TuneCorner

Help! I Have 24 Hours to Save a Horrible Mix, Part II

Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, engineer and the owner of recording studios in both Nashville and New York City. Cliff is also a regular contributor to EQ Magazine and Pro Sound News. He can be reached at [email protected].

Part 2

Too Late! I’ve Only Got 24 Hours To Fix My Horrible Mix

OK, so you didn’t have a chance to read the first part of this article before you made the mistake of promising your mix to someone in the music industry and, as it stands, the mix just isn’t going to cut it. What do you do? Well, there are a variety of options and, as with almost everything in life, it’s only a matter of money. After explaining a bit about why a mix may be horrible, I’m going to give you three financial scenarios and how you can repair your mix in each of them. By the way, no matter what the scenario, be clear with the engineer up front that you’re under a considerable time crunch and give them an exact deadline. This way, there can be no misunderstanding about when you need your mix.

Why Does My Mix Sound Horrible?!?

For the sake of this article, we’re going to limit ourselves to the mix itself as the culprit. Often, especially early in one’s recording career, the bigger issues of a mix go back to the actual recorded performances. Unless the players/singers involved have a decent amount of studio experience, their performances tend towards the tentative or worse. But as I said, we’re going to assume the performances are solid and it really is a mix issue. Mixes can sound bad for a variety of reasons and this article is not really the venue for a technical explanation so I’ll keep the following descriptions brief. If you’re a beginning sound engineer here are a few things to think about. With the instruments, it generally comes down to a lack of each instrument having its own place in a mix whether for reasons of volume, panning, EQ or compression. With vocals, the issue is usually clarity (level, EQ & compression) and effects (reverb, delay, etc.). When a mix sounds dull and unexciting, it’s generally because things are over-compressed. If you’re not a sound engineer and you’ve gotten your mix back from someone who is (or claimed to be) and you’re not happy, the above descriptions are a good place to start when describing your problems to your new mix engineer.

Scenario #1 – Money Is No Object

For obvious reasons, this is the best position to be in with a bad mix and very little time to fix it. There are some real miracle workers out there who can take a crummy mix and bring the whole thing to life in relatively short order. Also, even though these folks are busy, it’s likely that not every one of the projects they’re working on is urgent. Your best bet would be to come in, explain the urgency of your situation and bring the mix (and mix files) with you so the engineer in question can give it a look/listen on the spot. Without necessarily saying you’ve got all the money in the world to throw at this mix, simply say that you understand this is last minute and you need their best work right away. Ask them what their fee would be (they ought to be able to give you a very close estimate) and accept. This is not the time to haggle as you’re asking for a lot from someone who is probably busy enough to say “thanks but no thanks” if you start to negotiate. By the way, whether you have the money right now or not, it’s in your best interest to familiarize yourself with the best engineers/studios in your area. You might not need them now but some day you might. It’s generally free to go visit a studio and talk to the owner or engineer and get a sense of their capabilities and rates.

Scenario #2 – You’ve Got A Few Hundred Bucks

You’ve got a couple of options here. First, you might want to ask a top engineer if they know of anyone who’d be willing to work for less. Often, top engineers have assistants who do good work and would love a chance to work on something at a more reasonable rate. A second-and perhaps better-option is to consider the world of independent producer/engineers who are in every town especially the music towns of Nashville, New York and LA. These guys might not have the reputations of the big engineers but will still do excellent work at reasonable rates.

Scenario #3 – You’re Out of Money

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you’re kind of screwed. You can pass up whatever opportunity was 24 hours away and hope that when your finances are a bit more flush you can go in and repair what’s wrong. Or you can turn the mix in as is. In this scenario, I’d almost always opt for passing on the opportunity. In the music industry, it’s very easy to poison the well by turning in something that isn’t ready for prime time. It’s better to make up an excuse and pass than to turn in something half-baked.

However, there are a few other options. First, the same top engineer that has assistants might also have interns. These guys might get the use of the studio from 2am to 8am and would be willing to work for nothing to gain experience and your loyalty. It’s certainly worth asking the top engineer if there are any interns who’d like to do the mix. The downside, of course, is that you’ll be working with an intern and there’s no guarantee you’ll get something better than what you’ve already got. Then again, you might. Second, if you’re really creative, talented, and lucky as all hell, there may be another way. Let’s assume you’ve got a terrific song and an almost “sure thing” to get it placed. You can always offer an engineer a significant piece of the pie if/when the song gets placed. Let’s assume the engineer loves the song and understands that there’s real potential. In a best-case scenario, the song does generate income and you end up giving half or more to the engineer. Be aware that this could end up being much more money for the engineer than the original mix would have cost you had you paid directly. You’ll have to chalk it up to experience and look at the placement as more of a resume builder than an income generator. I feel the need to say that this scenario is extremely rare. Most talented mix engineers are making a living by being paid for their work and not by taking chances on songs that are brought to them by unknown clients at the last minute. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I’m a firm believer that if you want to earn income from your music, you have to treat it like a well-run business.

