Curious about the music industry? Find out stuff.

BonsaiK

Music Industry Corporate Whore
Nov 14, 2007
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Okay, so the internal computer network at work has some weird problem where everything works at about 1/25th speed, so things have ground to somewhat of a pathetic halt while the techs fix it and I'm just sitting around. It won't be fixed in a hurry. The internet still works at normal speed though, which means I have a few hours to kill. I could spend it playing Mafia Wars or I could spend it on here. So...

Those who've been paying attention will know that I work in the music industry. I work at a radio station, also I work for more than one record label, on top of that I teach music, I perform music, write music, go on tours, get interviewed, interview others, do live sound for bands, engineer bands in the studio, produce bands in the studio, write scores and get them played by people with stuffy white shirts, blah blah blah. In other words I have experience in just about every aspect of the industry, and the areas that I am not involved with, I either know people who are, or I have reference material at my fingertips. So ask me stuff about any facet of the music industry, if you want to know about it. Any reasonable question will be answered. The only questions I won't answer (besides banworthy stuff) is anything that might be considered "digging dirt" on an individual or organisation and thus defamatory, however I can talk in more general, lawyer/moderator-friendly terms about some of the more controversial topics if you really want. Many people here like to post about music so presumably some of you are at least curious about it from an insider's perspective.

I have this thread bookmarked so I can see if you post in it.

(Occasionally I get an unsolicited music-industry related question in my inbox, so this thread is dedicated to you guys who do already ask me stuff via PM - you gave me the idea for this. You know who you are.)
 

Frequen-Z

Resident Batman fanatic.
Apr 22, 2009
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Do artists get a lot of creative freedom concerning album art, music videos, song titles, and lyrical themes?

Does piracy really have an impact on the giant piles of money thrown around?

Which artists that you have encountered/worked with showed the most love for their fans?

Conversely, which ones showed the least love?
 

gl1koz3

New member
May 24, 2010
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No idea how industry works out there, so expect some dumb questions.

1) What does it mean, to produce? Why there's always an artist and a producer... or something.

2) Say you need to create an action tune for a sci-fi video. What would the deadlines be? Would you get any inspirational material, or would you be going nearly blind with some basic background info? And how much would you get paid, and what influences the paycheck? What is the most common way they look for musicians to do the work?

3) Assume you need to create this track. Is the creative process thoroughly monitored/adjusted by the "client"? Or do you just create some stuff and then it is either accepted or not?
 

BonsaiK

Music Industry Corporate Whore
Nov 14, 2007
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Yay, a response! Here I was thinking I'd have to play Mafia Wars all evening.

Frequen-Z said:
Do artists get a lot of creative freedom concerning album art, music videos, song titles, and lyrical themes?
Album art: generally yes. Censorship these days is rare unless you want something really outlandish on the front, but I know of cases where a label has said "we won't release that until you get a better album cover, because we feel that your art doesn't meet the standards for visual presentation on our label". This is really common on "boutique" independent labels, some who go so far as to insist that you use an in-house graphic designer for all label releases.

Videos: depends who you work with. Some video directors are very "my way or the highway", most are pretty keen to acquiesce to the band's wishes if the band have something specific in mind (after all the band is their client). Mind you, you'd be surprised how often the band doesn't have a damn thing in mind or is kind of "meh" about videos generally. Not many working musicians have a lot of time to sit and watch videos so a lot of them are happy to just go with what the director wants. Generally speaking the label doesn't get involved too much in the content of the video, they leave that to between the artist and the director of the video. That's because labels will only usually work with directors that they feel that can trust in this area anyway.

Song titles/lyrics: depends on genre, pop obviously has strict rules. Also depends on who you're signed to. Miley Cyrus can't sing the same stuff that Metallica can because Disney doesn't want to look bad by association (which is why they dropped ICP from their Hollywood Records imprint). Overall it's loosened up somewhat over the years, labels these days usually don't give a shit unless it's a really big artist wanting to do something really controversial, and then they may insist on changes (smaller artists they'll assume no-one will notice). Marilyn Manson's new album has a song called "Pretty As A Swastika" on it, it's a dollar sign on the back of the CD but "Swastika" inside. There was a line in that song too - "kill the president, kill whoever's in power", that got changed to something else in the final cut, listen for the edit in the song if you have it. Rap labels do this too, believe it or not some subjects are taboo in rap! The last Mobb Deep album "Blood Money" has a song called "Pearly Gates" where anti-Christian sentiments in the lyrics were changed. All the "******" and "************" stuff was left in though. Go figure.

