Stephen Stallings is a New York-based music licensing professional with over a decade of experience in music supervision and production for brands as well as music editing, songwriting, producing, and performing. Stephen is currently the Senior Director of Creative Sync for Advertising at Silver Side Productions, where he pitches a diverse catalog featuring everything from legacy acts to current independent artists for use in advertising. Most recently, he licensed The Everly Brothers’ “Bird Dog” for a currently running Amazon commercial.
Having been on both sides of the advertising music process, Stephen has a unique perspective on the creative and logistical processes a song goes through in order to be licensed for an advertisement. In his previous position as an in-house agency music supervisor at Dentsu, he oversaw the music licensing and production process for clients including American Express, 7-Eleven, Verizon, New Orleans Tourism, United Airlines, Audible, Crayola, and many more. His work for 7-Eleven’s Anything Flowscampaign, featuring Flo Milli, garnered the Best Brand + Artist Collaboration award in the 2024 AMP Awards, Best Use of Music bronze in the Shots Awards, and Spotify Hits’ honors for Most Innovative Audio Campaign and Best Overall Campaign.
Stephen comes from New Orleans by way of Houston and has a degree in Music Business from Belmont University in Nashville. Perhaps his great accomplishment is that an ad he worked on was parodied on a 2023 Mardi Gras float.