at Internet radio pioneer Live365.com, where he spent over 14 years leading both technical and business efforts as Director of Engineering and member of the Senior Management Team. Live365 ran cloud-based B2B and B2C subscription and ad-based business utilizing its own web, PC, Mac, and mobile clients and 3rd party CE clients. Since leaving Live365 in 2012, John served as a technical/business consultant to a handful of clients, including SongLily, where he has built out the entire service including the client-facing front end and the extensive administrative interfaces.

John holds an ScB in Computer Science from Brown University.