Frequen-Z said:
Does piracy really have an impact on the giant piles of money thrown around?
Yes. Music piracy is as old as the hills, but what's changed is that now pirated copies are the same audio fidelity as the original, and quicker to distribute to strangers. That never used to be the case. The music industry won't die, but it's been in a recession that began when home CD burning became reasonably affordable, and has only increased with the advent of MP3s and p2p software. What the music industry has been looking at ever since is how to make money from experiences that people can't (as easily) download. Hence, live concert ticket prices have skyrocketed, so has merchandise, most CDs also come with DVD content now, special editions and fancy packaging is more common, short-run vinyl collectors pressings are popular... many different things. The industry will survive but it remains to be seen how the actual music itself will continue to be sold, we're in a bit of a transition phase at the moment, but no-one is quite sure as to what we're transitioning to. Maybe we'll give up on that bit at some point and the role of a label will start to be more about "brand management" than "product selling".

Frequen-Z said:
Which artists that you have encountered/worked with showed the most love for their fans?
I could name just about any heavy metal band I've met. Metal bands and their fans have a special relationship and camaraderie that other genres don't quite match. It helps that often the bands come from dirt-poor backgrounds and thus appreciate their own fame and the plight of other struggling musos.

Frequen-Z said:
Conversely, which ones showed the least love?
Won't comment on individuals, but certain older punk bands and ex-punk artists I've worked with that shall remain nameless have been completely appalling, cunty bastards. I would have thought that the same rules as for metal would apply to punk in terms of poverty appreciation blah blah but I guess not in all cases.
 

BonsaiK

Music Industry Corporate Whore
Nov 14, 2007
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gl1koz3 said:
No idea how industry works out there, so expect some dumb questions.

1) What does it mean, to produce? Why there's always an artist and a producer... or something.

2) Say you need to create an action tune for a sci-fi video. What would the deadlines be? Would you get any inspirational material, or would you be going nearly blind with some basic background info? And how much would you get paid, and what influences the paycheck? What is the most common way they look for musicians to do the work?

3) Assume you need to create this track. Is the creative process thoroughly monitored/adjusted by the "client"? Or do you just create some stuff and then it is either accepted or not?
1. A "producer" of a CD is someone who makes decisions about how the final product sounds. He doesn't actually twist the knobs himself (that's the engineer's job) but he'll sit back in his chair, listen to the recording, and go "hmmm... needs more bass" or "perhaps you should lengthen that chorus out a little and then go into the solo", or whatever. Sometimes the producer is the engineer. Sometimes the band produce themselves. You may be wondering why a producer is hired at all - can't anyone do this? Well yes... but if a label (or an artist) wants a hit record they may hire a producer who has worked on other well-known material in order to get a more marketable sound. Often bands aren't too savvy about what is saleable in the marketplace in terms of sonics, so they need help in making their musical output more accessible. This is really important if the band wants radio airplay or a hit single. If the band doesn't care about money fame fortune blah blah they may still want to work with a "name" producer who worked on other records that the band personally liked, in order to try and capture a bit of that type of feel, more as an artistic thing. Also a fresh pair of ears is always valuable. If you're doing long shifts recording your album day after day, sometimes you don't have an outsider's perspective so it's helpful to talk to someone who does have it.

2. When you work in TV and film doing scoring, generally, the way it works is this: you send stuff to the director/film company, like a "demo video reel" that shows you scoring some action in a short film, so they can see what you are capable of, it's like a video resume. Or, you could just send music on its own. The first approach is better. Pay rates depend on what sort of job it is. If it's film work you usually just get a lump sum for whatever they want you to do, if it's continual work on something like a TV series then you might get a wage, or you might get x amount of $ for each episode that you complete. Deadlines are obviously more stringent for episodic TV content than for a big one-off project. Different studios do things differently and it also varies from country to country, a place with a very small film industry will pay correspondingly smaller wages. TV and film studios rarely have to look for people, they tend to get inundated with interest!

3. Depends. Some people will be just like "we want a moody piece" or "we want a piece for a fight scene that goes for three minutes", and if they don't like what you send they'll say "can you make it more like this" or whatever, then when they get something they want they'll edit your work to suit. Others will give you film footage complete with SMPTE time code and say "score this action, so it starts at 01:25:43:04 and ends at 01:27:23:14 with a climax at 01:27:02:20, results by Thursday, thanks in advance". Some places who want orchestral stuff may want you to write out actual notated score with SMPTE time codes included instead of giving them a recording, then they hire musicians to play it. Often you'll also get a script (not the whole thing, just the bit you have to work on). There's all sorts of variations but the main factors are budget and time. How closely you are monitored depends a lot on your track record and how much they feel they can trust you to come up with the goods. If they have faith in you they will leave you alone, but if you have no real track record expect people to be looking over your shoulder until they know that you're capable of working to deadlines.
 

