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Music Business

Share The Spoils, Or Pay Up Front?
December 28, 2022 by Aaron
Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Published Work, SonicScoop
aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, home recording, making beats, music business, music collaboration, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, should i pay my music partners, SonicScoop

When and why to cut collaborators in on the backend

This article first appeared on SonicScoop.com. I reprint it here and encourage you to check out their super informative site!

Imagine this scene.  You’ve laid down an incredible piano part, a great vocal, and a passable drum line.  You’re thinking this song would really be better with a real drummer, and you know just the person.  You call them up, send them the track and they love it.  You know how to integrate their performance, you know how to be flexible and collaborative, and you’re confident the track will soar because of your friend’s influence.

But when you think about paying for that work, things get a little iffy.  Maybe your budget is tight and you’d rather not spend anything, but your friend normally costs $200 a session.  What can you offer?

If you’re like most of us, what comes to mind is offering a piece of the backend.  When you make money, your friend makes money.  It costs you nothing now and if the song gets big, he makes more in the long run.  Great!  But wait.  Is it wise to share on the backend, or would it be better to simply scrape together some money and hire your friend as a session player?

The answer depends on a lot of things, including what your friend wants, where you both are in your careers, the nature of the work, and just your preferences.  Regardless of all that, however, there are some things you should bear in mind before jumping headlong into a backend sharing scenario.

To make this decision, you need to think through what it really means to share a percentage and how that will affect you in the long run.

What Does Backend Even Mean?

First, you should probably know what it means to “share the backend”.  At its simplest, this means when you make money with a track, you share that money with your friend.  But its important to consider everything that entails, and all the different ways a track can make money.

Rivers Of Revenue

There are many ways a recorded song can potentially make money.  You can think of those revenue streams like a river with two major branches:

1.      Songwriting – Songwriting revenue goes to the writers of songs.  Songs are intellectual property defined traditionally as lyric and melody.  They exist separately from any performance of them, and any media those performances may be captured on.

2.      Recording – Otherwise known as “master rights”, recording revenue goes to the owners of a recording of a song.

To understand the difference between a song and a recording, think of this scenario:

Harry writes a song called “This Is My Song”.  Johnny records “This Is My Song” as an acoustic ballad.  Suzy records “This Is My Song” as a heavy metal dirge.

Johnny owns his acoustic recording.  Suzy owns her heavy metal dirge recording.  Harry owns the song.  Harry gets the songwriting revenue on both recordings, but not the recording revenue.

So, before you even begin, you have a decision to make.  Assuming your project is a song you wrote, you’ll be the owner of both the songwriting and recording revenue.  Are you sharing both sides with your drummer friend?  Or, are you only sharing the recording side?

Tributaries Of Tribulation

Next, you need to understand the various ways each major branch can make money.  This can get really complicated and an in-depth explanation is beyond our scope here, but you can start with understanding some basics, including where money comes from in each branch.

Songwriting

In the songwriting branch, there are several possible streams, all of which are paid to the owners of songs.  In the simplest form, they are:

·        Performance Royalties – paid (usually) by Performing Rights Organizations (PROs) like BMI, ASCAP or SESAC

·        Mechanical Royalties – paid either by recording owners (labels, traditionally) or digital music services like Spotify.

·        Sync licensing – paid directly to song owners by video producers when they want to use a song in a movie, commercial, TV Show or other video production.  Note this is a different fee than the fee paid to the owners of recordings.

The thing to understand here is that depending on your activities, you might end up owing your collaborator directly.  If you intend to shop your songs to music supervisors and you land a license, you’ll have to track what you’re paid and pay your friend their share.

You and your partner both need to be registered with a PRO to collect performance royalties, and possibly also a publishing admin service for mechanical royalties.

One of the major things to understand about sharing songwriting with say a drummer or a session guitarist is that if you (or someone famous?) produces an entirely different version of the song without that performance, you will still be splitting songwriting revenue with your partner.  If you feel generous, or you feel like their contribution deserves to be recognized as part of the songwriting process then by all means share and share alike!  Just be aware of this beforehand.

