Making money in music is scary. Subscriptions may help.

May 25, 2022 by Aaron

Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Published Work, Rebilly.com

aaron trumm, making money in music, music business, music subscriptions, nquit music

This article was written originally for rebilly.com. I repost it here because maybe it’s useful information. This isn’t comprehensive, and the point was to sell Rebilly as the subscription service you need, but still. Rebilly might indeed be the right way for you to do it, or perhaps Patreon or another solution. You’ll have to decide for yourself, but hopefully this at least is a start.

Look, I get it. I’m a musician and It’s tough out there. Traditional ways of making money in music have blown up.

Streaming is killing download sales. Downloads killed CDs. Touring is expensive and rarely profitable.

With so much scrambling, so many musicians, and such widespread devaluing of music, making a living – or even a buck – can seem like a lost cause.

It’s daunting, but there is good news!

It turns out, with the right kind of innovation and willingness to leverage new technology, now is actually the best time in history to be an independent musician.

A Possible Solution

There are many ways out of the mire, but a couple solutions seem particularly suited to indies. Many musicians are leveraging fans directly to fund records, tours and other creative projects.

You may remember Amanda Palmer from her wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, which convinced the music world that crowdfunding might actually work. The Pixies were almost as successful with their “PIXIES: A Visual History” campaign, and Music For Cats (yes, it’s actually an album for cats) raised over $240,000.

Since crowdfunding a single project has proven workable, now musicians are taking the next logical step. Amanda operates a subscription business on Patreon, and rakes in $37,000 every time she releases something. In fact many musicians are finding subscription services to be a great way to create predictable income while simultaneously building a strong fanbase.

Virtually unknown to the main stream, rapper Nino Bless makes a tidy income which allows him to remain fiercely creative and free of label influence. Using a combination of his subscription service and well placed product offers, he was able to grow from nothing to 17,000 rabid Facebook fans, all while actually making a profit. It took him a mere four months to reach that stage, largely because he was able to fuel growth with subscription income.

Could it be you?

Let’s be real for a minute. Subscriptions could be perfect for you – or not.

Here are a few things you need to succeed with subscriptions:

Consistency. Subscription based businesses can’t earn predictable income (or trust) if content and communication are sporadic. If you only make art when the muse happens to float by, you should learn how to be consistent first.
Popularity. This may be a hard pill to swallow, but the truth is “if you build it they will come” does not apply to crowdfunding. It’s best to build a following, remain consistent and when the time is right, launch your subscription service for your most loyal fans. For help with this stage, check out some thought leaders in digital marketing for musicians: Indepreneur and Music Marketing Manifesto.
Reliability. Once your fans start paying every month, they’ll expect you to be there for them, deliver whatever goodies you’ve promised, and provide support. You can delegate some of this, but it won’t work if you’re not seen as reliable.
Service. You’ll be interacting a lot with your fans who you’re trying to make ongoing customers, so your customer service skills need to be on point. That shouldn’t be hard for rock-star types who love interaction. It’s just a matter of making sure you’re putting your customers’ needs first.
Patience. Your wildest dreams are possible, but it could take time. The big numbers artists like Amanda Palmer pull in look great, but the reality is those are outliers. In fact only 2% of Patreon creators make more than minimum wage. Don’t get discouraged or quit too soon. Let your business grow over time, rather than hoping to explode.

If you can create those things (and you can!), you’re on track for building a business that works!

The tools

In order to make your fan club go, you’ll need a few tools.

As it turns out, Rebilly has a thorough rundown of the tools you’ll need to launch your subscription business. Nevertheless, here’s a quick rundown of the tools you’ll need.

A Website – This should go without saying!
A merchant account (services like Stripe or Square come without upfront fees).
A way to take payments.
A subscription billing service, like Rebilly.
An email marketing tool. MailChimp and AWeber are great examples.

You might also like to use a customer relationship manager, a support tool, and a shipping tool, if you’ve got physical product.

What to deliver

What you give your subscribers is entirely up to you. People love exclusivity, and you can create a feeling of being one of the in crowd with a variety of digital products, subscription only content and access. Most successful acts get quite creative with what they offer their diehard subscribers.

Here are a few ideas to get your juices flowing:

Music. What a concept! You can simply give your subscribers regular access to new songs. You can release a new single every month which they get before the public, release exclusive remixes, even do a cover song every month. Jim Guthrie gives access to his entire back catalog of 14 albums – quite a lot of music.
Video. Video is super engaging, and it doesn’t have be all full music videos. Behind the scenes videos, explanations of songs or special performances are all options. Andrew Huang’s whole shtick is live performance videos, with a lot of cross collaboration thrown in.
Access. Fans love having access to musicians. This may be the biggest advantages indies have over major label artists, who are typically hidden behind a veil of mystery. You still seem like a rock star to your fans, and people will pay to get behind that wall. You can do live video with interactive chat, online performances, Facebook interactions, and even perform in person for your top tier subscribers. You can also seek feedback and let your fans be part of the process. Nino Bless takes the time to live stream, email and even call subscribers, and his fans really appreciate the attention.
Merch. Also known as physical stuff. For your higher paying subscribers, you could ship regular goodie boxes with shwag like shirts, buttons, stickers or even CDs. Just make sure to budget for shipping, production and packaging based on what subscribers pay, and leave yourself a profit margin. For $25 per creation, Amanda Palmer will send physical artwork that she makes. You can also increase revenue beyond subscription fees by offering awesome exclusive merch or discounts.

Above all, provide value and an ongoing, engaging experience. You’re beyond just making music when you gather paying subscribers. You’re creating an experience, and it can be quite effective!

It’s up to you

It’s an exciting time to be a musician, even if it’s a little frightening. Fans are gobbling up new music, and they’re dying for an experience beyond the anonymous, boring pop radio phenomenon. As an indie with some ingenuity, you’re situated perfectly to fish the teeming waters of people who want to be touched, moved and inspired, and want to be a part of the process.

It might take a little time, effort and new thinking, but it can be done, and it can be very rewarding.

I admit it, I don’t have a subscription program yet. I may do that at some point, but in the meantime just hit me up on Facebook @AaronJTrumm – or email me aaron @ aarontrumm.com

Cull the Herd

May 10, 2022 by Aaron

Flypaper by Soundfly, Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness, Published Work

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, flypaper, home recording, music business, music submissions, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, soundfly

The Definitive Guide to Deciding Where to Submit Your Music

This article first appeared in FlyPaper by Soundfly. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to check out their courses. You can get a 15% discount code on a subscription using the promo code AJTRUMM15.

You can’t be everywhere all the time. Still, it’s hard not to fall into the trap of trying to do just that. In the music business, there are thousands upon thousands of gatekeepers, promotional outlets, and other “opportunities” where you can submit your tracks. Since promoting music is largely about submitting and submitting and submitting again, you can’t simply ignore this aspect of the business.

That said, there is no way you can realistically submit to everything, so you need to pick and choose. How to decide who should get your music can be a bit tricky to figure out. Plenty of people will advise you, and everyone accepting music will recommend you submit to them, but the truth is the right plan is different for everyone.

Knowing that your time is precious, here are some things to consider when evaluating whether to submit to a particular opportunity or company.

General considerations

Every category of submission opportunity has its own unique considerations, but to start with there are a few things to think about, no matter who or what you’re pitching to.

First off, think about your goals. Do you want to find new fans to go to your shows? Are you trying to make money as quickly as possible? Are you building a brand around a musical act, or are you a producer trying to produce instrumentals and make a living?

It may seem obvious, but you don’t need to submit to every category for every goal. For example, if your only goal is to place instrumental cues in video productions, you don’t need any press or radio connections. In fact in that case the only category you need to worry about is licensing.

Next, there are a few universal considerations to think over in every case.

Genre

Make sure the people you’re submitting to work with your genre. It may go without saying, but lots of musicians don’t bother to research this crucial aspect, and waste a lot of time in the process, not to mention annoying the people on the other end and damaging their own reputation.

Reputation

How reputable is the company or person you’re submitting to? Is there any risk to making a deal with them? We’ll talk about submission fees in a moment, but also consider whether the company will be hard to deal with, or whether the time you put in to deal with it will really be worth the effort.

Potential return

This consideration is closely tied to reputation. If the entity is a major player with a great reputation, you may stand to gain a lot more than with other companies. If the potential reward is big, you may be willing to go to more trouble.

Submission difficulty

Speaking of effort, some submission processes are easier than others. Sometimes it’s as simple as sending an email with a streaming link to your music, and sometimes you can find yourself spending an hour or more per song filling out forms and checking boxes just to be considered. When it comes to business efficiency, this can be a make or break consideration.