Your Best Bet

No matter which of the above scenarios you find yourself in, you’ll have sacrificed the one thing that music has to offer over most other businesses…fun. By adding a tight deadline, you’ve just introduced stress into the equation that, in most cases, could have been avoided. As I mentioned in the first part of this article, when it comes to mixing, your best bet is to be methodical, patient and sure you’ve got a mix you’re proud of before you start finding uses for it. After all, this is music we’re talking about and enjoying the process of making it is one of the best things a career in music has to offer.

Help! I Have 24 Hours to Save a Horrible Mix

Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, engineer and the owner of recording studios in both Nashville and New York City. Cliff is also a regular contributor to EQ Magazine and Pro Sound News. He can be reached at [email protected].

Part I

Well, I suppose I’ve got your attention now at any rate. Given what an emotional medium music is to begin with, it’s not surprising to me that songwriters and artists (myself included at some point in the murky days of my early career) find themselves panicking when they’ve committed to something that requires a finished product before they have it. In the old days, this used to be situations like planning a CD release party/show before you had the finished, shrink-wrapped CD in your physical possession. These days, it’s more likely that you’ve committed to getting a finished mix to a film/TV music supervisor or radio station by a specific date and after playing your mix for a few trusted friends or fellow musicians, your worst fears are confirmed. The mix is horrible. As this article will come in two parts, I’m going to spend the part one of this article giving you ways to completely avoid this situation to begin with. Then, in part two, I’m going to give you ways to salvage a desperate situation based on three different budget scenarios.

How To Avoid the Above Situation in the First Place

I understand how exciting it can be when you’re nearing the end of a recording project. You can almost count the money you’re going to make from sales or royalties. Stop! You’ve spent years perfecting your craft. You’ve taken your time and learned to sing, write songs, play instruments and, in some cases, even to engineer your own material in your home studio. Why would you try and rush one of the most critical stages of the game? A mix is the culmination of all your effort and should be handled precisely and patiently. My sincere recommendation is that you never promise a song to anyone in the industry for any reason until you’re dead certain you have a finished mix you can submit with confidence. By avoiding situations where you’ve promised something you don’t have, you won’t run the risk of not delivering and appearing undependable or, worse yet, turning in something that’s sub par. Set yourself apart from the stereotype of the flaky musician by delivering what you say you’re going to when you say you will. It might help to remember that at a certain level in the music world talent is a given. You have a better chance of differentiating yourself by being a professional in all senses of the word.

The Mix Process

Whether you’re mixing the song yourself in your home studio or working with a professional mix engineer, take your time. Listen to the mix on the speakers in the studio, in your car, on a boom box and, Steve Jobs help us all, on those crappy $30 ear buds that come with every iPod. Of course your mix won’t sound as good on a boom box or through ear buds, but it should still sound clear. You should be able to hear the vocal and distinguish the individual instruments without, for example, the bass making the speakers rattle so much that nothing else is audible. Also, it’s been my experience that singers tend to want their own vocals too low in the mix because they’re either self-conscious or they think because they already know the words that the lyric is clear enough…or both. My recommendation is to bring in one or two friends (ideally not musicians) to listen to your mix and give you their honest opinion. Musicians, as a rule, tend to listen to the wrong things in a mix. The average listener will give you valuable feedback like “I can’t hear the guitar because the drums are too loud” or “I can’t hear what you’re singing.” Musicians tend to get into the nitty gritty and often can’t keep the big picture in perspective. The one exception would be if you’re a relatively new engineer and you’re uncertain about how your mix sounds. In this case it might be worth your while to talk to an experienced mix engineer and even hire them to give you detailed criticism about things you can do to improve your mix.

Working With A Mix Engineer

For non-engineers, the main thing to remember when giving your mix to a professional mix engineer is to let them mix. My recommendation would be for you to explain to the engineer that you’re going to leave the mix to them and you’d like them to let you know when your mix is ready to review. Then take the mix home, listen to it on various sound systems (as I mentioned above) and take detailed notes about what you’d like to go over with them when you see them again. For example, instead of saying that there are some words in the song that aren’t loud enough, you’d do better to say “in the second chorus, the word “aardvark” is a little too low.” It is infinitely easier for an engineer to go over a checklist of things to review in a mix than it is for you to have them stop playback every time you think you hear something. In other words, do your homework and use your studio time with the mix engineer to methodically tweak whatever needs tweaking.

When It’s Done, It’s Done

By following the approach I’ve mentioned above, you’ll avoid the gut-wrenching feeling that you’ve got an opportunity you’re going to miss or screw up if your mix isn’t ready in twenty-four hours. My final piece of advice for this section of the article is to remember that once you’ve signed off on a mix, it’s in your best interest to let it go. Like songs, mixes can be tweaked and tweaked ad infinitum but my hope for you is that you’ve got enough else on your plate to know when to say when. Do your best and move on. The more you go through the process, the easier the “letting go” will become.

Stay tuned for Part II of this article, coming soon.

Viral Marketing–What’s Really “Real” About It?

Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, engineer and the owner of recording studios in both Nashville and New York City. Cliff is also a regular contributor to EQ Magazine and Pro Sound News. He can be reached at [email protected].

The Bad News

In my 15 years of making a full-time living in the music world, one thing has become more and more clear to me. It’s work. The romantic image of the starving artist being so incredibly talented that one day he or she gets “discovered” and becomes rich and famous is a dangerous myth. I say “dangerous” because the more you as an artist believe it, the less inclined you’ll be to do any work on your own behalf. The gritty reality is that if you don’t do the necessary (and daily) work promoting yourself and your music, it’s highly unlikely anything will ever happen.