Recording

In the recording branch revenue is a bit simpler, but as you might expect, it can get complex the more you dive in.  Keeping it simple again, there are only two tributaries in the recording branch:

·        Sales – If you sell a CD at a show, that’s a sale.  You owe your partner their portion.  If your distributor pays you 47 cents for streams and downloads, you owe your partner their portion.  If you sell a download directly, you owe your partner their portion.

·        Master Use Fees – If you license your track to a video producer, you could be paid a “master use fee”, and you’ll owe your collaborator their portion.  As noted above, this is separate from the “sync” fee paid to the song owners.  This can be confusing, because often these fees are combined for purposes of simplicity.

What it boils down to on the recording side is that you will have to track your sales and fees.  This can get complicated when you consider that a typical quarterly report from your distributor might have thousands of lines of miniscule transactions for all your songs.  It’s your responsibility to track that data, determine how much you owe your friend, and pay them.  You’ll also need to track direct sales at your shows or from your website.

This can be a daunting task, especially if you have a lot of collaborators, but there are some services and software available.  The author uses DashBook, and there are relatively affordable monthly services by Label Engine and Royalty Worx, as well as a lot of higher priced services aimed at bigger companies.

There’s also the option of using a distributor that will split up payments and send directly to your partner(s) and many people are moving to that solution.  As of this writing there are five such distributors:  DistroKid, Soundrop, RouteNote, OneRPM and Songtradr.  The only drawback there is you can’t deduct expenses before paying out – the payments are made and it’s up to you to manage how much you’ve spent.  If you’re the only one who will spend money promoting your work, you might consider a little higher percentage for yourself.

Will I See You Again?

Once you’ve considered how you’ll handle money, you should consider the relationship.  When you enter into an agreement to share the revenue from a production, you’re bound together forever, or at least until you discontinue the release.

You need to know that you’ll be able to contact your partner, and that they will let you know if their contact info changes.  You need to have reliable payment information, and you need their PRO information so you can register songs properly (if you’re sharing songwriting).  Even if you’re just paying by PayPal, you’d be smart to have a physical address on file, and you’ll need to remember to send them a 1099 if you pay them more than $600 in a year.

Even if you’ve decided to use a distributor that will split monies for you, you’ll still need to contact them if you get paid a sync or master fee or make money in other ways.  Another thing to consider is that some distributors require your collaborators to sign up or ALL the revenue is frozen (your part too!).  Finally, some distributors have an annual fee for membership, so it might not seem worth it to your friend to join up if they think their royalties won’t cover the expense (a valid concern).

Just as in a marriage, you’ll have to consider the possibility of a falling out down the road, and know that you’ll still have to maintain contact sometimes.  That can take maturity that some musicians lack.  If your friend is likely to disappear or cause a lot of trouble, you may consider paying them up front instead.

Communication (In Writing) Is Key

If you’ve considered all the ramifications of “getting into bed” with a collaborator and you still think that’s the way to go, then you’ll want to communicate very clearly about everything.  You should discuss business up front and if possible you should sign paperwork ahead of time.

Speaking of which, all your agreements should be in writing, and you should consult a lawyer to give you boilerplate templates to use for your productions.  A proper contract will not only mitigate possible conflict, it’ll also make it a lot more clear how to go about things.

You’ll need to be clear about what the percentage splits are, who has control, who can pitch the song to opportunities, who can distribute or sell it, what the title is, what the act is, and what promotional activity is allowed or expected.  The more you can talk about, agree to and sign off on ahead of time the better.

A contract is also a good place to gather all the necessary information like real name, email, physical address, phone number, PRO ID number, and any payment information.

It may seem a little overwhelming at first but in reality, clear communication and complete paperwork aren’t hard and they save a lot of time and effort down the road.  In addition, you will not be able to enter into a licensing agreement without signed paperwork documenting all contributors.

The Other Side

There’s another side to this coin.  What if you’re the partner?  How do you decide whether to allow someone to pay you on the backend or ask for a fee up front?

Well, you should consider all of the above, but ask yourself whether your potential partner is equipped to handle all that.  Also ask yourself whether the royalties on the backend will be equal to or more than your potential session fee.  If the answer is an absolute no, then you obviously won’t say yes, unless you just happen to love the project or the person and don’t care.

If you really think that a production will make a lot of money, then 10% of master rights for life may be a whole lot better than a $200 session fee.  You’ll have to balance your need for money now with the possibility of more later.