Submission cost

This is probably the stickiest and most contentious consideration. Quite often, pay-to-play is a red flag, but there are situations where it’s ok. If there is a fee, you should be sure that the company has a great reputation, and that your music is really on the mark for their needs. You also need to consider the potential return more seriously. It may only cost five bucks to submit a song to a brief, but if you’re playing a numbers game and submitting song after song, it can add up.

Also, submission fees could indicate something very important that you should consider seriously. They could mean that the company’s revenue model is based on your submissions. Companies like this will often encourage you to submit too often, overstate the potential of your return, or do any number of other shady things to keep you paying in. It also means that this company doesn’t really need to believe in you or your music to accept your music.

If you think a company might be worth it even though they charge submission or membership fees, check with peers and try to find out if anyone is actually making money. If your friends like the company, but can’t point to any revenue generated from them, that’s a big red flag.

When it comes to venues, you shouldn’t pay to play. If you’re renting a space, that’s a bit different, but don’t pay regular venues a fee to submit or play.

Specific considerations

Once you’ve gone through the major considerations above, there are some category-specific things to consider.

Reach

Applicable to press, radio and somewhat to label submissions, the question of reach is simply how many potential fans can this outlet reach? For press type outlets, check into their readership, website traffic or subscription numbers. For radio, what’s their listenership? For labels, look at how big their other artists are, what their overall budget is, and how many connections to press, radio and other outlets they have.

In the licensing realm, you’ll want to consider how many placements they have under their belt, and how widely exposed those placements are. A company that has thousands of placements in small YouTube videos spots may the biggest overall reach, but one that has dozens of national ad placements may also be a powerful ally.

Focus

Who you’re able to reach is as important as how many people you can get to. If your submission is genre-appropriate, you’re already in a good place here, but it’s worth it to further consider a company’s focus. If you’re looking at a label for example, they may have a very wide reach but be spread too thin. A magazine may claim to be national but only have a few readers in each city. Especially if your goal involves getting people to your shows, you’re better off submitting to press, radio and labels who are strong in the areas you want to play. Genre-specific blogs and playlists may be better for finding fans than generalized publications and shows.

When it comes to licensing companies, consider your own goals. Your basic genre may be on point, but if your goal is to produce songs and sing them, you may not want to spend much time with libraries that focus on instrumental cues. Some licensing firms are all around companies, and some specialize in very specific areas like advertising or film and TV. Consider where your music has the best chance of being used and go for the companies in that area.

Relationships

When you’re considering an agent or a manager, their biggest asset is industry relationships. Don’t just consider how many people they know, though. Consider how deep and lasting their relationships are, and how trusted they are.

Payment

Payment isn’t something you need to consider for promotional opportunities like press and radio. But if you’re submitting to labels, licensing companies or venues, you need to know not only WHAT they will pay, but HOW.

Consider the percentages they offer and what the terms are. This is especially important in licensing. Many licensing agreements are super unfavorable, with really long payment terms, clauses that allow non-payment for certain usages, or any number of odd chicanery that might not suit you. If you can, read their terms before you submit. If you can’t live with their terms, there’s no reason to submit.

Similarly if you’re submitting to a venue for performance, find out ahead of time how they deal with money. Do they pay a guaranteed amount? Do you share the door? Are you allowed to sell merch? Again, try to get some idea what you’re likely to make before you submit.

Exclusivity

Exclusivity is a consideration mainly for licensing submissions. Label deals are always exclusive, agent/manager relationships are generally exclusive, and exclusivity isn’t a question in promotional settings.

However, in licensing, exclusivity (or the lack of it) is a major consideration. There are a lot of opinions on what’s better – an exclusive deal or a non-exclusive – but when it comes down to it, your needs will determine what works best.

For the most part, artists are not asked to sign licensing or publishing deals that tie up everything they do. Usually, exclusive deals in this realm apply to individual songs or groups of songs.

Generally, if you place songs with licensing agents or libraries non-exclusively, it means that you’re free to place the same song with other companies, or shop it directly to productions yourself. The one main drawback is the risk of having multiple companies pitch your song to the same production. This can get awkward, so many licensing-focused musicians try to pick only one company in each niche (advertising, film, etc).

There may be an advantage to accepting an exclusive deal, though. Usually, an exclusive deal with a licensing company or publisher means that company will work harder to place the song. If the company is a good one with a lot of clout, it may be a no brainer to accept an exclusive deal. Just remember to vet the company first. There are a few bad companies out there offering exclusive deals, and you don’t want to be locked into one of those.

Competition

Finally, consider your competition. A healthy amount of competition isn’t bad, but too much could be. Anyone worth submitting to is getting hundreds of submissions, so you’ll have to deal with that no matter what, but there are a couple of scenarios where it’s a bigger concern.

Those situations involve licensing and labels. Specifically, consider how much other music is rostered on a label or licensing company. Are you one of a few powerful, handpicked greats that the company really believes in, or are you one of thousands? Being a face in the crowd isn’t always bad, but especially when it comes to any kind of exclusive deal like a label deal, you need to be aware of how much this company will really be putting into you.

If you’re offered a deal with a failing label owned by a struggling major superstar, for example, there probably won’t be many resources left over for you. Similarly if a licensing company is offering thousands of artists exclusive deals, that’s not likely to go well for you.

None of this is to say you should shy away from competition. If you have a chance to submit to an advertising brief worth $200,000, by all means do it! Sure there will be more competition, but you could win! Just be judicious about putting yourself in positions where you don’t have that chance.

Go forth and submit

It doesn’t take much time to consider these factors before making submissions, and when you do, you’ll save yourself a lot more by doing so. You’ll also find your success rate is better, and you’ll have more time to do what you really love, and that’s making music. So go forth, and efficiently submit your music!

Wanna talk about it all? Hit me up on Facebook or Instagram or aaron at aarontrumm dot com and we can vibe about music biz, making stuff, whatever man.

Chasing the Timeless Sound

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

There’s one term that’s a death nell when its associated with a record. It strikes fear in the hearts of producers, partly because nobody wants this brand, and partly because it’s incredibly difficult to define. As soon as you think you understand it, it’s gone in a puff of smoke. And as soon as you start thinking about it, everything sounds…

…dated.

Shudder.

So, what does it mean? What is it when a song sounds “dated”? Let’s start with a dictionary definition.

Dated: Old-fashioned.

That was easy! Dated means old. That means old stuff is dated, right? But old music doesn’t necessarily sound dated. New stuff that sounds old might sound dated, and it might sound “vintage”. So, using old techniques doesn’t always mean a track will sound dated.

If it did, that would mean that recording a live band in a studio would sound dated, because that’s been done to death – but it doesn’t work that way.

The fact is, “dated” is a lot like other subjective terms like “current”, “rockin”, “good”, or “bad”. What sounds dated to one person might sound fresh to someone else.

Maybe a better word for “dated” would be “unoriginal”.

One thing’s for sure. “Dated” is a real thing, just like “good” or “bad”, and you’ll know it when you hear it.

Does It Matter?

Leaving off trying to define it, does it matter if your song sounds dated? Not really. In the end if you love it, you made something worthwhile. End of story.

From a professional standpoint it can definitely matter, especially in pop.

The music business fraught with requests for tracks that “sound like” some famous artist. “In the vein of Drake”, “with an Ed Sheeran vibe”, etc. Many requests even include the term “current”.

Ironically, the more you chase trends, the more dated you’re likely to sound. Even if you manage to hit the mark now, an overly trendy production may not stand the test of time.

Timelessness

Mysterious as the notion of datedness may be, we have established a few things. First, it’s at least partially subjective. Next, it has something to do with being unoriginal (another nebulous term). Third, you’ll know it when you hear it. And finally, chasing trends can lead to future datedness.

Other things seem clear. The latest cool computer trick – dubstep wobble base, for example – may not stand up long. On the other hand, staying stuck in an old way of thinking could make you sound stale. And copying a famous artist may sound unoriginal.

So, timelessness, which opposes datedness better than “current”ness, seems to be a delicate balance of subtle originality and bold creativity.

The truth is, timelessness is as subjective as datedness, so we could never definitively tell you how to find a timeless sound, but there are a few things that seem to help.

Vintage sounds can anchor a song while simultaneously bringing a fresh perspective to a current style.
Some things stand up over time, like spaciousness, great songwriting, or undeniable virtuosity.
Songs seem more timeless when they don’t rely on gimmicks, or when those gimmicks are so original as to be unrepeatable.
One element of a song may be timeless while others may be dating. Perhaps a lyric is timeless, but it’s sung over a cheesy 80s synth track. Maybe a super original track which will stand up forever is superimposed with slangy lyrics mentioning the year.
Certain styles come and go in repeating patterns. Big reverb, for example.

Just Keep Making

Styles go with time periods, and that’s ok. Does that mean that as we age we become irrelevant? Of course not. As we evolve as individuals, our music evolves, and so does music in general. Half of the reason genres change over time is because the same people make them, and those people have grown. The other half, of course, is new blood.

