Luck in music business

  Over the past year or so I have talked to many musicians, especially around the Dublin music scene. There has been few things that keep on popping up in these conversations. One thing that I hear a lot is luck. Music business used to be all about being in the right place at the right time. It was the A&R guys of record companies that used to hold the keys to the exclusive world of recording an album. The actual studio time was just too expensive, and understandably so, as the old tape machines were expensive to buy, and even tape was costly, you also needed a big studio desk to have enough inputs to match the tape machine, and another set of inputs for playback. And we are not even talking about compressors, gates, reverb units and other effects, microphones, stands, nice sofa... It was not unusual for the equipment in a studio to be more expensive than the property around it. Also vinyl pressing was expensive. And the record companies were almost the only route to get your product distributed. So the reasons for those expensive advances you hear stories about was the fact that recording an album was costing thousands per day. Editing was very limited, so you had to nail the tracks, not just fix them in ProTools, as is the case these days. Also the recording levels had to be bang on, there was no normalizing back then. So you needed a lot of luck to get one of those A&R guys to come to hear you play. You probably needed to make a demo, that you already spent small fortune getting recorded. You'd send the demos to the record labels, and hoped that some one would listen. And if they did and liked it, then the A&R guy might come and check you out live. So you needed to be gigging all the time as well.

  But today everything has changed. Not only can you get a reasonable recording set up for hundreds, not thousands. If you just don't have the head and the ears to record your self, the professional studio time is much cheaper as well these days. Also there are many up and coming engineers/producers with their own recording set up, who offer their services for very reasonable price. The recording technology has brought out so many new tools As mentioned above, just what you can do on editing is pretty amazing. You have pitch correction, all the tools and effects that costed a fortune and took space, stored in the pluggins folder in your computer. I remember an interview of certain engineer who said he wouldn't do more than three takes on vocals, after that he just fixes the rest, and some of the albums he has worked on went on to sell millions... You can also get your recordings in to most internet download shops for a very small fee. You can sell them through CD baby, or sell them your self from your website or even facebook page. Record shop is still important place for me, but for lot of people it is not any more. Most people buy their music from iTunes, or at the merch table at live concerts. These are all things that has made it possible for you to make it happen, not wait for that lucky day when the A&R guys finally finds he's way to your concert. Those big fat advances are long gone, and what little you might get from the record label, you need to pay it back before you see any money. Actually there are many small labels out there, that won't even give you an advance on the first album. They expect you to bring them a finished product. If it goes to sell loads, maybe on the next one they will give you something towards the recording costs.

  So as you can see, waiting for that luck is more than likely not going to take you anywhere. Instead of luck, you need to get organized and you need lots of “go and get it done” attitude. It's the bands that get of their ass, spend hour polishing their songs in the rehearsal room, gig at every given opportunity, make their own Cds, T-Shirts and other Merch, build a following, they are the ones that will succeed. And most of all, that is what the record company would be looking for as well, an active band that has already proven that they can and will work hard.

So let us know your thoughts on all this. Back for more next week, have a good one:-)
   J.P.