Betancore

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Apr 23, 2010
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What kind of criteria do you use to judge a band's potential?

I'm asking this mainly because I work at a radio station as well, and every week the music department has to sift through all the music we get sent and pick some songs to go on our 'Sweet Sixteen' list. It'd be good to have some insight from someone experienced like you, because I want to be able to do it quickly and efficiently, but still be able to choose tracks that a majority of our listeners will like.
 

BonsaiK

Music Industry Corporate Whore
Nov 14, 2007
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RhombusHatesYou said:
Okay, to save you from boredom...


What cities are the best for bands to chase their chances in? And what genres work best for those cities?
I notice you live in Australia, that's convenient for me because so do I, I'll focus my answers to this country.

Melbourne for any kind of rock and punk music. Brisbane and Perth also have worthy music scenes so if you're in one of these two cities, don't move to Melbourne. If you're anywhere else, consider it, or at least tour there or you won't be noticed. Melbourne also for any alternative goth or weird music styles!

Sydney for any kind of music which isn't too loud. Acoustic, light music, jazz etc. High density housing in this city means that despite the large population loud music in pubs is unviable, therefore there's a real shortage of venues. Sydney rock bands often find themselves moving to Melbourne.

Adelaide for rap, the only rap bands worth a mention in Australia are all from Adelaide so this is where the eyes are. Adelaide also has a good heavy metal scene although be prepared to leave the country to tour no matter what city you reside in.

Any big city for dance music, DJing, it's viable anywhere that there's a population that goes clubbing.

Country music can be made anywhere but the biggest interest is in the inland country towns, I guess that's stating the obvious. Other styles shouldn't neglect country touring though - you probably won't be seen by label execs but it's a great way to make money as country places are starved for entertainment so tours can be lucrative. Often in a remote location the whole damn town rocks up to see you play, regardless of style, just because it's something to do and for them to talk about later.

If you're in Tasmania, getting to the mainland should be top priority.
 

BonsaiK

Music Industry Corporate Whore
Nov 14, 2007
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Betancore said:
What kind of criteria do you use to judge a band's potential?

I'm asking this mainly because I work at a radio station as well, and every week the music department has to sift through all the music we get sent and pick some songs to go on our 'Sweet Sixteen' list. It'd be good to have some insight from someone experienced like you, because I want to be able to do it quickly and efficiently, but still be able to choose tracks that a majority of our listeners will like.
What do I use? If I like the songs, if I think they have potential. That's really about it. I don't worry too much about anything else. Labels always send CDs with flowery bios that all say that whatever music is the latest and greatest, and about the be the next big thing, I don't give a toss about any of that, I don't even read most of that shit. I also don't worry about radio formats, like time, etc that most people do... my station is a bit more lax about that stuff than many. I guess, if I am faced with a fucking mountain of CDs and have to quickly pick out some stuff which might not suck, here's what I'll do:

* Look at the cover art. Is it amateurish? Is the graphic design shit? Does it look like the guitar player's girlfriend designed the cover? In the bin. If they can't even present their CD properly, the music is likely to be sucky. I don't care if it looks cheap, or simple, but if it looks like a graphic designer with at least some semblance of knowledge of image and text composition wasn't involved, then bye bye.

* Flip it over, look at the song titles, if I see anything there that screams "dickhead", in the bin it goes. I don't mean profanity (which is fine), I mean immaturity. Sorry but if you've got a song called "No Fat Chicks" or "LOL" then I don't wanna know what else you got. Also, if I see a huge list of really unoriginal titles I won't bother, like if every single song title has the word "love" in it.

* Is it a band I know, that have proven to not suck in the past? If so I'll give it a listen, probably. Also, which label sent it to me? What other things has that label released that I like? This makes a big difference - some labels tend to put out stuff I like more than others. Also what country and town is the band from? What genre? A quick scan of the bio usually reveals this. If it's not obvious from the press material OR the CD art, then I'm intrigued.