Outside that reality, the notion of a timeless sound is as nebulous as datedness. Given this subjectivity, it would stand to reason that in order to achieve a timeless production, you’ll need to a) trust your gut, b) don’t chase trends and c) don’t worry about it too much.

The main thing we can say is stay true to yourself but let yourself change. Your songs will follow suit.

I make songs that sound dated, cheesy, and unoriginal. 😉 I try hard never to release those. Find out if I’m succeeding at aarontrumm.com/audio or ask me on Facebook or Instagram

Feeding Back

June 8, 2021 by Aaron

Audio Instruction, Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness, Published Work, Recording Magazine

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, do it yourself recording, get better at making music, improve my music, music critique, nquit music, recording magazine

Improving your tracks by soliciting critique

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

Normally in the audio world we try to eliminate feedback. Nobody wants that high-pitched caterwauling ruining an otherwise perfect performance. That may also be how you feel about listening to someone’s opinion about your music, but the truth is outside opinions can be incredibly helpful.

Even if your goal isn’t a wildly successful professional career, getting an outside opinion or five can help you see what you’re missing in a way that time away from a track cannot. If you’re willing to take on the challenge, you can use these other opinions to dramatically improve your work. Just like a writer rarely submits a first draft to a publisher, a great song is hardly ever the first version. In fact, most great productions go through multiple iterations and some final versions are barely recognizable as the same song as version one.

That all said, there’s an art to soliciting feedback and using it wisely to improve a track. But done right, the circle of feedback, revision, feedback, revision is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal in the never-ending quest to sound better.

An Ever-Widening Circle

The first question that’ll come up when you’re ready to get critique is who to ask. Sure, you can ask just about anyone and if you know how to listen, every opinion will have value. But in practice you’ll probably want to strategize, both for time’s sake and for your own sanity. A good plan of action employed by many is the ever-widening circle approach.

The Inner Sanctum

Start with your closest and most trusted associates; the people who already believe in you, think you’re great, and you feel safe showing bad work to. This group may be the four or five members of your band, it may be the 2 collaborators on a long-distance project, or it may be your mother and your girlfriend.

This is the group you can show sketches to, to start to get an idea if a song is even worth your time to produce. This group is also well situated to feedback on multiple versions of a song and help as the song grows from an itty-bitty baby mp3 demo into a full-fledged mix. It’s helpful if one of this inner circle is an expert, but it’s equally helpful if at least one is not. Most important, they should understand you and your goals, and they should feel safe to be honest. This should not be a group that will say everything you do is great. That’s not helpful. They should, rather, know how great you CAN be, and hold you to that standard.

First Steps Into The World

Once your track starts to grow legs, you should start widening your circle. Seek out trusted industry contacts, other musicians and strangers who aren’t the general public. A good place to find new people at this stage are Facebook groups meant for production feedback. It’s helpful to be part of a few semi-private industry groups like MixMe where people bounce ideas and learn from each other.

The key at this stage is to present as finished a mix as you can, and then be willing to go back and change it. Luckily, these are not the days of 12-hour analog mix sessions that can never be recreated. Do a “save as” and create a new DAW file so you can implement changes without losing the older versions. If you ARE working in an all analog environment, you may consider having more people involved earlier in the process, and more people in the building when you mix.

It can be a hard pill to swallow to work hard on getting something to “finished” and then soliciting feedback, but once you start to involve strangers you want to put your best foot forward.

At this point, you’re still probably looking for general feedback, but you may start focusing down, maybe by seeking feedback from mix engineers on the mix, and songwriting experts on the song writing. Make sure to take notes on everything you hear good and bad, and don’t put your own filter on. If possible, try to implement every piece of feedback you get unless two people directly contradict each other. In that case, you’re the boss so use your veto power.

Going Semi-Public

Once you’ve solicited feedback from some fellow producers and extra friends and done a few more iterations, you’re probably feeling confident about the track. Now’s the time to get a little more public, and you can do this in a number of ways.

You could share the track on social media and wait for feedback. If you do it this way, it’s unlikely anyone will say anything bad to you, but you’ll be able to gauge how well the track is moving people by how extreme their responses are. If you get 3 comments on a Facebook post that say “neat. Great track, man,” that’s not a great response. It means people are being polite. If you get 43 comments that say “holy CRAP I love this SOOOOO much where can I download it PLEASE?” that’s a great response.

That’s a decent way to go about it, but in truth, it’s hard to get people to listen to songs on social media (a subject for a whole other article). If you’re really looking to test the track’s mettle, you may start reaching out to gatekeepers or professionals whose job is to critique songs. If you’re a Taxi member you can submit for feedback or find a listing to submit to and see what the screener says about the track. If the track gets accepted great, but you don’t really care yet, you’re just looking for feedback.

Another option is to submit your track to a service like Audiu, AudioKite (now a part of ReverbNation) or Fluence and read the reports. The feedback may or may not be specific enough for you, and your skin needs to be thick at this point, but the powerful part is these are not people that are trying to please you, and they’re anonymous.

At this point, it may be even harder than before to want to change things, because you’ll have worked hard, but if you’re willing, you can make your track just that much better. Just beware of one thing: context is decisive. That means that inside the context of you seeking “coaching”, you will probably never impress these people. Their job is to look for what’s wrong, so simply use what they say to polish up the track, and leave the accolades to your fans.

The Art Of Solicitation

Once you have an idea about who to ask, how do you ask? As is usual in any business interaction, the first rule is be civil, polite and humble. Be specific about what you need feedback on, and never ever answer back. When receiving feedback, especially face to face, it’s never helpful to defend a decision. This leaves people feeling unsafe to really open up, which will leave you in the dark about what they really think. Instead, simply nod, write down the note, and say thank you.

If you’re simply looking for people’s first responses, then you can simply ask “what do you think of this”, but as you move forward, you’ll probably have specific questions, like whether the mix is translating or if the lyrics seem trite. It’s good to let people know if the mix is just a rough and you’re looking for songwriting, or if the arrangement is set in stone, and you’re just looking for opinions on the bass. Whatever it is, being specific helps people narrow in on what you need and saves time and energy.

That said, it can be quite telling to NOT mention a particular problem you’re worried about. See if people notice it without you mentioning it. That’s a tell tale sign that your instinct was right and you need a change.

Of course, if you’re asking other musicians for feedback, be sure to be willing to help them on their tracks too! On most Facebook groups, the common etiquette is to feedback on other people’s work for a while before making your ask. People will be more familiar with you and feel more comfortable helping you.

Above all, be great with people, and receive all criticism with gratitude.

Giving Feedback

Since you’ll be reciprocating by helping people, you may want to think about how to give feedback in a way that creates a good relationship while still actually helping your fellow musicians grow.

The same basic rules apply. Be kind and courteous, and treat people with respect, even if they are brand new. Never pan work outright, and never criticize the person. A good rule of thumb when giving feedback is to assume everyone is a professional who knows what they’re doing. This means only providing feedback when asked, sticking to what’s asked for, and never talking down to people, even if they’re way newer than you.

You also don’t want to blow smoke. Just as with your work, it’s patronizing and unhelpful to simply say “yeah! Great stuff!” unless your mind is so blown that you can find nothing to improve. In that case, you will probably come up with something more anyway. By the same token, focusing entirely on a plethora of mistakes can be damaging and equally unhelpful.

So a good method to use is what management technique calls “the sandwich method”. This method is normally used to surreptitiously give negative feedback to employees, but when critiquing music can be the perfect approach. It goes like this: start with something positive, lead to something that could be improved, and end with something positive.

The key to the sandwich method NOT being disingenuous and manipulating is to really MEAN the positive parts. Find something that you truly like or love about the song, and lead with that. From there, move into the thing that you noticed that you think could be improved. Be specific, and offer an idea for something else to do. Then end with more positivity. That could be “great work!” or “can’t wait to hear the next version”, or even another specific thing.

For example, maybe your friend Joe asks you for general feedback on a song and the first thing you notice is a very muddy low end. Since that’s the first thing you noticed, you should listen again, and look for what you like. On second listen, you notice how great the songwriting is. So your feedback might go something like:

“Hey Joe! Wow this song is so well written. Amazing lyrics! I’m hearing some mud in the low end which obscures a couple lyrics, so I might try to carve out some 100hz in the bass and kick drum, and maybe look for other cuts in some of the ‘mud’ frequencies like 200 and 400-500hz. I’d love to hear it at that point. Really digging this one, can’t wait for the finished master!”

The best part about establishing this method of feedback is that if you boost people up while still actually helping them improve, they’ll do the same for you!

