Although Artistic Outlet Media, or AOM Studios, is located in the middle of downtown Eugene, a casual passerby might never know it existed. An inconspicuous black door with no signage leads up a flight of stairs, above Buy2 and Krispy Krunchy Chicken, to the 6,000-square-foot media space. But the work produced at AOM, a production house and media company, reaches people around the world.
Located on the corner of Olive Street and East Broadway, AOM Studios provides clients with services like video shoots, photo shoots, set design, studio recording sessions and graphic design. Ife and Kelsey Adeniji, co-founders of the media company, spoke to me over the phone from Nigeria in the process of shooting a new music video project. Their journey began over a decade ago, where their passions for music, photography, content creation and visual arts led them to transform their creative ambitions into a career.
“We handle everything to help clients get their projects from conceptualization to delivery,” Ife said. “Clients could come to us with any part of their projects in need and we could satisfy it.”
Along with their hundreds of business clients and brands, they work with a myriad of up-and-coming and established musicians, creating music videos for over one thousand clients in the music world, including Snoop Dogg, Nappy Roots, Bun B and B.o.B, Ife said.
Kelsey said her journey into media production came from her introduction to photography in high school. Her grandparents, who were both professional globetrotting photographers, gifted her her first black and white camera, inspiring her to step in that direction.
Ife, who grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, was inspired by music from a young age. He was the only kid on his block with a satellite and access to MTV and would charge his friends to come to his house to watch Puff Daddy, Ma$e and Snoop Dogg videos. Eventually he moved to the United States, where he began to pursue music as a rapper in high school.
Kelsey and Ife met in high school, and later when Ife was beginning to get in touch with music labels, she began helping him shoot his own music videos, which eventually inspired them to take their production skills to another level.
“That kind of spiraled into something like ‘Wait, maybe we could make this into a business,’” Kelsey said. “Ife took over the editing of the music videos, and I wanted to stick with my photography. We were kind of going through this whole thing of dabbling in media at the time when it was kind of just starting out. This was 2011.”
At this point they were taking classes at Lane Community College, but they were beginning to build a clear vision for a promising business idea. With clients already knocking on their door, they knew they had something big.
“[Our music videos] were good enough for my friends, my other rap friends, to start calling us and offering us $200 to shoot their videos,” Ife said. “After a while it became a thing where we were doing like five videos a month, the price went up to like $500 and people kept coming.”
They quickly dropped out of LCC together, Ife set aside his music career, and they’ve never looked back.
“I was like ‘Screw rapping, dude! I’m gonna make videos and make real money,’” Ife said.
As a team, they took on their AOM project at full speed, traveling all around the country for various projects within a year of starting up, and eventually traveling all around the world. They take pride in their ability to reach so many people and make an impact on fellow artists’ dreams and trajectory, Ife said.
“One thing about us is we’ve never settled for mediocre production,” Ife said. “Our whole name has always been giving industry and mainstream stuff to you from Eugene.”
Kelsey said AOM’s focus going forward is on the studio itself and community engagement. Within the past year, they opened up their studio to the community for fellow creatives to take advantage of their space.
“My most rewarding thing is seeing the work that comes out of the studio,” Kelsey said. “When you get other people in there to go and create and see the work they’re producing out of your space, you see something that’s better than what they would have done on their own — a higher level.”
AOM Studios has come a long way over the past 11 years, and its owners said they want to light those creative sparks for others in Eugene.
“No one is promised anything. The world owes you nothing,” Ife said. “So knowing everything that has transpired in the decade, the journey has been better than what I thought it would be.”
