Gary Hilton – CEO of Gas Music

A day in the life. Meet Gary Hilton, CEO of Gas Music, a music and sound design studio that started up at MediaCity in 2016. The studio composes music for advertising, TV, film, radio, gaming and more. He describes running a business at MediaCity.

“MediaCity was the right place for us to set up; it was the right address. We had huge support from The Landing (now HOST); the people there were and still are ambitious and inspiring for content and tech-based businesses like ours. We love music, and we love what we do. We work with our clients from end to end; we come up with concepts and invite our clients to be part of the creative process. We have musicians in-house, and so we can do everything from sound design and composition to producing, mixing, mastering and delivery. It’s a turn-key audio service.

Our biggest growth was during the pandemic. There’s a Bruce Lee saying, be like a cork: when the waves are high, you’re in the middle, and when the waves are low, you’re still in the middle. You drop and rise but you can still see where you’re going. There were some scary days at the start, so we started a podcast – the latest had 30,000 listens. The only reason we got through was because we knew we needed to stay active, do something to help us recover – and the podcast brought in a lot of new work. It gave us that resolve. Hence, we’ve been like the cork.”