Go Around Again

Once you’ve got some good critique and a bunch of notes, obviously you’ll want to implement it. You’ll probably want to save a new DAW session file, and you may even want to make a couple of different versions at this point. Perhaps you’re not decided between one person’s idea that you make a song longer and another that you make it shorter. You can do a couple of versions and let them shoot it out. Or you may just make that executive decision. Either way, once you’ve implemented as much of the feedback as you can, go back around the ever-widening circle until you’re getting very little critique, and most importantly you feel satisfied and confident.

When you’re at that point, it’s time to put the song into the world, and after that don’t ask for feedback, because that sets up the context that the song is not finished. When you release to the general public simply project confidence and excitement. You’ll still get some unsolicited critique, and that’s ok. Carry that feedback forward and let it inform your next productions, and where and who you market the finished song to.

Wherever that leads you, you will find that vetting your work will give you confidence, better tracks and a lot more opportunity to interact with and work with people of like mind.

Here’s to feedback we want, and may you never hear the other kind of dreaded squeal again.

I’m a producer, singer and emcee who could have used some more vetting early on. Nevertheless, I’m now open to conversation on social media @AaronJTrumm.

Stretching The Budget

April 5, 2021 by Aaron

Audio Instruction, Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Published Work, Recording Magazine

aaron j. trumm, home recording, independent music, music business, nquit music, recording magazine, recording on a budget, save money on recording

How to get the biggest bang for your recording studio buck

This article first appeared in Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

Not so long ago, a recording project required a full-fledged studio. Things have changed now, and many projects are done entirely at home. But there’s still a place for a dyed-in-the-wool recording studio, and still plenty of reason you may need one.

This means money. No one’s recording budget is unlimited, so let’s talk about how to make that budget go as far as it can, without sacrificing quality.

Pre-Production

You can save money at every stage of the production process, but the preparation stage, or pre-production, is your best opportunity to save money in the long run.

Rehearsal

Recording sessions are usually charged hourly. Nothing makes a session take longer than doing take after take because the artist isn’t ready to rock n roll. It’s even longer if you never get a whole take and have to comp them together, and that’s seriously compounded if those comps have fluctuating tempos.

So, first and foremost, rehearse. Whether you’re a band or a solo artist, tracking sessions can be incredibly efficient if you’re well-rehearsed. Some things to do in rehearsals:

Practice with a click – You’ll be asked to sync to one in the studio, and if you’re not used to it, it can be difficult to say the least.
Practice in public – Preferably, you’re recording songs you’re already killing with on stage. In the studio strangers will be watching and when tape rolls, nerves can be a factor. Plus, if you’re recording well-vetted material, you’ll have fewer decisions to make later
Practice as a group – If you’re a group, you probably want to record as a group, at least to begin with, so obviously you should practice together.
Practice alone – The tape never lies. In the studio, you can’t hide behind the group, the crowd and the fleeting moments like you can on stage. So put your parts out there where you can scrutinize and perfect them.
Practice recording – Even if all you have is the voice recorder on your phone, practice recording however you can. Roll on rehearsals and listen back, making notes and practicing the little things you wouldn’t have noticed.

Writing And Arranging

Even if you’re cutting new material, you should still be rehearsing and finishing songs ahead of time. Writing songs in the studio is a huge money waster.

Lyrics, song, and arrangments should be completely finished. Get feedback and edit songs in pre-production. Don’t pay money to send rough mixes to find out you should have sung “I love your mom” instead of “I love your man”. You can find that out with an acoustic scratch track or a lyric email.

The same holds for melodies, chord progressions, breaks, fills, everything musical. If you’re a band, work as much of the cool production stuff out live as you can. Bring your producer to rehearsal and implement their ideas. You’ll wildly improve your live act while you’re at it.

If your music is more sequencer based, you should be arranging everything at home. Get feedback on your home versions first, before going in the studio.

Session Planning

Once you’ve finished your songs, plan the sessions. Communicate with the studio ahead of time. Share your tech rider with the engineer and discuss mic choices, physical arrangement, song order, headphones mixes, everything. Anything you can figure out ahead of time when the clock isn’t running will make sessions faster.

If you can visit the studio beforehand so you know what they have, what you’ll need to bring, and who will be working on the project, do it! If you can have a pre-production meeting with your engineers, even better. You can even plan how many tracks you’ll need and what to overdub.

In any case, communicate everything you can with the studio, so they can be ready for you.

Tracking

When the day comes to start work, there’s still plenty you can do to maximize your budget.

Use The Right Room

In pre-production, you should outline what you’ll record in the main studio and what you’ll do at home or in a cheaper studio. Higher-end facilities often have multiple recording rooms, and studio B or C might be cheaper than studio A.

Also consider booking time in different studios. You may be able to track a bunch of vocals in a small project studio that costs half the big studio, for example. Save the expensive rooms for work that can only be done there. Grand piano, full orchestras, or full band captures, for example.

You may be also able to do some work at home. If your music is sequenced, you’ll certainly do that work at home, but you may be able to do more. If you’ve got a simple interface and there are guitar overdubs that would work with a direct input, plan to do that at home. You may even be able to grab backing vocals at home, or keyboard parts. These audio files can be integrated into the main DAW project. You may even have enough home studio to track everything at home and save money for mixing and mastering.

Also ask about intern engineers. Studios often let the new guy record on off hours at significantly discounted rates. Just remember that the engineer is bearing the brunt of that discount, so be nice!

Finally, you may be able to save some money overall by booking a day or week-long lockout. That won’t be cheap, but it will remove the pressure of the clock.

Gear Maintenance

Prep your equipment ahead of the session. Make sure strings are new, drum heads are in good shape, fingers and vocal chords are fresh, and anything else you need is ready to go. The clock doesn’t stop if you break a string, so be as ready as possible before you get to the studio.

Of course, your body is equipment too. Sleep well, eat right, and come to the session fresh and ready to go. The fresher you are, the fewer mistakes you make, which makes everything more efficient. And it should go without saying but being snot-slinging drunk will not get you your best performance.

Studio Day

Just a few things to note when you get to the studio:

Be early – Arrive at least 15 minutes early to the session. Once your booked time begins, small talk and intros cost money, so create relationships before and after the session.
Be even earlier (and organized) – Next, be organized when you arrive and leave extra time for load in. If you can bring help to carry gear, that will make things quicker and leave the engineer free to set up. Aim for being in the room fully set up 5-10 minutes before the session start time, if possible. Many engineers won’t start setup until the clock starts, but if you can do anything to facilitate pre-session preparation, great. Just remember to be respectful of the studio’s time too.
Warm up – You’ll be glad if you warm up before the session rather than on paid time. Run through scales or vocal drills at home, and then quickly when you’re waiting for the session to start.
Bring documentation – Bring anything you wrote during pre-production like set lists, tracking plan, “stage” plot and the like and be sure the engineer gets copies. Give the engineer lyric sheets, too, with enough space for notes.
Keep it professional – Just like in rehearsal, the more you jabber, the more time things take. But beware, being too tight makes performances rigid and leads to mistakes. So, keep yourself in the sweet spot between fun and focused. Say stuff, laugh, be creative – and be ready and able to shut it at a moment’s notice. You’d be surprised how much time this habit can save.
Take breaks – Recording sessions can get grueling. It’s not uncommon for a session to drone on for 12 hours. Don’t do this. Break every two hours, eat a meal every four, and unless you’re trying to maximize a lockout, keep days to eight hours. You’ll stay fresher over the duration of the project, which will lead to better efficiency.

Mixing

Oh happy day! You’ve finished tracking. Hopefully you’ve sought feedback on rough mixes, and you’ve been careful to throw away advice you can no longer implement (that lyric should have been edited in pre-pro, remember?).

Now you need a mix. Every studio on Earth will try to convince you that you need to mix at their studio, since you tracked there. Poppycock. That studio may be the best place to mix, and it may not.

In either case, we’re thinking about the money here, so you want to consider a few things to help you maximize the mix budget:

Pay per song – Mixing can be involved and unpredictable, and it’s in your best interest NOT to pay an hourly rate. It just so happens that dedicated mix engineers prefer it this way too.
Provide references – If you’re going for a certain sound, provide references to the mixer.
Organize tracks – This is really the tracking engineer’s job, but don’t leave it to chance. Make sure the mixer gets well organized, properly labeled tracks. There shouldn’t be 34 guitar tracks labeled “eric” or “rickenbacker 45000 uptown one chicken fried awesome track”. Edit and comp tracks and label them plainly, ie: “electric guitar”.
Pick a leader – The whole group should get to feedback, but one person should have final veto power. Otherwise things may never get done. If you have a producer, this is their job.
Limit revisions – Most mix engineers (especially with a per song fee) will do this for you, but you should make sure there are only one or two revisions. You can tweak forever and never get done, and if you’re paying hourly, this will cost you severely.

Mastering

If you’re on a budget, you may not be thinking about sending mastering out to yet another studio/engineer. This is ok. You can have your mix engineer put together a master, and that mix engineer might very well be the same person who tracked you. Maybe this isn’t the aural ideal, but It’s no crime.