* So if initial sings are good I put the CD on and listen to the first ten seconds of track 1. If nothing happens I forward it to about a minute or two in. If the band is still pissfarting around I go to track 2 and do the same. Looking for some actual meaty song material here, or something that grabs my attention. I spend two minutes doing this, absolute maximum, if nothing has got me by then, I give up. In the bin. If I'm still listening after that time, then I might possibly be onto a winner.
 

reg42

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Mar 18, 2009
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How much is the industry effected by things like Autotune and other voice-altering software? A lot of people say it's just genres like RnB and industrial (although industrial often uses it for a different reason) which use it, and I was wondering whether that is the case, or if other genres have started using it.
 

BonsaiK

Music Industry Corporate Whore
Nov 14, 2007
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reg42 said:
How much is the industry effected by things like Autotune and other voice-altering software? A lot of people say it's just genres like RnB and industrial (although industrial often uses it for a different reason) which use it, and I was wondering whether that is the case, or if other genres have started using it.
Actually, R&B and industrial use "hard" Autotune for exactly the same reason - as a vocal effect (i.e NOT as a way to cover up a bad singer's voice, but as a way to change the texture of the vocal to give it a more mechanised sound).

Let me explain a bit here about how Autotune works and what it is for. Autotune, as we know, is a pitch-correction tool. It gets a pitch and moves it to the nearest musical note. The degree to which the note is moved can be adjusted. The robotic sound that people associate with Autotune is what results from turning that slider all the way up to 100%. The industry has a special term for this - "hard" Autotune. This is the type of Autotune that you hear on everything from T-Pain and Kayne West to Cher's "Believe", Lady GaGa, Skinny Puppy, Brokencyde, etc etc. However, you can be more subtle than that. A bad singer often won't miss the note by much, they'll often just be a teensy bit flat or sharp every so often. By using Autotune in a more subtle way, we can give those shitty singers a gentle push in the right direction, without stripping the "natural" sound out of their voice.

Cher's "Believe" was the first song to use "hard" Autotune in certain passages. When quizzed about the effect, the producers initially claimed that they used a Vocoder (a device that repitches vocals to match the pitch of an instrument, the vocoder has a similar synthetic, robotic sound and is an effect most commonly associated with Kraftwerk) to get the noise, in an attempt to keep the sound as a "trade secret", but they came clean eventually. Cher didn't need Autotune to cover up her vocal performance, because she has a track record of being able to sing quite well - even if she did hypothetically fluff up those passages she would have been able to do another take on them and get them right. It was just a cool sounding effect.

However, now Autotune has a reputation. When people hear hard Autotune now, they immediately get suspicious, and start thinking "gosh, I wonder if that person can sing". That's why very few singers who can't sing use hard Autotune, because they don't want people thinking that they can't sing! T-Pain can sing just fine without Autotune. So can Lady Gaga. The ones who can't sing are using "soft" Autotune, they're using it so softly that you can't even tell it's in there.

It is affecting the industry? Not really. Before auto-tune, there was resampling. Stock, Aitken and Waterman (producers of the early Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley, etc) were famous for it, but they weren't the only ones. If a singer continually hit a bum note, instead of wasting studio time trying to get them to sing in key, they'd just sample the bum note into a keyboard or computer and then replay it at the correct pitch. Before that there was recording onto a separate tape and speeding up/slowing the tape during bounce-down, and also soundalike ghost singers who would "stand in" on certain notes that the real performers couldn't hit, and then they'd be edited in later via tape splicing or punch-ins! We've had shitty singers being "smoothed out" on recordings long before this latest studio toy, the only difference is that these days the technology is more widely understood and in everyone's hands, whereas before it was only in the hands of pro studios.

Oh, and all popular genres use it now.
 

reg42

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Mar 18, 2009
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BonsaiK said:
Musical knowledge
Wow, you really know your stuff. Thanks man. I have another question, although I'm not sure if I'm asking the right person, but I'll give it ago anyway.

I'm really keen on the thought of studying musicology and possibly going into music journalism once I'm all done with high school, so I was wondering if there was anything necessary you think I'd need to know.
 

BonsaiK

Music Industry Corporate Whore
Nov 14, 2007
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reg42 said:
BonsaiK said:
Musical knowledge
Wow, you really know your stuff. Thanks man. I have another question, although I'm not sure if I'm asking the right person, but I'll give it ago anyway.