Of course, from your point of view, the best case is to get your fee and some backend points.  If you can secure that deal, more power to you!

When You Should Just Pay

Even once you’ve educated yourself, set up your systems and put yourself in a position to properly share the backend on a production, you don’t necessarily want to do that in every case.  In fact, your life will be easier if you can do it as little as possible.

Some reasons you might choose to come up with a session fee include:

·        The player won’t do a backend deal

·        It’s unlikely you’ll maintain contact

·        You want to minimize the amount of admin you have to do

·        You think you will make the session fee back and then some and want to maximize profit

·        The player is flakey or might block release by not filling out paperwork, returning calls, etc.

·        You want to just use the track and not worry about credit and who did what

·        You’re using a service like SoundBetter to hire a freelancer.

Even when you do choose this easier path, have your session player sign a waiver that releases you from any further obligation once the fee is paid.

It Can Be Great

After reading this, you may feel like sharing on the backend is just too much hassle.  Admittedly, that’s partly the idea here; to show that “sharing” is a little more involved than a lot of people think, and sharing responsibly is necessary if you want to stay out of trouble.

That said, once you get organized, sharing properly is perfectly doable, and the benefits are undeniable.  Sharing can make productions possible even when you have zero budget; it can allow you to work with people you couldn’t afford (if they’re willing); and in general collaboration is one the most fulfilling aspects of making music.  Not to mention that when a partner has ownership of a project, there’s a completely different sense of pride and care.  It’s often the only way to get someone’s level best.  Of course, you need to be generous and you need to show that you’ll live up to your end, but if you do, the results can be magnificent.

I’m a vocalist, producer and writer who is always collaborating.  Look me up if you have an idea on Facebook or Instagram

8 Pitfalls to Avoid While Building Your Music Business
October 5, 2022 by Aaron
Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Published Work, SonicScoop
aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, home recording, making beats, music business, music business pitfalls, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, SonicScoop

This article first appeared on SonicScoop.com. I reprint it here and encourage you to check out their super informative site!

It’s a jungle out there.  Or a forest.  Or maybe a desert.  It could be an ocean teeming with sharks.  Whatever it is, we can probably all agree the music business can be a frightening journey.

Whether you’re a full-fledged professional musician or just trying to get the word out about some tunes, you’ve probably gotten a lot of advice about the path to take through the quagmire.  A lot of that advice may have been helpful, and some of it was probably misleading and maybe even flat out wrong.

The truth is, the path is yours, and we can’t tell you exactly where to go.  But we can post a few warning signs so you don’t sucked into a pit of quicksand or a magical whirlpool to nowhere.

Here are 8 of those pitfalls, laid out in no particular order.

1.      Inconsistency

Inconsistency is probably the top cause of failure in creative business.  Have you ever turned on the T.V. expecting to see your favorite show, only to find that one of the cast members didn’t show up, or the script just didn’t get done in time?  No.  Period, end of sentence, never.

This doesn’t mean you need to create crazy, impossible promises and die trying to fulfill them.  What it does mean is that if you can’t consistently show up and create, you should learn that skill before going any further.

You can still let your muse do what it does but learn how to drip that sporadic output to the public in an even way.  This is easy enough to do using scheduled posts, future release dates and (contrary to the big TV model), NOT overpromising.  If you’ve got 18 songs in the can and ready to go, create an 18-month release schedule.  If you’ve got zero, don’t promise you’ll do one every month unless you know you can.

If you don’t have much content, just make sure you’re showing up regularly.  That may mean checking your Facebook daily and responding to comments, sending a monthly email, doing a live video, or simply showing up to open mics predictably.  Whatever you can do consistently, do it consistently.

Consistency also means emotional consistency.  Give every contact the same great experience when they interact with you.  Let your emotional whims and brilliant insanity out in the studio, not in your relationships.

2.      Lack Of Focus

Here is an area where you’ve probably been given some bad advice.  I’m sure you’ve heard something along the lines of one of these:

  • Start a podcast to draw attention to you and your music
  • Write sync cues to fund your act
  • Write a blog post every day
  • Post on Facebook 3 times a day every day
  • Learn to play all the hits so you’ll always have a gig
  • Put your music in every licensing library
  • Be present on every social media platform
  • Send your music to blogs, radio stations, magazines, etc.