The Good News

There has NEVER been a better time to spread the word about yourself and music. The internet, with its downloadable digital music files, social networking sites and countless other advances that we can’t even begin to imagine yet, has leveled the playing field in a way that will make the “work” you have to do infinitely more effective.

Gather Your Fans

The more you can identify and reach out to your fans the better off you’ll be. Whether it’s your friends on MySpace or Facebook or the email addresses you’ve been collecting at gigs or online, it’s these people who you need to be able to reach effectively to spread the word about what you’re doing. Treat your list of email addresses like the gold that it is. It’s these people who will not only consider buying your music when it comes out, but more importantly, will also help spread (“viral” get it?) the word about you and your music. Once you’ve got a network of fans that you can reach out to, you’ve dramatically increased your potential to spread the word about what you’re doing.

Be Creative

The fact that the playing field has been leveled and almost anyone can get their music out worldwide is both a blessing and a true challenge. Instead of fans knowing that the local Tower Records is where they should go to find new music, the internet, with its infinite musical venues, has become the new (and overwhelming) place to find what’s new and great. The more creative you are in your presentation, the more likely a fan of yours will be to forward a YouTube link with your video or any one of a thousand other ways you can create to present yourself and your music. Again, the plan is that by putting something out there that’s unique enough to rise above the typical internet fare, it will take on a life of its own and appeal not only your current fans but also to new fans in ways you’ve never imagined.

Stay Current

The outlets for music and ways of marketing online change and advance almost hourly. Taking time out of your day to be aware of the next MySpace, Facebook or Twitter will pay huge dividends going forward. It’s not enough to find one way of reaching people and stubbornly stick to it. If that were the case, bands would still be mailing postcards to let people know about their gigs. Did I just date myself?

Give It Away

Don’t be afraid to give something to get something. A free download of a song in exchange for an email address is the best deal out there these days. Make it worth someone’s while to give you his or her email address and you’ll be amazed at what happens. Let your music speak for itself. If fans like their free download, there’s a much higher likelihood they’ll come back and buy the rest. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to do this either. Take a peek at a simple and effective example by clicking here.

Make Sure Your Music Is Available

I can’t think of anything more depressing than the artist who comes up with an amazing vehicle to promote his or her music, watches it go “viral” and generate huge web traffic to their site only to have nothing readily available for sale. Don’t expect most people to wait around or check back with iTunes every few days until your music is up. Make sure that before you go about promoting your music, you’ve taken the necessary steps to insure that if and when people want to buy your music, they can do it easily. Companies like Tunecore make this essential step both simple and cost effective. Don’t wait around for people to start asking how they can get your music. By then, it’s too late. Do it first.

Trust Me, It’s Real

Be patient. Not every online marketing attempt you make will result in thousands of downloads and new fans. However, every effort you make to get the word out about your music (even if it’s fifteen minutes a day) becomes part of the bigger picture of reaching new fans. The more fans you have, the greater the potential for any one thing you do going viral and bringing in not only more fans but income. All of a sudden your “friends” on MySpace and Facebook just became a whole lot friendlier. Think of your work as a series of base hits that will get you ready for your shot at a home run. Good luck!

The Value of a Good Mix, Part II

The Instruments

Getting great instrument sounds in a mix is a combination of many factors. Finding space in the mix for each individual instrument is essential. This is often achieved through judicious use of EQ, compression, volume and panning. For example, the skill it takes to get great drum sounds, marry the kick drum to the bass while also giving the electric guitars rooms to breathe and sparkle is developed over time and repetition…a lot of repetition. When this is done properly, the instruments are exciting to listen to. Each has its place and role to play and when they come together, the song takes on a life of its own.

Vocals

A great mix engineer always makes the treatment and placement of the vocal a priority. Once the instrumental mix is generally where it needs to be, it’s time to make certain that the vocalist is running the show. A combination of EQ, compression, tuning (if necessary), effects and volume fader automation should all serve the ultimate goal of making it sound like the singer is in charge. There are several risks associated with improper vocal placement. If the final mix has too much vocal, then the instruments end up sounding small and weak. However, if the vocal is too soft in the mix, it loses its ability to communicate the emotion of the song. Every genre has its preferred vocal level. In general, pop music has the vocal more integrated into the instruments whereas country music (with its emphasis on the lyric) generally puts the vocal higher in the mix. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule but a good mix engineer will know the genre he or she is mixing in and do the right thing for the song.

On a related note, one of the best reasons to bring in an experienced mix engineer even if you’ve recorded the song yourself is a fresh, objective set of ears. It’s been my experience that if the singer mixes their own project, they tend to keep the vocals too low for a couple of reasons. One is that most singers tend to get uncomfortable with their vocals up in a mix. There are precious few singers I’ve ever worked with who genuinely love the sound of their own voices. By keeping the vocal low in the mix, the vocalist/engineer won’t have to their comfort zone but the mix suffers. The second reason has to do with the fact that the singer already knows the words and assumes that they’re hearing the words when, in fact, they may be too low for someone who doesn’t know the song to understand.