If you do have a mastering budget, some guidelines apply:

Don’t fix it in mastering – Never leave anything wrong with a mix for mastering to fix. If it can be done in mixing, do it.
Organize songs – Similar to sending a mixer well organized tracks, the mastering engineer needs clean, well-documented material. Make clear filenames and include notes telling the engineer what’s where.
Clear deliverables – Be very clear ahead of time what deliverables you need. Do you want CD quality files? A CD master? Streaming-ready MP3s? Provide a detailed list of deliverables so there’s no back and forth.
Limit revisions – What’s true in mixing is true in mastering too. Keep the tweaking to a minimum.

The After Party

As you can see, maximizing your recording budget is often done in increments. Each time you add efficiency or cut something unnecessary, you stretch the budget. Yes, you can cut your budget to nothing by setting up your phone recorder and jamming out some tunes (call it lo-fi, it’ll work!), but what you’re really trying to do is create something awesome.

If you’re efficient, you can actually improve the quality of your recording, because you won’t have to cut corners after wasting a bunch of money – for example – drunkenly re-writing a song in the $250/hr main room at Ocean Way.

And if you do it right, you’ll have just enough left over for a few beers at your fabulous post-recording party!

———————————————————-

I like to think of myself as the McGiver of recording. I “funded” my first CD by rebuilding a boneyard at the University Of New Mexico, dragging 80 pounds of gear there every Saturday, and re-tarring the roof of my mentor’s studio to earn mix time. Ask me about it on Facebook @AaronJTrumm – or email me aaron @ aarontrumm.com

File This

A Brief Discussion of Audio File Types

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

In my article “Keeping Track”, we covered data. We talked about the information you need to keep with your songs in order to sell, license and organize them. We covered metatags; data about data that gets embedded in files. We talked a little about the file types that carry metadata and how to use them, and that brought up a wider topic: audio file types.

There are hundreds of audio formats and an endless variety of settings and options. So, without a whole lot of fanfare, we’ll dive into some of the formats that exist as of now, but first let’s delineate a few traits and categories.

Compression

An audio file (or a video file for that matter) is either compressed or uncompressed. What this means is the file is either whole and complete or it has been squashed down to save space, like using a .zip file; or in physical terms, like using one of those infomercial vacuum bags to suck the air out of your Christmas sweaters. A WAV file is uncompressed; an MP3 is compressed.

Don’t confuse compression or the lack thereof with the terms lossy or lossless. Lossy and lossless are two types of compressed files. If a file is lossy, it means some data has been thrown out because in theory that data isn’t necessary, usually because the human ear can’t hear it. That data cannot be recovered. On the other hand, a lossless file is compressed, but no data has been thrown out. Think of the difference between cutting off the sleeves of your sweater (because it’d be fine as a vest) and sucking it in Mr. Popeil’s vacuum (lossy), and simply sucking it in the vacuum, but leaving it intact (lossless). As you might guess, lossless files are generally bigger. MP3s are lossy. FLAC files are lossless.

File Format and Codec

You may never need to know this, but there is a difference between a file’s format and it’s codec. The format, or file type, is simply the wrapper in which the audio data is kept. The codec is the meat of how it’s encoded. Not all file types support all codecs, but there are some surprising possibilities. A WAV file might not be encoded with PCM, for example. We don’t have room here for a comprehensive list, but it’s likely you’ll only ever need to worry about a few possibilities. We’ll say more on those big ones momentarily.

Sample Rate, Bit Depth and Bit Rate

These are the main measurement of audio quality, and there can be some confusion about what they all mean.

Sample rate is used to refer to an original or uncompressed recording. It’s how many times per second a snapshot of the signal is taken. 44.1k means 44.1 kilohertz, or 44,100 times in a second. You probably know that CD quality is 44.1k, 16 bit.

Bit Depth is how many bits are in each sample. If you record at 44.1k, 16 bit, you’re taking 44,100 16 bit samples every second. Crudely, more bit depth corresponds to more dynamic range.

Bit Rate can be a bit fuzzier. Bit rate simply means the number of bits that are processed over a given amount of time, and it is a measure that can be applied to any file. A CD quality file is 1,411 kbps (kilobits per second), for example. In practice, though, bitrate is more often used to refer to the quality of a compressed, lossy file. To be crude again, it comes down to a measure of how much data we’ve thrown away. The highest bit rate for mp3s is 320 kbps, and the default iTunes rate is 256. A 128k MP3 is noticeably smaller than a 320k file, but in many situations, not all that different sounding. A 32k MP3, however, would sound awful, except in special circumstances (audiobooks, for example, often use low bit rates, because that doesn’t much affect a spoken track).

The Big Ones

While there are actually tons of audio file types and different combinations of format/codec possibilities, there are only a few you’re likely to see very often. In fact, we can narrow that down to three. WAV, AIFF, and MP3.

WAV (Waveform Audio File Format) files are Microsoft’s format, used in PC applications, and based on RIFF (resource interchange file format). Usually WAV files are encoded using PCM (pulse code modulation) encoding, which is uncompressed and the same basic encoding used in CDs, but it is possible to encode a WAV file with other codecs, even compressed ones. A “RIFF Wav” is a normal WAV file, and a “Broadcast WAV” is a WAV file with extended headers, originally used by broadcasters. WAV files have .wav extensions.

AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) files are Apple’s uncompressed format, also based on RIFF, and usually using PCM encoding. The only practical difference between WAV and AIFF files is that AIFF files allow more metadata by default (so you can see stuff like album covers in iTunes), but you will notice that certain DAWs won’t deal with both. That’s not a problem, as you can easily convert between them with something like Sox or FFMPEG, or free software like Audacity. AIFF files typically carry .aif extensions.

EDIT with a sneak pro tip: AIFFs and WAVs are literally the same format, from an audio standpoint. So if Joe Schmo who uses GarageBand sends you a bunch of AIFFs that your Windows DAW can’t read – you can just change the extension and voila.

MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer III) files are compressed, lossy and very common. MP3 shouldn’t be confused with MPEG-3, which is a video format. MP3 compression is done by throwing away data which isn’t needed, mostly due to a phenomenon in human hearing called auditory masking. That’s a pretty fancy way of saying we don’t hear everything in an uncompressed file anyway, so we might as well throw some away to save space. There’s no shortage of debate there, but it seems to work pretty well. MP3 was a proprietary format, owned and licensed by the The Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Circuits, and that’s why not all software could make an MP3, at least until very recently. The Fraunhofer Institute declared MP3 an obsolete format in May of 2017, and terminated its licensing program. Whether this means the MP3 will die or proliferate further remains to be seen. For now, it’s still the de-facto compressed file format, and typically what you get when you rip a CD with iTunes or other software, or download that free track from your favorite polka band.

Other Major Formats

There are so many audio formats, we’d be hard pressed to talk about them all here, but there are a few you should know about.

CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) is the format for compact discs. It’s just an AIFF file with different headers. If you happen across a .cdda file (probably ripped from a CD), you’ll probably be able to play it in anything that can play a WAV or AIFF.

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is a compressed, lossy format created by Dolby which was designed to be a successor to MP3. Apple subsequently developed a copy protected version that uses DRM (digital rights management) for iTunes, and that’s generally the format of files you buy from iTunes.

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is exactly what it sounds like, a free, lossless, compressed format. Great for archiving files, since it can reduce size up to 60% without losing any quality.

WMA (Windows Media Audio) was originally a compressed, lossy Windows format designed to compete with MP3. It’s been expanded to include a lossless version, a multichannel version, and a lower bit rate version used for voice. You may encounter Windows system files or other similar things in WMA format. WMA files can be copy protected.

AC-3 is a lossy 5.1 surround sound format used by Dolby Digital in DVDs, HDTV and DTV (digital television). Its highest sample rate is 48k. A side note: The “point one” in surround sound refers to a Low Frequency Effect (LFE) channel which has less bandwidth. The LFE is where the shake your boots BOOM in movies comes from.

What To Use?

At this point your question may be why should I care, or what should I use? The truth is, audio is audio, and when it comes to format choice, utility is the main consideration. Your DAW will do what it does, and I recommended letting it do that. When you’re deciding what to export, think about the use at hand. You’ll want to export either WAV or AIFF for mastering, making CDs, importing into a video project, or other continuing full resolution work. They’re really the same thing, so think about the software you’re using next, or what the person on the other end needs, and use that.

When it comes to delivery to the general public, think about the end user rather than entering into an endless debate about the perceptual quality of various algorhythms or codecs. If you’re selling downloads to normal people, you’ll probably want to use MP3s. If you’re delivering files to a digital distributor, you’ll probably be asked for CD quality WAVs, and in some cases, distributors will take AAC files for iTunes. If you want you can also distribute lossless files in FLAC format, or give people access to WAVs, or even distribute OGG/Vorbis files, which is an open source container/codec combination very similar to MP3. Beware, though, that not all players support these less common formats, and your user may end up with no way to listen.

