01 — The brief
A new category of music software, built on the operational reality the industry runs on.
Team is a release management platform built to bring visibility, orchestration and operational control to modern music rollouts. It replaces the spreadsheets, Slack threads, shared drives and email chains that labels, managers and artists currently use to coordinate releases — with a single source of truth for the entire release lifecycle.
Studio Nine partnered with Team from pre-launch, embedded as the company's end-to-end strategic marketing and go-to-market function. Studio Nine founder Simon Lodge serves as CMO for Team, leading positioning, brand, GTM and growth infrastructure alongside the founding team.
02 — The challenge
Define a new category. Launch a SaaS into a relationship-driven industry. Build the engine to scale it.
Modern release campaigns are operationally chaotic — every release touches a dozen tools, ten stakeholders and zero shared visibility. The opportunity wasn't to ship another productivity tool; it was to define an entirely new category: the release operating system. That meant building the strategic narrative, the brand, the digital surface and the growth infrastructure simultaneously, while the product itself was still being shaped.
And music is a category that doesn't respond to generic SaaS marketing. Trust is earned through specificity, fluency and credibility within the industry — not louder messaging.
03 — Our role
Embedded leadership across strategy, brand and growth.
We didn't build a marketing department around Team — we built marketing into the company. From category positioning down to the daily rhythm of content, GTM and CRM, Studio Nine operates as Team's marketing function. The work spans the same surfaces a high-performing in-house team would own, executed at startup speed.
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01
Category & positioning strategy
Defined Team as the release operating system — a new category framed around visibility, orchestration and operational control rather than feature comparison with generic project tools.
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02
Go-to-market strategy
Built the GTM plan from the ground up — ICP definition, segmentation, messaging frameworks, funnel design and launch sequencing across labels, managers and artist teams.
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03
Brand & messaging architecture
Shaped how Team looks, sounds and shows up — visual identity, narrative system, value proposition layers and the language the platform uses across every surface.
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04
Website & digital platform
Designed and built the marketing site as both a brand statement and a conversion engine — modern, intelligent, operationally credible to anyone who has ever run a release.
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05
Custom CRM & GTM infrastructure
Off-the-shelf CRMs don't understand the music industry. We architected a bespoke CRM and growth stack tailored to Team's workflows — signal-driven outreach, music-industry-aware data model, integrated marketing ops.
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06
Content, comms & founder-led social
Run the always-on communications ecosystem — campaigns, founder content, social, launch comms and community narrative that positions Team as a thought leader on modern music operations.
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07
Embedded executive leadership
Simon Lodge serves as Chief Marketing Officer for Team, sitting in the executive team and leading strategy and execution alongside the founders.
Impact
A company shaped to scale on day one.
"Studio Nine isn't our agency — they're our marketing team. They built the strategy, brand, website and growth engine we're scaling on."Founding team Team
Studio Nine team
- Marcus, Studio Nine — Account Direction
- Simon, Studio Nine — CMO & Strategy
- Priya, Studio Nine — Brand & Design
- Eli, Studio Nine — Engineering & GTM Stack
- Chiara, Studio Nine — Growth
- Naomi, Studio Nine — Content & Comms
Disciplines
- Strategy & Positioning
- Go-to-Market
- Brand & Visual Identity
- Website Design & Build
- Custom CRM & Marketing Ops
- Content & Communications
Status
- Engagement: 2025 — ongoing
- Sector: Music technology / SaaS
- Role: Embedded CMO & marketing function
Next case
Mercado Labs