Mastering a Good Mix

Mastering a mixed recording is a separate skill altogether. While this isn’t an article about mastering, I’d recommend using a dedicated mastering engineer (not your mix engineer) when it comes time for this step. More to the point, the value of a good mix is that the mastering engineer will spend much less time (their hourly rates are generally higher than mix engineer rates) getting the finished master together. In other words, money you spend on a good mix will end up saving you money on a final mastered recording.

Doing It Yourself

If you’re still intent on doing your own mixing, consider hiring an expert to mix a song or two for you and then ask them for the session files back. Assuming you’re using the same recording software (i.e. ProTools, Nuendo, Logic), you’ll be able to examine every detail of how the mix was done and use the finished mix files as a kind of tutorial so you can ultimately learn to do them yourself.

Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, engineer and the owner of recording studios in both Nashville and New York City. Cliff is also a regular contributor to EQ Magazine and Pro Sound News. He can be reached at [email protected].

The Value of a Good Mix, Part I

Cliff Goldmacher is a songwriter, producer, engineer and the owner of recording studios in both Nashville and New York City. Cliff is also a regular contributor to EQ Magazine and Pro Sound News. He can be reached at [email protected].

Once you’ve decided to up the ante and put your music online for the world to hear, it’s in your best interest to pay close attention to every step in the recording process. One of the most vital of these steps is the mix of your song. It’s not enough to have a great song. You need a great recording and a strong mix is an essential part of any great recording. The art of mixing (and make no mistake, it is an art) is not a skill everyone possesses. It’s well worth your while, even if you’ve recorded your tracks yourself in your home studio, to seek out an experienced mixing engineer. While there is no substitute for a dynamic, exciting musical performance, a good mix can enhance every aspect of that performance so that the final sonic result truly makes your song stand out. On the other hand, a poor mix can severely compromise even the best song and performance. Only you can write and sing your songs. That makes you an expert in those areas. However, unless you’re also an expert mix engineer, I’d highly recommend going to someone who is.

Budget

I get it. Everyone wants to save money. I do, too, but there are places to save and places to invest. In an effort to keep recording costs down, many musicians have purchased their own recording equipment. This is terrific and there’s never been a better time to buy affordable, high-quality gear. As long as you’re as passionate about learning the engineering process as you are about your music, you’ll do great. Owning your own recording equipment also takes a lot of the pressure off when it comes to experimenting in the studio. Finally, it allows you to record as many takes as necessary to get the performances you want without worrying about the clock. However, one way to make the absolute most of your recorded performance is to let an expert mix them. It’s amazing what a talented, experienced mix engineer can bring out of a mix that might otherwise get lost or obscured at the hands of a less able mixer.

Before You Mix

Before I cover in greater depth what makes up a good mix, let’s go back to performance for a moment. No matter how great the mix engineer may be there are some things you simply cannot fix in the mix. To be more specific, there is no way to “mix in” a great vocal or instrumental performance. What makes a performance great might surprise you. For example, sometimes it’s what you don’t play that counts the most. In my experience, the best studio musicians are the best listeners. What I mean by this is that great players base their instrumental performance on whatever else is going to be played in the song so that all the instruments work together as a whole to serve the song and NOT their individual egos. Playing too much is the hallmark of an amateur studio musician. Secondly, the timely use of dynamics (where to play louder/softer or with greater/less intensity) is essential to a mix that breathes and has shape to it. Simply moving up and down a volume fader won’t do the same thing. When it comes to singing, all the Auto-Tune and reverb in the world won’t give a vocal performance real sincerity and emotion. All this to say, make absolutely certain that the performances are exactly how you want them before you start the mix process.

Stay tuned for Part II, coming up next week!

Jeff Price's Article in the Huffington Post

Here is the full text of TuneCore President Jeff Price's article that appeared in the first week of January, 2009's Huffington Post. Read it and reap. --Peter

From MTV to YouTube: When the Net Pays Everyone But the Musician

In 1996, taped to the wall of my now defunct record label spinART Records’ 800 square-foot, four-ikea-desk-loaded-with-unsold-CD-and-vinyl office was a $1 check from MTV. I fought hard for that stupid check. MTV wanted to use a song called “Supermerica” by a band called Poole that I released. Usually TV shows pay good money for the use of a song, but not MTV-- they required labels to allow them to use the music for free in their TV shows when you submitted a music video to be considered for programming on their network. I still don’t know why they even bothered saying they would pay a dollar. It really pissed me off. I had fronted money and worked my heart out along with the band to promote, market, manufacture and release their album and along comes a multi-national billion dollar media corporation and demands to be able to use the music for a stinking dollar. I refused to do it. The music had value to me, it was the thing we sold and the thing the band made the majority of their money off of. I could not just give it up for free. But, Harry (lead singer of Poole) convinced me to let MTV have it in anticipation of the promotional value they might get out of it. The show aired, the song appeared in the background for about 30 seconds, the show ended, MTV made money from the advertisers and the song was not mentioned anywhere. This was the way it worked. The labels fed MTV free music and videos and in return hoped to get their videos aired which in turn would drive huge music sales. And MTV made a fortune off the advertising.