As far as bit rate, I like to give my loving, devoted fans the highest quality MP3s I can, so those are encoded at 320k, but it’s also a good idea to make a 128k version for web-based preview listeners, because the smaller size will load faster and stream better. Some submissions you make (say to internet radio or licensing folk) may have size limits, too, so those smaller MP3s are useful. In the end, this is a judgement call, and if it’s for your own personal listening, then do whatever you like best.

One other consideration is something we addressed in “Keeping Track”, which is metadata. There are many situations where you’ll want some data other than audio in your file. Whether it’s so consumers know who you are, or licensing agents know who to contact, you’ll need some extra info in there, so the file type you use to send to certain people needs to contain that data. That’s what we covered in “Keeping Track”, so if you haven’t seen it, check that article out.

Resources

As with any very technical topic, an exploration of audio file types can go quite deep, and we don’t have room here to cover everything we could think of, so here are some recommendations for further reading:

Principles of Digital Audio by Ken Pohlmann
The Audio Expert (chapter 8 especially) by Ethan Winer
Mastering Audio by Bob Katz
How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt (for a great history of the MP3 format)
Any Wikipedia page about “audio file types” or specific types – google “WAV Wikipedia”, for example.

If you’re new to audio or recording, then hopefully we’ve helped you at least begin to sort out file types in digital audio, and if you’re a veteran, I hope you’ve reminded yourself of a few things here. For the most part, file types are pretty straight forward, but you can run into confusion at times, especially when a DAW or other piece of software gives you a thousand choices. It’s nice to remember a few basic tenets, cut through the noise, and get back to creating. So file this away, and we’ll see you in the studio!

Did you know I have a master’s degree in “Music, Science and Technology” from Stanford University? That means I can go back and forth between Macs and PCs in the studio, and talk at length about debt. Find me on Facebook and Twitter and other various stuff @AaronJTrumm.

Keeping Track

August 12, 2019 by Aaron

Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Published Work, Recording Magazine

aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio, metadata, metatagging, metatags, recording magazine, what do i put in my metadata

Meta-tagging and the data you need to keep

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

It may not be a glamorous notion, but handling data properly is one of the biggest differences between a professional and an amateur in music production. When it comes to selling music to other professionals or making sure your image is awesome when fans find you, good tagging and tracking of recordings is of the utmost importance. So we’re just going to dive into the where, how and why of keeping your metadata.

Metatags

Simply put, metadata is data about other data. In our case, it’s data about audio data. Metatags are how files embed this metadata into themselves. This could be anything from the title of a song to the format of a file. Audio file formats include various amounts and types of metatags, and you’ll want to fill in this data where appropriate. We’ll talk about what you’ll need in a bit, but let’s start by talking about a couple of file types and their metatags.

WAV

Wav files are our most common uncompressed audio format. Technically these files have metadata in them, but it’s all technical data about the file (more on that in an upcoming article), and nothing you want to touch. From our point of view, WAV files contain no extra data. Don’t confuse this with the metadata that gets amended to a Red Book CDDA file, which is the way CD Players know things like song title and artist name. This data is stored in the Red Book file, not in the .wav itself.

EDIT for full accuracy: WAV files DO indeed carry metadata, not just for technical stuff. Very few software packages can read this data, so it’s likely that whoever you send a .wav file to will never see it, even if you add it. AND it’s likely if they save the file in any software that doesn’t deal with it – it’ll get lost. Nevertheless, some people still embed their metadata in their .wav masters – I am one. As of this edit, I use Tag Scanner for this job – it’s free and awesome.

MP3

MP3’s are currently the most common compressed format, which is usually how we deliver downloads to fans and associates. Mp3’s ubiquitous nature may change, but probably not soon, and since Mp3s carry so much useful metadata, they’re good for getting the concept down. There are a couple of different metadata formats associated with Mp3s – ID3v1 and ID3v2 – but we really needn’t concern ourselves with that right now. What’s important right now is what data we need.

Others

Many other audio file formats exist for audio, including AIFF, OGG and Flac. Some carry useful metadata and some don’t. We’ll be diving into file formats in more depth in a later piece, so for now, let’s stick to the basic concepts and use Mp3 as our basic guide.

What You Need And Why

So what data do we want to associate with a song? Obviously the title and artist name would be a good start, but there’s a lot more than that. To start to understand what you really want to embed in a file, you just need to think about the purpose of a recording. There are a few potential purposes. You might be selling the tracks to fans, you might be giving the tracks away for promotion, and you might be using the tracks for business-to-business transactions, such as licensing.

That last scenario is the big one. When you pitch a track to an agent or a music supervisor, there’s a wealth of information they need to make it easy to potentially use a song. Fortunately, some of it is the same stuff you want your fans to have, and all of it also serves the purpose of creating a professional look and feel to your work. So, let’s look at some information from the extended Mp3 standard that we might want.

Title
Artist
Album
Album Artist (could be different than the track artist)
Grouping
Composer
Year
Track number (# of #)
Disc #
Genre
Comment
BPM
ISRC (a unique identifier for a given recording)
Publisher
Copyright
URL
Album Cover
Lyrics

Title, artist and album are pretty self-explanatory. If your song has a featured artist, put that in the TITLE, not the artist. This way, programs like iTunes don’t separate the song from your others, creating organizational havoc for your listeners. Album artist might be different, say if you’re a guest on a compilation or something.

Fill in the year, track number if the song is part of an album, and if the album is some sort of multi-disc set, fill in the disc number. This is kind of an antiquated notion unless you’re also releasing a physical product like CDs.

If you fill in your genre, make it as accurate as possible, and don’t overload it. Use no more than 3 genres (most of the time, it’s a dropdown anyway). Especially when it comes to licensing, your agent or music supervisor or indie film maker needs to be able to find you in a genre search and not be way off.

Grouping was intended originally for movements in classical music, but you could use this for subgenres, or some people use it to identify the companies clearing the mastering and publishing sides of a song, which just means who a person has to deal with to pay for a licensing.

In the composer section, you can list all the composers or the main composers, and if you have writer information, such as writer’s percentage and performing rights identification number. This is also a good place to identify a public domain song, or if it’s a cover, the original writer.

Comment may be the most useful section. Here’s a good place for contact information, which is especially important if you’d like somebody to license your music and pay you! It’s a good idea to put your website in here, writers splits if you don’t put them in composer, the key, time signature, or any songs or artists the song sounds like. Also helpful is any identifying info from your performing rights organization, such as BMI # or ISWC (an international standard song identifier), or even the ISRC, which, if you have one, is a unique identifier connected to a given recording. Another useful thing to do if you’re pitching for licensing is include a link to an instrumental version somewhere on the web. The comment section is limited, so be judicious with your character count.

BPM, or tempo, can be important for anyone looking to use your music in a video production, or for DJs who’d like to work your song into a set. If the song is published, or you have a publishing company, you can enter that info and your copyright info (you can do this even if you have yet to register), and you may find a separate URL tag. Use that, but also put your website in the comment section.

Album cover is super important. Imagine when you open an mp3 from a pro – there’s always an image. Make sure, if your track is for sale or any kind of public consumption, that you get some kind of cover image in there. Square is best. Pro tip: album cover, title and artist are the only things you will see in every mp3 player.

Of course, lyrics are also an option. It’s up to you whether to include lyrics, but if you intend to pitch the song, the lyrics are quite helpful, and it’s a nice thing for fans to have. Not all players will show the lyrics, but iTunes does.

How To Do It

If you’re wondering how to fill in your metatags for, say, an mp3, it’s not difficult. Many software packages do this. Some mastering software will let you create tags right in the software, some audio software such as Audacity have metatag features, and there are dedicated tagging packages such as Mp3Tag, TagScanner (both free), Tag & Rename and MediaMonkey, to name a VERY few. A lot of packages support various formats like AIFF, as well. You can even add metadata when using command line mp3 encoders, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Probably the easiest thing to do is open your song in iTunes, click “info”, and edit the tags to your heart’s content. When you do this, you’ll notice that you can do this to any mp3, which means that anybody can change your tags around. You’ll have to live with this. It’s how people organize their collections.

If you try a few different packages, you’ll see some variation in what tags are available. iTunes doesn’t include the ISRC, URL, publisher or copyright tags for example. This doesn’t mean they aren’t there, but if you were to open the file in a package that does use those tags (TagScanner, for example), you’d see they’re blank.

TagScanner – the Author’s favorite free MetaTag Editor

In any case, you’ll edit your tags, and hit save. The metadata is embedded into the file.

