THE MARKSMEN is a free-agent producers network with members specializing in Hip-Hop track production, R&B & Soul music production and songwriting, Music for TV & Radio Ads, TV & Film scoring, and Sound Design.

Frustrated by all-too-common obstacles to track placement with record labels, Mark Hines, formerly co-head of Russell Simmons new media endeavor 360HipHop, launched THE MARKSMEN in 2002 as a suite of products and services to solve the problem for himself and a handful of other talented producers and musicians. Hines determined that if he could standardize not only the creative tools but also the sales, promotion, and distribution mechanisms used in the track placement process, he could more readily repeat, the few and far-between successes he had experienced in his then 7 years of professional production. Further, by leveraging new computing technologies, as was his focus of study at Princeton University, he could repeatedly beat the competition by delivering more focused music content in quick succession while a production opportunity was still open for submissions. 

Together with media engineers Selwyn Hinds (former Editor in Chief of The Source Magazine and co-author of the critically acclaimed “To A Young Jazz Musician” with Wynton Marsalis), Guy Routte (Artist Manager & Deal Man, Sara Devine, Columbia Records), Hines deployed Marksmen products and services to unify and cultivate the content of it's members.