And this is more or less why Warner Music recently demanded that all its videos and music be removed from YouTube. Warner previously granted YouTube the legal rights to use its content and YouTube generated a lot of money from it via advertising. Now Warner wants to be paid more by YouTube. If the Google-owned YouTube does not comply, it opens itself up to potentially tens of millions of dollars in copyright infringement fines. Universal did this same thing successfully some time ago.

When media giants fight over music, you know it has to be valuable. Looking, listening and occasionally buying a “good” song drives revenue, tremendous web traffic and generates big advertising dollars. I can kind of understand Warner’s point, but as music sales drop and the multi-national, billion dollar media giants wrestle, lobby congress and sue each other for new income streams the musician seems to be getting lost in the shuffle, and that’s a huge mistake. Creating a new revenue sharing model that focuses on allowing artists to generate enough money to continue creating music would be a win for everyone. After all, it is the music that is fueling the entire machine.

The union of music and advertising goes back decades, but it seemed to reach a new level with the launch of MTV. MTV broadcast free “TV shows” from the labels in the form of music videos. These videos brought viewers allowing MTV to charge money to advertise on its network. In return for the free videos, the labels and artists received promotion. Artists became more famous which in turn allowed labels to make more money from music sales (there were other income streams as well like money from gigs, but the labels only participated in revenue that came from the sale or license of the music). This symbiotic relationship worked very well as long as all involved made their fair share of money.

However, after over two decades of a steady annual increase in music sales generating enough revenue to feed the record industry, music sales plummeted. At about the same time, advertising revenue from music went through the roof. Internet companies made money off music via venture capital investments, going public and getting acquired for a billion dollars. And this is the crux of the problem, music is being used for profit but not everyone is getting a piece of the pie.

Music sales plummeted with broadband proliferation and the mass adoption of the Internet, MP3s, compression technology, peer to peer file sharing, instant messaging of files, email attachments, torrents and other on-line distribution vehicles. The labels found themselves wondering why they should continue to provide their music and videos for free if the channels/sites they gave them to were reaping a disproportionate financial benefit. Labels would not have given MTV free music videos in the 80’s if MTV made money off the videos but the labels did not. (Imagine ABC getting the TV show “Lost” for free, then broadcasting it and keeping all the advertising revenue.)

Move ahead in time to the launch of the original peer-to-peer music file sharing software Napster allowing anyone to get any song at any time for free. Tens of millions of users provided Napster a huge “viewing audience” that it could reach via its “channel.” Unlike MTV, most labels and artists did not give Napster permission to use their music. The one area where value could have been created – music sales from discovery – was made irrelevant by allowing users to get the songs for free. To add insult to injury, despite Napster raising almost 100 million dollars and then being bought for 8 million the artists and labels were not paid anything (some would even suggest they lost money due to pirating).

The money that labels did make came from suing Napster and getting paid settlements for copyright infringement; the artists got nothing.

Over time social networking sites began to pop up and MTV moved on to showing its own TV shows (why not, they now had their own built in audience). Bands began to use these sites to get heard, discovered and to collect fans. Music lovers flocked to the sites, web traffic went up and the social networking sites began to charge advertisers for banner ads based on the “eyeballs” they were getting (for a website, any friend of the band is a friend of theirs). Once again it was the bands’ and labels’ content driving the audience, and once again someone else was making money off the music without an equitable inclusion of the labels and bands in the equation.

Which brings us back to Warner demanding that YouTube take down its content until it receives what it perceives to be its fair share of revenue. Following Google’s one billion dollar acquisition, YouTube is not yet profitable and suggests it cannot give up even more of its advertising revenue. Labels contend that this is really not their problem and need to be paid more for the use of their “products.” Unfortunately, advertisers are not paying the same sort of rates for online exposure as for TV and radio airtime, and there is not enough money to go around. And the artists, the ones who create and make the music that fuels it all, have yet to be directly included in the conversation.

As the “golden era” of MTV morphs into the world of MySpace and YouTube, a new model of advertising around music – ads appearing on artist’s WebPages or popping up on a streaming internet radio player– is not creating enough money to share. And no one is seriously discussing sharing it with the artists anyway. How then in this shifting landscape can they survive?

One possible piece of the puzzle may be the democratization of corporate sponsorship; instead of companies deciding which bands they choose to endorse or random ads appearing when music is played, let bands decide which corporations they want to work with. Bands can then tells their fans to click a link to land at a sponsor’s webpage where the fan gets a “free” song. The advertiser gets the web traffic and the artist gets their proportionate share of the advertising money for each free download. Going a step further, the artist has the ability to collect information about the fan (i.e. email address, age, zip code) thereby providing the opportunity for a targeted ad buy , i.e. 18 – 25 year old woman in the 02134 zip code. Or, taken another step further, as opposed to a random ad appearing on a streaming Internet radio player as a Pixies’ song is played, assume an ad appears for a product that the Pixies selected, i.e. The Pixies use Gibson Guitars or they love the movie Fight Club. Targeted demographic marketing allows advertising fees to go way up.

TuneCore is launching this model in January 2009 (full disclosure, I am CEO). This connection allowing artists and corporations to work with one another directly may prove to be one of the better ways to generate revenue in the new model. New companies such as TuneCore can then become facilitators providing the tools and information to the artists to collect fans, create music and provide access to opportunities such as corporate sponsorships. I by no means believe this is the magic bullet to the problem, but I do think it has the potential to be part of the solution. In 1981, video killed the radio star, here’s to hoping the Internet does not inadvertently kill the musician.