But Wait…

You can keep a lot of the data you need to associate with a track in the metatags embedded in the file, but you may find that you need more data at your fingertips. For example, if you submit your track to a few micro-licensing libraries, you’ll find yourself entering in a description and mood over and over. So, it behooves you to keep some information somewhere connected to your songs, so you don’t have to dig around every time you need it. You can keep a simple spreadsheet, use a database, or there are a number of software packages and online solutions that can help you keep organized.

You should keep all the data you would put in a metatag handy, plus more – here’s a big list of data you might want to keep, if you were to use a simple spread sheet:

Credits – any players, engineers, studios, etc that should be credited.
Title
Artist/Act Name – you may have more than one, so keep track if you do
Description – a short description of the song that tells people the basic topic, mood, genre and instrumentation
Moods
Release date – you’ll get asked for this a lot
Album – if it’s part of an album, keep track of which
PRO # – the id number assigned when you register the song with BMI, ASCAP or your PRO.
ISWC – the international song identifier used across PRO’s, issued by your PRO.
ISRC – the unique identifier for the recording, issued by the RIAA in the U.S., or your ISRC agency, or your distributor (this is easiest).
Publisher – if you have a publisher, or if it’s your own publishing company, or none if neither
Writers splits – who owns what percentage of writing
Master splits – who wants what percentage of the recording
Genres – a short list of genres
Time – of the track, not the day!
BPM – tempo
Time signature
Key
UPC – if you have a UPC for the track, keep it with the track info. Keep the album UPC with your album info. UPCs are issued by the GS1, or your distributor (this is easiest).
Keywords – a comma separated list of keywords so you can copy/paste when asked for them on a form
Lyrics
Toggles – whether you’ve registered the PRO, copyright, Soundscan or SoundExchange. You can use Y/N, Yes/No,1/0, whatever feels best to you.
Notes – some general notes

There You Have It

There you go! The topic may not have been as sexy as some other things, but metadata is the nuts and bolts of efficient communication, and it makes all the difference when you’re building a business out of music. Keep your data clean, handy and up-to-date and you will find it a lot easier to spread the word, engage your partners, and make money. Even if you don’t plan to build a music business, it’s nice to know where everything is. So, fire up the computer and get organized!

What The Hell Are Master Rights?

February 19, 2018 by Aaron

Music Business, What The Hell Series

ari herstand, ascap, bmi, making money, master rights, moses avalon, music, music business, music revenue, publishing, royalties, sesac, socan, songwriting

Master rights – What the hell are they? Several times I’ve seen some form of this question come up on Facebook, and the replies people get are usually hazy, conflated or inaccurate. So here I’m going to attempt to explain this as simply and completely as I can, and at the end, I’ll link you to some other very good explanations and resources. Be warned, even this is super simplified, but I hope it helps.

One way this gets asked a lot is something like “If my friend has master rights on my song how does he/she make backend income from it if it is played publicly or released and sold on iTunes, Spotify, etc.”

(Shortcut answer: YOU pay them…read on for why…)

Most of the time, when people talk about this, they conflate or confuse terms like “backend” and “royalty”, and what things like “master rights holder” or “song” actually mean. So in order to really understand who owes who what, we need to go through a few steps to clear things up.

STEP 1 – Clear up the revenue streams

First let’s make it clear what revenue streams there are in music.

Think of this like a tree with two huge branches:

Branch 1: WRITER income. This could also be called PUBLISHING or SONGWRITING. This is paid to the OWNERS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (songs), aka writers and/or their representatives (aka publishers).
Branch 2: MASTER income. Aka RECORDING, or ARTIST/PERFORMER income. This is paid to the OWNERS OF A RECORDING.

It is vitally important to understand the distinction between those two streams of income. At no point and in no way do these two streams of income cross. If you are both a performer and a writer, you need to separate these identities in your head, because they are not the same. The easiest way to keep this straight is to tell yourself (from a business point of view) that WRITERS DO NOT PERFORM, AND PERFORMERS DO NOT WRITE. Keep those two entities separate in your head forevermore (even though obviously a person might do both, and most of us do).

STEP 2 – Fully define the branches

Let’s go a little deeper into each branch.

Branch 1 – Writing/publishing.

Writing. This branch is for the owners of intellectual property. Songs. A song is defined as lyrics and melody (or just melody), and it exists as a conceptual thing. We can make something physical that represents a song, like a piece of sheet music, or a lead sheet, or a tab sheet with lyrics, or a recording. None of those media of communicating the song are the song. The song is the melody and lyric. Drums are not the song. A bass line is not the song. A recording is not the song.

When you register your song with your Performing Rights Organization (or PRO), (BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, SOCAN, etc), you are registering this intellectual property, NOT THE RECORDING.

When we discuss this branch, we need to understand it as one branch. PUBLISHING simply means that a songwriter has chosen to transfer a piece of that branch (usually half) to another entity in exchange for the service of exposure and representation, and sometimes administration. A publisher may or may not own the copyright to a song, but they are given control, and they become a SECOND entity inserted in this branch. From here on out we will refer to the COMBINATION of songwriter/publisher as “song owners”, because this isn’t really an article about the relationship between songwriters and publishers.

There are several ways song owners can make money, and these are all governed by the copyright law. They can be broken up into two basic categories: Fees paid directly to the song owner by another entity, and fees paid by entities to performing rights organizations, which are then distributed to song owners.

FEES PAID DIRECTLY TO SONG OWNERS:

1. Sync licensing. If a visual content producer uses a song in a video production, they are required to negotiate that use with the owners of that copyright (regardless of who recorded the version of the song they use). This is paid BY THE CONTENT PRODUCER TO THE SONG OWNER, BEFORE THE PRODUCTION AIRS. This is an UP FRONT fee, and ownership of the song in question stays with the song owner.

CONFUSION WARNING:This is NOT THE SAME FEE as is paid to the owners of the recording. Even if you are the owner of the recording and the song, and you license a track, and you get paid a single fee, you NEED TO REMEMBER THAT THAT IS ACTUALLY TWO FEES. If there’s nothing in the license paperwork that defines the two fees, consider them equal. So if you get $1000, $500 of that is master usage, and $500 is for the song. This may affect who YOU owe and how much (more on that below).

1. Work-for-hire composition. An entity (such as a film production or even just a regular person) can hire a songwriter to write a song specifically for them, and pay a (hopefully higher) fee to now own that composition or use it exclusively (or not!). This is paid BY THE CONTENT PRODUCER OR OTHER ENTITY TO THE COMPOSER. This is an UP FRONT fee, and ownership of the song MAY go to the content producer/person/client.
2. Mechanical royalties. This is one that gets people pretty confused, but if you remember that from a business perspective the writer of a song is NOT THE SAME ENTITY as a performer, then it gets much easier. Mechanical rights simply means this: If a business or person wants to RECORD and sell a SONG on some recorded media, they must pay the songwriter a fee, PER UNIT CREATED (NOT per unit sold), and that fee is defined by law. That fee structure varies based on media, but it’s about 9.1 cents per copy in most cases. Go HERE for more detail on those fees.This means that if a performer records a cover song, they owe the song owner mechanicals. This also means that if an performer signs to a label and records a song, the label owes the song owner mechanicals. This ALSO means that if YOU record your FRIEND’S song, YOU OWE YOUR FRIEND MECHANICALS, unless your friend specifically WAVES that right for you, in writing. I suppose this also means that if YOU write a song and record it, you owe yourself mechanicals!

CONFUSION WARNING: Mechanicals are NOT paid to owners of recordings, and they are NOT paid by distributors or radio stations. Spotify, iTunes etc. Mechanical royalties are ONE SPECIFIC thing. They’re a fee owed to SONG OWNERS by RECORDING OWNERS, and they’re paid by the owners of recordings to the owners of songs, or their representatives.

Streaming services like Spotify DO pay mechanical royalties (in theory). This is a source of much contention and confusion and it could change. You see, there’s an ongoing debate about whether or not we can define a stream or a download as a recording being “manufactured” and who, then, might owe a song owner a mechanical royalty. HERE is a resource explaining more about how mechanicals work in the current world, and here is another.

FEES PAID TO PROs AND THEN DISTRIBUTED TO SONGWRITERS:

1. Radio, television or venue performance. If a business, such as a radio station, online radio station, television show or other entity (like an ice rink or a bar) uses a song by playing it on a show, broadcasting it in their store, using it on their boombox while they massage people, etc, they owe the songwriter PERFORMANCE ROYALTIES. The rates are dictated by law, and these royalties are paid BY THE BUSINESS TO PERFORMING RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS. Performing rights organizations (PROs) police the usage of SONGS (NOT RECORDINGS), collect money, and pay money to songwriters.

