In the summer of 2024, Frank Louis was ready to put his house on the market and move from Nashville to Texas. His music career was not where he wanted it to be, and he was taking a break from his Music Business bachelor’s degree program at Berklee Online after having two kids during the pandemic.
“I got to a point where I was like, ‘I think that I’m just going to stop doing music altogether,’ and I put my house up for sale,” he says. “And I mean, I listed my house on the market, and was about to move to Houston. And then, I don’t know. There was something about getting that close to that moment of finality that was like, ‘Let’s really give it one more go.’”
Frank had one year left in his program, so he decided to stay in Nashville and give himself one year to finish his degree and try to make progress in his music career. If it didn’t work out, he would put his house back on the market and move on. He called this his year of “yes.”
“I’m saying ‘yes’ to everything, every opportunity that comes,” he says. “Don’t turn anything down, even if it makes you uncomfortable, even if you think you’re not ready for the opportunity. I had been telling everybody that this is the year of ‘yes.’”
Exactly one year later, Frank’s music is featured on a new ad for Major League Baseball (MLB) that began airing July 4th and will run through the rest of the 2025 baseball season. And “exactly one year later” is no exaggeration; he listed his house on the market July 4th weekend of 2024.
Stepping up to the Plate
In January 2025, Frank enrolled in Berklee Online’s Writing and Producing Advertising Music course, authored by Peter Bell and taught by Katie Day, a Berklee alum and the creative director of Shortcake Music. Katie took the course in 2018 and stayed in touch with Peter as she started up her music production house (the basis of a 2020 Take Note profile). In 2024, when Peter retired, he asked Katie to take over teaching the Berklee Online course.
“He mentored me and that was incredibly helpful to get my company off the ground, and then we just kept in touch,” says Katie about Peter. “He casually mentioned at one point that whenever he does retire, would I be interested in teaching the class, because it’s a very niche industry. And I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, yeah, that would be such an honor!’”
As an elective course towards his degree program, Frank didn’t go into Writing and Producing Advertising Music with any expectations.
“Honestly, it was just a class I signed up for,” he says. “I never would have even thought of myself as a composer. Singer, songwriter, producer, sure, but specifically scoring to picture—it just wasn’t something that I had really explored.”
As it turns out, Frank had a knack for writing music for advertising and Katie picked up on his talent.
“Frank was asking all the right questions,” she says. “He was there to really be a sponge, and to learn as much as he could about the industry and how it works. That made me feel like he was going places, because that’s how I was when I took the class in 2018. I was there to be a sponge and to ask questions and to learn as much as I could, so I could actually go do it in the world.”
Baseball Is Something Else
After the semester ended, Katie’s company was hired to collaborate on an ad for MLB’s “Baseball Is Something Else” campaign with Good Sports Creative, an advertising agency in Portland, Oregon. The campaign, which initially launched in 2023, was part of an initiative to attract younger fans to baseball, which coincided with new rule changes.
A die-hard Chicago Cubs fan (who has mixed feelings about the new rule changes), this wasn’t Katie’s first time working on a baseball campaign. In 2016, her song “By the Lakeside” became the Cubs’ victory song when they won the World Series. And in 2024, Katie arranged a mashup of “California Love” and “Empire State of Mind” for an ad promoting the highly anticipated World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees.
“That was really fun to do an edit of those two songs together, and then from there we got in with this company [Good Sports Creative] that does a lot of work for MLB,” says Katie. “I’ve always been really into baseball, so the fact that the coolest stuff that we’ve gotten to do now is a handful of things for MLB, it’s my dream come true, obviously.”
Swinging for the Fences
Once Shortcake had been hired for the 2025 “Baseball Is Something Else” ad, it was on Katie to compile some demos to pitch MLB—she wrote a few, her partner wrote some, and she brought in two composers to contribute, including Frank, which eventually led to another dream come true. Each composer received a demo fee, and the one whose track was chosen would go on to score the full ad.
“I remember Katie saying to me towards the end of the class, ‘Frank, we are going to work together,’” he says. “I didn’t know whether or not it was going to turn out. It’s just one of those things like, ‘Okay, keep me in mind if anything comes up.’ Two weeks later, Katie called me and was like, ‘I got something.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, well, what are we looking at?’ And she said MLB. And I’m just like, ‘I’m sorry, what?’”
Katie stresses that the chance to write a demo was exactly that: a chance.
“I wasn’t like, ‘I’m putting all of this on you, and I’m trusting you with this right away.’ I was like, ‘Here’s a demo fee if you want to take a shot at this.’ So it was not going to be a ton of skin off my back if it didn’t work out.”
Knocking It Out of the Park
Out of the 25 demos Katie submitted for Shortcake, Frank’s was the one that MLB wanted to move forward with.
“I was just so shocked—I’m still shocked at the magnitude of the opportunity, but then also, wow, she really trusts me to take this on,” says Frank about Katie. “To see someone have that level of confidence and support in you makes you look at yourself and say, ‘Man, you really are doing this! You really have what it takes!’ And I think that’s what Katie was for me. She was so supportive and really championed me in the work that I was doing.”
That kicked off a fast-moving, collaborative process, refining the track, scratching it completely, changing genres, and arriving at a hip-hop sound with Latin flair that MLB was happy with. At first Frank was working with a brief and a storyboard, and then once the commercial was shot, he had to edit the song to the picture, and send back revisions.
“It’s a very rigorous process,” he says. “It was one thing hearing Katie talk about it in class, and it’s a whole other ball game—I promise that pun is not intended—when you’re in it. Things are subject to change nothing is set in stone until it’s set in stone.”
The Heart of the Game
Katie said she didn’t know about Frank’s year of “yes” and that he almost gave up on music altogether.
“It just really makes me feel so fulfilled in what I’m doing with my life, like it is making an impact, and it means something to somebody,” says Katie tearfully. “There have been times when I almost gave up, too, and I feel like you almost have to get to that point a couple of times. And then when you overcome that, you’re just in it to win it, no matter what, and that’s kind of where I’ve been now for the last couple of years.”
Frank seems to be headed in that direction as well. In May, he walked at Berklee’s 2025 Commencement ceremony and is expected to graduate with his bachelor’s degree in Music Business in the fall. He also founded his own business called Sound Famous, offering scoring, composition, and sound design services.
“Your whole life can change in one year,” says Frank. “This wasn’t something I was looking for. I didn’t even know it existed. I was just taking a class, and because of what I was doing, because of who I was, and what I was contributing, someone saw value in me.”