Thank you...and Coming Up in 2009!

A THANK YOU

On January 25th, 2006, almost three years ago, TuneCore went live. Gary, Peter and I had a mission to change the music industry by allowing any artist to have worldwide distribution, receive all the money from the sale of their music while keeping all their rights. As we begin 2009, we want to give you a sincere and heartfelt thank you. Without you we could not have changed the world for the better.

SEE WHAT YOU DID!

In the last two years, TuneCore customers earned over 30 million dollars. In just one day, you release and distribute more music via TuneCore than any major record label does over the course of a year. In just three days more music is released and distributed than all of the major record labels combined over a year. YOU are now the music industry.

COMING UP IN 2009

With the new-year upon us, our focus is to provide even more information, access and distribution points while building and providing more tools and services that can be of use.

First up is the opportunity to get an endorsement deal from Ernie Ball, one the pre-eminent guitar and bass string manufacturing companies on the planet. Available for the first time ever in the music industry via TuneCore, any artists can obtain a top level Ernie Ball endorsement based strictly on how many songs are sold. Sell 50,000 songs and get discounted Ernie Ball guitar or bass strings; sell 100,000 songs and get FREE Ernie Ball guitar or bass strings, up to 18 packs a month. Just walk into any Guitar Center store to get them. Before the end of January, the first group of eligible artists will be notified.

Also before the end of January, expect the following to be live at TuneCore:

The first version of your own streaming player that has direct links to buy your music on iTunes. It can be placed on any webpage that accepts cut and paste HTML.

The opportunity to give away a song for free and be paid for each download by a sponsor.

In the next few months you can also expect a number of other new high-end features and services including a site re-design, music discovery tools, new digital stores, some very cool physical distribution opportunities and a few other surprises.

As always let us know what you want and what you are thinking in our forum.

Here’s to a great 2009! We can say we knew you when...

TuneCore Announces New Sales Awards

I began working at TuneCore a little over a year ago because I was inspired by the idea that with all the seemingly negative changes in the music industry, there were actually more opportunities than ever for artists to pave their own way.  Earlier this week, we unveiled new sales certification awards to recognize that with a new way of selling music, there must also be new milestones to measure sales by.  It is for this reason that we have announced our brand new TuneCore Sales Certification Awards.

In addition to looking extremely cool, the most exciting thing about our first 26 awards is that they are going to both established stars (Jay-Z, Ziggy Marley, Jason Mraz, Public Enemy) and DIY up-and-comers (Meiko, Sky Eats Airplane, Eric Hutchinson and Clear Voyage just to name a few).

 

Below are some artist renderings of these new plaques: 

 

White: 100,000 songs sold certification     

 

 

250,000 songs sold certification

 

 

500,000 songs sold certification 

 

Each sales certification award will be approximately 16" x 19 1/2" and made out of single molded piece of cast resin. The album cover will be raised and inset above the resin under framed glass.  Text will be etched on the glass to create an even deeper dimensionality.

There are going to be three thresholds of songs sold via paid download to be eligible for TuneCore certification and award:

•     White: 100,000 paid download sales
•     Silver: 250,000 paid download sales
•     Black: 500,000 paid download sales

The downloads must come from one album, not from multiple albums. The certification is based on the total number of song sales from that one album. (For example, if an album has 12 songs on it and the album sells 10 times, the number of songs it has sold is 120. The total song sales for that album will be the number of albums sold multiplied by the number of songs on the album PLUS the number of individual songs sold from that same album.) The sales will not be restricted to territory but will take into account paid download sales from around the globe.

You can view the full list of winners here.

Why Sales Awards, Why Now? by TuneCore President Jeff Price.

The world of the music industry is changing and recognition of these changes needs to occur.

As I write this, the RIAA is the one self-appointed entity in the United States that certifies and issues Gold and Platinum records. Currently, to be eligible for the opportunity to have the RIAA issue a Gold/Platinum record, an album, single etc has to have shipped (not sold) 500,000 or 1,000,000 copies. With other options available for global distribution outside of the RIAA members, there are new milestones for success, new ways to sell and buy music and new companies uniquely qualified to verify sales information that the RIAA does not even pick up on. TuneCore is one of these companies.

Three years after our launch, there is more music released via TuneCore in one day then via any major record label over the course of a year. Very soon, more music will have been released via TuneCore than all the major record labels combined. Hundreds of thousands of artists now have their music available around the world to be bought, share and sold. They too deserve to be rewarded and recognized for the achievements.

TuneCore is now certifying and issuing sales awards based on artists reaching new sales goals.

Salvaging poorly recorded drum tracks for $13.99

Here’ a recording tip from world-class producer/mixer Ronan Chris Murphy, whose expertise in recording drums includes work with Terry Bozzio, Victor Bisetti (Los Lobos), Gregg Bissonette (Santana, David Lee Roth), and Pat Mastelotto (King Crimson, Mister Mister, The Rembrandts). 