CONFUSION WARNING: This is another a place where many people conflate or confuse things. Notice above that there is a crossover. If a video content producer (for example a television show) wants to use a song, they must FIRST NEGOTIATE PERMISSION AND FEE FROM THE SONGWRITER. That is income stream 1 above. Then, AFTER BROADCAST, THEY MUST TRACK USAGE, REPORT TO AND PAY THE PERFORMING RIGHTS ORGANIZATION. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME REVENUE STREAMS. In other words, visual content producers pay twice.

CONFUSION WARNING: “Backend”. The PRO revenue mentioned before is often referred to as “backend royalties”. This is accurate, but it shouldn’t be confused with another POTENTIAL revenue stream and that is “backend” profit sharing that COULD happen if you struck a deal with a content producer that says “you must also pay a portion of your revenue from the production”. This kind of deal is rare in TV, rare in big movies, but it’s something you might see, say on a smaller movie production that doesn’t have a big up front budget. Neither of these should be confused with “backend” money you might pay to a fellow master rights holder or a fellow songwriter, after you’re paid for something. The only thing “backend” actually means is that there’s something owed AFTER money is made by a thing. If you were to make me a burger that I intend to resell, and I don’t pay you for it, but instead share the money I make by reselling it, you’d be making your money on the “backend”.

Live performance. If a band, performing artist, symphony or other performing entity performs a song in a live setting, they owe the songwriter a fee that’s defined by law. This fee is paid BY THE PERFORMING ENTITY (BAND) TO A PERFORMING RIGHTS ORGANIZATION.

NOTE: This is a simplified list, and the basic structure that I use to understand how to do business. It is by no means complete and thorough. The actual royalty structure PROs use is incredibly complex, for one, and there are other possible streams like sheet music publication, etc.

Branch 2 – Recording/master rights

This is the branch for owners of recordings. If you are an independent musician making recordings in your house or a studio, you own those recordings. If you’re an artist on a label, your label owns the recordings. The rights given to the owners of recordings (“master rights”) and the ways they can get paid are vastly different than for the owners of songs.

CONFUSION WARNING: “Master rights holders” are not the owners of songs. They are the owners of RECORDINGS. RECORDINGS ARE NOT SONGS. Similarly, the MEDIA used to STORE a recording is not a recording.

Here are the ways recording owners get paid:

1. Sales. A customer can buy a copy of the recording. Money is paid directly to the recording owner or their representative (like a retail store or a distributor). Included in this are CD sales, vinyl record sales (or any other physical medium), or download sales. If a customer buys a downloadable mp3 from your website, this is a record sale. If a customer buys a download from iTunes, this is a record sale. Something important to note here is that whoever makes a sale now owes every other “master rights holder” a piece of that money. So by way of example:If Mike and I decide to make a recording of a song, and sign a piece of paper that says Mike has 50% of the master rights and I have 50% of the master rights, and I sell a CD for $10 to Brenda, Brenda pays me $10. Then I owe Mike $5. Brenda does NOT have to find Mike and pay him $5.Similarly, if I send the song to a digital distributor such as CD Baby, and they deliver the song to Spotify, iTunes, etc., I will receive payments from CD Baby for streams and downloads, which they have collected from the digital retailers.*I* owe Mike 50% of that money. It’s up to ME to pay Mike, not CD Baby, and NOT SPOTIFY, ITUNES, ETC. *ME*. If I have more than just that song out there, I will receive relatively complex statements detailing which songs made money and how much. IT’S MY RESPONSIBILITY TO TRACK THAT AND PAY MIKE.And remember, we owe the song owners their mechanical royalties if we plan to sell CDs or downloads, unless they’ve waived that right.

CONFUSION WARNING: Streaming is not the same thing as downloading. This is still a confusing and contested area for everyone, because streaming didn’t exist when the laws that govern music were written. However, streaming is sometimes considered “performance”, which means that song owners may be paid money for, say, Spotify streams, by PROs. This has NOTHING TO DO WITH MASTER RIGHTS. Now that we’re in branch 2, we really don’t care about this. If you’re paid something by your distributor, you owe your fellow MASTER RIGHTS HOLDERS their share, and if you look at your statement, you’ll see that this will include streams as well as downloads.

Master Use Fees. This is the counterpart to sync licensing, and is sometimes referred to with that same term. This is separate and distinct from sync fees owed to song owners for licensing. When a content producer wishes to use a recording, they must negotiate and pay a fee to BOTH the song owner AND the owner of the recording. As I mentioned above, if you are both, be SURE to think of this as TWO SEPARATE FEES. Similar to record sales, if you have partners who own a percentage of your master rights, YOU owe THEM when you’re paid a license fee. Here’s another example:If I meet with Warner Brothers and they want to use Mike’s and my song for a big movie, and they pay me $1000 dollars for the MASTER USE FEE, I now owe Mike $500. They may insist on having Mike in the room, in which case maybe they’ll pay him directly. But if only I collect, I owe him. Remember that if Mike and I ALSO wrote and own the SONG, that there is another fee for that to be negotiated. So if Warner Brothers says “$1000 is all you get, both for the song and the recording”, that’s actually TWO FEES. Now I actually got paid $500 for the song and $500 for the recording. Now I owe Mike $250 for the song license, and $250 for the recording.Why does this matter? Because Mike might not have written the song. *I* might not have written the song. The song sync fee may not be the same as the master use fee. On and on. It could look more like this:George, Linda and I write a song. We decide to split that 3 ways. Mike and I record the song. We split the master 2 ways. Warner Brothers decides the song itself is worth $1500 and the master is worth $500. They pay me for everything. I receive $2000. Now I owe George and Linda each $500 ($1500 split three ways), I owe Mike $250 ($500 split two ways), and I keep $750 ($500 for writing and $250 for master use). If I were to (wrongly) divide the whole pot in 4, I would pay Mike too much, and myself too little! How generous! But in another scenario I might end up paying someone too LITTLE. Then there’s trouble.

Notice that the list here is short. There are basically two ways to make money from a recording: master use fees and sales. Until very recently, there was no mechanism for the owners of recordings to collect money based on things like radio or online performance. Now one organization, SoundExchange, tracks and collects on behalf of the owners of recordings (EDIT: and now, some full service companies like CD Baby will interface with SoundExchange on your behalf).

Branch — 3??

Well, there really is no branch three. But there are of course many new ways to make money with music, both directly and indirectly. Merch sales are not new, but Patreon is, as are other subscription services where fans pay for special access, YouTube revenue, video downloads, etc. These are all streams which really aren’t part of song OR recording revenue, but they’re related to your career, and you’d be wise make it clear in writing who gets what from THESE potential sources as well.

Resources

Books – I recommend all of these highly, and I wish you would read them cover to cover

How To Make It In The New Music Business, by Ari Herstand

The Musician’s Guide To Licensing Music, by Darren Wilsey and Daylle Deanna Schwartz

Confessions Of A Record Producer, by Moses Avalon

Web Links – for another take or deeper information

Ari’s Take – Ari is very thorough – Click here for his “what is Sound Exchange…” article. It’s similar in topic to this one, and really good.

Here is another pretty good post about this topic from Digital Music News.

The Harry Fox Agency, if you’d like to dig even deeper on mechanicals.

An article by Ari Herstand on legally releasing cover tunes.

BMI’s royalty explanation. Read this thoroughly to really dig down into how BMI pays. The other PROs have similar documents and play by similar rules.

Music Business

Making money in music is scary. Subscriptions may help.

A Possible Solution

Could it be you?

The tools

What to deliver

It’s up to you

Cull the Herd

The Definitive Guide to Deciding Where to Submit Your Music

Categories

General considerations

Genre

Reputation

Potential return

Submission difficulty

Submission cost

Specific considerations

Reach

Focus

Relationships

Payment

Exclusivity

Competition

Go forth and submit

Chasing the Timeless Sound

Does It Matter?

Timelessness

Just Keep Making

Feeding Back

Improving your tracks by soliciting critique

An Ever-Widening Circle

The Inner Sanctum

First Steps Into The World

Going Semi-Public

The Art Of Solicitation

Giving Feedback

Go Around Again

Stretching The Budget

How to get the biggest bang for your recording studio buck

Pre-Production

Rehearsal

Writing And Arranging

Session Planning

Use The Right Room

Gear Maintenance

Studio Day

Mixing

Mastering

The After Party

File This

Compression

File Format and Codec

Sample Rate, Bit Depth and Bit Rate

The Big Ones

Other Major Formats

What To Use?

Resources

Keeping Track

Metatags

What You Need And Why

How To Do It

But Wait…

There You Have It

What The Hell Are Master Rights?

STEP 1 – Clear up the revenue streams

STEP 2 – Fully define the branches

Branch 1 – Writing/publishing.

Branch 2 – Recording/master rights

Branch — 3??

Resources

Books – I recommend all of these highly, and I wish you would read them cover to cover

Web Links – for another take or deeper information