I'm really keen on the thought of studying musicology and possibly going into music journalism once I'm all done with high school, so I was wondering if there was anything necessary you think I'd need to know.
Most music journalists that I know who work in the field of popular music have no musical qualifications at all, some know nothing about music whatsoever on a technical level and don't play instruments either. They do sometimes have journalistic qualifications, so if you're going to study anything, study journalism. Don't study musicology at all unless you're interested in writing about classical music, otherwise you won't need it. However you may wish to study ethnomusicology, which is the study of music within different cultures and thus a subset of anthropology (although many universities may not formally recognise it as such), and can be useful if you want to write deep analyses or more scholarly work than just a magazine article. Check out the documentary "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey" if you haven't - I'm told that the director Sam Dunn handed that film in as part of his PhD assessment in anthropology. Not sure if that's true but either way it's a damn good film that demonstrates an even-handed "anthropological" approach to journalism that's lacking in most documentaries, TV shows and magazines. Most magazine writing is pure opinion.

I don't have any journalistic experience myself, I assume that in a journalism course they would teach you as part of that course how to gain work within your chosen field. However I do know a few journalists. Writing for street press is a good way to get experience that you can put on a resume, that might help you get paid work down the line. Also, freelance and send in your writings to magazines, a lot of them accept a surprising amount of freelance work and will pay for submissions. It also helps to live near where the music you are wanting to write about is happening, so you can do live gig reviews, meet bands, etc. It's all about who you know, as always...
 

Kralika

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Jul 16, 2010
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What's your personal view of record labels? Do they provide enough freedom to let you write the material you enjoy, rather than them having total control? Cheers in advance!
 

Dags90

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Oct 27, 2009
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To what degree are albums planned by studios? One of the reasons I stopped buying CDs was the increasingly disparity in quality between singles and the rest of albums. I find this particularly noticeable in popular music genres. One can guess which songs will be released as singles with surprising accuracy. There are noticeable differences in production quality and musical structure.
 

BonsaiK

Music Industry Corporate Whore
Nov 14, 2007
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Kralika said:
What's your personal view of record labels? Do they provide enough freedom to let you write the material you enjoy, rather than them having total control? Cheers in advance!
As someone who works for more than one label, I can tell you that record labels can be real pricks. How much artistic freedom you get is something that should be negotiated and included in any contract that you might sign with a label. However, it doesn't matter how much freedom you get on paper because if the record label doesn't like your stuff because it doesn't conform to what they want, they have ways of sabotaging you. All they need to do to ruin you career is stop returning your calls. They can also delay releasing your album, or release your album with no promotion... labels can work for good but as an artist you need a music industry lawyer present during any contract negotiations. Don't sign anything without a lawyer looking at it first no matter what anyone says, and make sure that lawyer is a music industry specialist, because there are certain terminologies specific to the music industry that a regular lawyer won't know how to deal with.

So-called "independent" labels will often give you more artistic freedom but that comes at the price of less promotional power and poorer distribution. And don't think that they won't screw you over too because they sure can and will if they want to and you haven't taken precautions.
 

BonsaiK

Music Industry Corporate Whore
Nov 14, 2007
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Dags90 said:
To what degree are albums planned by studios? One of the reasons I stopped buying CDs was the increasingly disparity in quality between singles and the rest of albums. I find this particularly noticeable in popular music genres. One can guess which songs will be released as singles with surprising accuracy. There are noticeable differences in production quality and musical structure.
It's true, and has been true since the invention of the long-player record, that lower-quality albums of pop artists will contain the singles and the rest will be "filler" tracks - usually just enough to fill the contractual requirements for a full-length record. Of course, studios don't intend to release shitty music - if it were up to them everything they released wiould be a masterpiece, however sometimes it just turns out that the songs were dud or whatever. Maybe the producer and the artist weren't clicking or the band were lifeless or there were no ideas in the studio but damn the contract says the album has to be out anyway, so "fuck it let's just go with what we got" they say. You'll notice that a lot of modern pop music albums have each track produced by a different producer. This is really common especially in rap and R&B music. It's a way of hedging your bets - if one producer is having an off-month, it's okay because there are twelve more of them on the thing. Chances are that you might, out of a 12-track album, get 4 good songs and maybe the rest of the stuff wasn't that well done... oh well, release the album for the fans and the better tracks as singles. That's kind of how it goes with popular music at the moment. However, not all artists are like this, and the best albums are the ones with one producer on board for the whole thing, and a generally consistent approach that happened to click. It's more of a risk to do it that way, because if the producer sucks then the whole album is ruined as opposed to just one track, but if the combination works and the producer and artist are both on fire the payoff and the result is far more worthwhile.
 

BonsaiK

Music Industry Corporate Whore
Nov 14, 2007
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II2 said:
What pieces of hardware and software do you lean on the most in composition and production?

Anything you would recommend adding to my kit?
What sort of stuff are you recording, or intending to record?