In a perfect world, every time we recorded a drum set, the drums would be tuned well, played great, and recorded perfectly, with just the right gear for the sound we were going for. Unfortunately we don’t get to live in a perfect world. Trying to mix a song and realizing that the raw sounds on your drum track are not happening can be a really frustrating experience. There are some advanced mixing techniques as well some often costly software and hardware options that can go a long way to salvaging poorly recorded drum tracks, but if you do not yet have the experience for advanced mixing techniques, the money for the right tools to do the job or if the drum tracks seem beyond help there is one cool option that is effective, easy and best of all cheap:

The mighty tambourine!

Believe it! One of the best techniques I’ve found for helping mixes with poorly recorded drums is strategically adding a tambourine track. A simple mono tambourine track (a real one, played live and recorded with a microphone) can add a sense of depth, texture and energy to a mix, and actually pull the listeners attention away from the “sound” or timbre of the drums but not the performance or its groove.

The great thing about the tambourine is that it can be mixed fairly loud and come across as a creative choice. The loud tambourine has been employed in rock records for decades, from Motown and the Rolling Stones to Oasis and Rob Zombie. A big loud tambourine track is part of far more great mixes than you may have ever realized. The important thing to keep in mind when applying the drum-salvaging tambourine track is to make nice clean recording with conservative recording levels and simplicity. The latter is the secret to the whole trick. Your tambourine performance must be very, very simple, with no variations. I usually prefer a simple doubling of the snare that goes through the whole song (except during drum fills). A simple part with out any kind of variations will not draw the listener’s attention to the tambourine and many listeners will not ever notice it, even if it is quite loud in the mix. If you do any kinds of fills or accent it will draw the attention away from the drums and the trick is ruined.

We’d like to thank Ronan Chris Murphy for sharing his valuable knowledge and experience. As you can see, you don’t always need to invest in expensive equipment to make the most out of your recordings. In fact, the best investment you can make is knowledge, and there’s no better way to learn to make the most out of your recordings than up close and personal with someone like Ronan Chris Murphy. Check out Ronan’s Home Recording Boot Camp at www.homerecordingbootcamp.com and keep checking your email for more recording tips from Ronan Chris Murphy. 

How To Succeed in the Music Biz (Part 3): Conclusion

by George Howard

The Goal
I want to now attempt to discern a sort of universal goal for all people engaged in the music business; either as artists themselves or as those who act as the support team for the artists. Put simply, the goals for anyone in the music business are simple:

•    Make enough money via your music to make more music
•    Release music that impacts the culture over the long term

That’s really it.  If you do both of these things, you will not only have a long and profitable career, but you will also create a legacy for yourself that will stand the test of time.  This simply must be the goal of all those in the music business.  Any other goal will not result in long-term success, and will eventually end in either artistic or financial failure (or both).

Looking at each of these goals individually, it becomes clear how they work together.  The goal of making enough money via your music in order to make more music can seem simplistic.  It’s not.  Making money in music is decidedly a non-trivial matter.  It ain’t easy, and most people do not make money.  Even fewer make enough money to keep putting out music, and fewer still make enough money to make the music they do on their own terms.   There are a million reasons why most people fail at making enough money to keep making music, but all of them have one thing in common: lack of disciplined strategy.  While there is a world of strategy beyond the above referenced Hedgehog Concept, most artists don’t even achieve that level of strategic thinking.

The lack of disciplined strategy causes artists to engage in the Cardinal Sin of business: random acts of improvement. You’ve heard the expression, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” and nowhere is this more true than in the music business.  Most artists, managers, and even labels got into the music business for the most virtuous of reasons, and genuinely tried to do the right things.  However, because they lacked the training, discipline, or experience, their efforts were nothing more than a hodgepodge of mis-guided, disconnected efforts that added up to nothing.  An artist, for instance, determines that they need a Facebook presence.  They spend a good amount of time and effort creating this Facebook presence, and then wait for the success to come.  It doesn’t.  The artist determines that perhaps a MySpace presence is needed.  More time, more effort…perhaps some money spent having someone pimp out their page.  Again, the success is elusive.  Undaunted, the artist decides that they must get their name out to a wider audience, borrows some money, and takes an advertisement out in Performing Songwriter magazine.  More time spent designing the ad (something the artist has no experience doing, and thus does a less-than-satisfactory job), more money being spent, and, again, nothing to show for it. 

None of these things—a Facebook or MySpace presence, or an ad in Performing Songwriter—are bad things.  On the contrary, when part of a cogent strategic plan, each of these things can be very beneficial in helping an artist connect with an audience.  In the absence of a plan, however, these are random acts of improvement. 

These are precisely the types of things that, when they fail to generate any result, erroneously convince the artist that their music is incapable of connecting with an audience.  In point of fact, they tell the artists nothing of the sort; in fact, they tell the artist nothing at all. Because these acts are not connected to any sort of over-arching strategy, nor are they able to be measured or gauged, they are devoid of any informational value.  Artists, however erroneously interpret their strategic ineptitude as musical ineptitude, and throw in the towel out of discouragement. 

I find this heartbreaking; particularly when I consider all of the incredibly talented artists who wrongly discerned that their music was no good by viewing the lack of reaction to their random acts of improvement as an indictment against their art.

