Ola Sars, Founder, CEO & Chairman of Soundtrack Your Brand

In this episode of M&A Science, Ola Sars shares the story of his 20-year journey disrupting the music industry—first by co-founding Beats Music (later acquired by Apple), and now as the visionary behind Soundtrack Your Brand. Ola dives into the bold thesis that’s guided his career, why he’s pursuing a buyer-led M&A approach to consolidate a fragmented background music market, and how he’s turning legacy customer bases into scalable SaaS revenue.

Things you will learn:

• How to turn a  product thesis into a long-term growth engine

• How Ola evaluates roll-up targets based on CAC and subscription quality

• What it takes to digitize a legacy industry with B2B SaaS

• Lessons from Beats Music, Apple, and Spotify on scaling and selling

______________________ This episode is sponsored by DealRoom! Turn your chaos into control. Tired of chasing updates across spreadsheets and email threads? Discover how DealRoom helps corporate development teams bring order to M&A. 👉 Learn how you can run a repeatable, buyer-led process   ___________ Join Kison at the DealMakers Forum in New York City! This event connects the most active players in M&A and corporate finance. Meet top M&A executives, investors, and deal advisors and discover how senior leaders structure and close high-value deals. Register Today! ________________________

Episode Chapters

[00:01:00] Introduction & Background 

[00:03:30] Early Thesis in Music Digitization

[00:04:30] Building and Selling Pacemaker and Let’s Mix

[00:06:00] Founding Beats Music & Apple Acquisition

[00:14:00] Lessons from Integration

[00:18:30] Starting Soundtrack with Spotify

[00:25:00] Licensing Challenges & Global Scale 

[00:28:30] Organic vs Inorganic Growth 

[00:30:00] The Soundtrack M&A Playbook

[00:33:00] Convincing Sellers to Join the Platform

[00:36:00] How Licensing Negotiations Built M&A Muscle

[00:46:00] Looking Ahead  Questions, comments, concerns? Follow Kison Patel for behind-the-scenes insights on modern M&A.