The Hedgehog Concept is the first step in avoiding random acts of improvement.  It keeps you from veering too far away from your core abilities.  By combining this with the deceptively simple goal of making enough money to ensure that you will be able to make more music, you begin to create parameters for yourself.  You can, for example, determine just how much money is enough money to allow you to put out more music.  For instance, if you’re an artist who is ready to put out an album, you should be able to determine precisely how many CDs or downloads you must sell of this album to make the money back you spent producing and marketing, as well as how many you will need to sell to fund the next record’s creation and marketing.  The numbers will vary, but by setting goals, you can begin to create strategy to achieve those goals.  Perhaps you determine that because you need to make $10,000 to produce and market your next release, you will need to sell 2,000 copies of your album at an average price of $5 per CD.  You now have a goal.  The next step is a strategy for wow are you going to achieve these sales?  You can begin calculating how many CDs you must sell at gigs, how many downloads you must sell via iTunes, etc.  From there, you create strategy to achieve these sales.  We’ll look closely at specific strategy in future lessons, but the point for now is to simply introduce the concept of strategy, and how it relates to being able to continue creating music.

The second goal is to create music that impacts the culture over the long term.  Beyond the karmic virtues of impacting the culture in a positive way, there are concrete business reasons to strive for this goal, and they very much relate to our first goal of making enough money to keep putting out music.  Specifically, if you succeed in your goal of creating music that impacts the culture over the long term, you will create a catalog that generates long-term revenue.  This, of course, will have a significant affect on your ability to keep putting out music.  On the contrary, if you simply try to identify trends that you feel you can profit from, you will most likely be wrong; the market moves too quickly for anyone to jump on the trend bandwagon, and so by the time you enter the market it will have moved.  Certainly, people have profited from trends and novelties, but these profits are typically ephemeral.  Additionally, trying to capitalize on trends is diametrically opposed to a central conceit of the Hedgehog Concept; no one can honestly say that they are passionate about a sequence of trends.  You may be passionate about a specific trend, but you can’t be equally passionate about the next trend.  Therefore, these trend-mongers lack focus, and necessarily engage in one random act of improvement after another.  Eventually, this results in the only place it can: failure.

By avoiding trends, and instead focusing on creating music that impacts the culture over the long term, and by combining this with the first goal of making enough money to keep releasing more music, you are guaranteed to create a body of work that will provide you the steady stream of income needed to create the music you believe in on your own terms.

Much like the Hedgehog Concept, if you fail at either of the two goals above, you will likely fail entirely.  While, as mentioned, people have profited in the short-term by following trends, it never lasts.  They will eventually not make enough money to keep creating music.  Similarly, even if you are making music that you believe will stand the test of time, but you are not able to make enough money, you will not be able to release more music that you believe will stand the test of time.

Put simply, these two goals force you to confront the delicate balance of art and commerce.  Sadly, there are many, many very worthy artists capable of impacting the culture, but because they didn’t make enough money, they never achieved the potential impact they could have had they been able to put out more music.  And, of course, there are artists who shot up like a roman candle, selling a ton of music, only to flare out almost immediately because they failed to impact the culture in a meaningful way. 

Our first strategic lesson, therefore, is to begin thinking about precisely what it will take to make enough money with our music to keep doing it, and to make certain that the music we make truly is capable of impacting the culture over the long term.

Summary
When asked what the most important quality for success is you hear a range of answers; from talent to perseverance to luck.  Certainly, all of those, and many more, are important qualities.  However, the one quality that looms above all others is the unwavering belief by the artist that his music must be heard.  This belief is the only thing that can sustain an artist through the inevitable travails that they will axiomatically confront.  From disinterested audiences to disbelieving spouses, and everything in between, the path from writing songs to having those songs heard by a wide audience is an uphill and treacherous one.  Without this internal belief that your music must be heard, you simply will not make it. 

Once you have determined you have this belief, and that nothing will cause you to waiver in your belief that your songs must be heard, you must begin focusing on precisely how you will get this music heard.  The foundation for this type of strategic thinking is what Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, calls “The Hedgehog Concept.”  The Hedgehog Concept forces you to focus by determining three specific things: what you are passionate about, what you can do better than anyone else, and what can make you money.  As we noted, it’s the confluence or overlap of these three circles that truly provides focus.  While you may be passionate about something, for example, and you may even be the best at it, if it doesn’t provide you with enough income to keep doing it, the passion and ability don’t matter.  The Hedgehog Concept provides an illuminating and instructive view on the adage of simply doing what you love. Doing what you love is an oversimplification, and—as many artists have found—just because they love to play guitar, it doesn’t guarantee they’ll ever be the best at it, or be able to make a living doing it.  The goal is to find the balance between the three circles.  This requires trade-offs, compromises, and maturity.  However, the payoff is potentially huge.

This understanding in place, the artist must then dedicate themselves to the true goals: 1. Make enough money with your current record in order to have the opportunity to make another one, and 2. Make music that will have a long-term impact on the culture.  By focusing on these elements, you decrease the chances that you will engage in the Cardinal mistake of the music business (or any business) engaging in random acts of improvement which don’t connect to your fundamental goals.

In essence, what all of the above advice points to relates back to focus. You must focus internally to understand your beliefs and motivation, and you must have strategic focus to build a career based upon these beliefs.  Is this easy? No. Is there any other real alternative? No.