The problem with advice like this is that it encourages you to dilute your focus and creates – wait for it – inconsistency.  If you’re trying to release music, play shows, do licensing cues, write a blog post every day AND do a podcast, you won’t be focused enough on any one of them to do it justice.  Podcasts will be late or sporadic, blog posts will come when they come, and disappear for months, and guess what?  You will eventually stop making music.

When it comes to social media, it’s tempting to think that being on more platforms will get you more traction.  But try spending two years solid responding to every Facebook comment, Twitter mention, Instagram post and LinkedIn request, and you will quickly find yourself drowning.  Better to pick one than do three poorly.

Similarly, you may have seen advice about reaching out to blogs, radio stations, Spotify playlist curators, internet radio, magazines and labels.  Before you spend time on that, think through your goals and decide what will do the most for your act.  Again, one push done well is better than 8 done halfway.

3.      Wasting Time And/Or Money

This is another version of focus. 

Yes, it feels good to get that little bit of validation every time you get a review in a cool publication, a radio play or a Facebook like.  The question is, is investment of time or money in those vanity metrics going to create a return?

If emailing blogs is taking you days and days and you’re getting a response rate of 1 out of 100, and an actual review in another 1% of those, and some of those don’t even have a link to your music, AND the only link to your music is a Spotify link, AND you have no way to capture, track or communicate with people who read the post, your time is probably not worth that effort.  If you spent money on that effort in the form of a PR company or virtual assistant, you’ve probably wasted your money.

Maybe you’re convinced that two or three music business courses at $1000 a pop will do the trick.  Or someone told you that you need a bunch more gear, or you think you’ll do better if your album is mastered by the absolute best mastering engineer in the universe.  Or worst, you’ve bought into some pay-to-play scheme.

SOME of these things might help you go forward, but most will waste your time AND money.  So instead of falling for the old “if you’re not willing to invest in yourself” line, stop and take a hard look at anything you’re about to put money or time into, and ask “how likely is this investment to return or forward my career in a specific and measurable way?”

4.      DIYing Everything

While you don’t want to waste money on every service and gadget out there that may not feed your bottom line, you also don’t want to be doing everything yourself.  If you’re trying to write music, mix your songs, master your songs, build your own websites, take your own photographs, write your own press releases, do all your own promotion…well you get the picture.  Not only will this waste time, it will also lead to a lack of focus, which will hurt your quality.

If you happen to be a web developer or a photographer or a graphic designer for your day job, it makes sense to use that skillset to further your music career, and if you have absolutely no budget, then you’ll be forced to do things yourself for a while, but as soon as you can, get the things that you aren’t good at into the hands of people who are.

5.      Trying To Bootstrap

Speaking of having zero budget, don’t.  That may seem a bit harsh, but the truth is it’s a rare business which doesn’t start off with some outside funding.  Especially in music, and more especially with recorded music, you’ll find yourself stuck at almost every turn if you can’t spend anything.

Obviously if you can make money playing live or with a sync license or two, you can put at least part of that back into your business, and you should!  But you will find a whole world of ease and grace available to you if you let yourself fund your music business with your other endeavors – like your day job.

It can be quite a trick, finding time for a job AND your business, but there are plenty of ways to strike a balance.  Flexible work, work that you can do remotely, part time work, and reducing your personal expenses are all really helpful things.  Striking the best balance you can when it comes to what you do yourself and what you delegate is wise as well, and is easier to do if you stick to actions that really have heavy value.  As mentioned above, do take the time to evaluate any potential spend of time or money in terms of how well and how fast it can return.

6.      Making It About You/NOT Making It About You

You’ve probably been told it’s not about you.  That’s true, to some degree.  If you are the only one who loves your product (aka your music), you’ll have a tough time making a living.  So you need to think about who your fans and customers are, and what they need.  You want to move, touch and inspire people, which means whether you love the sound or not isn’t top priority.

By the same token, if you’re not true to yourself, good luck moving people.  You must be authentic to your own inspiration in order to be inspiring to others.  This is where making it about you IS important.  The fact is, people don’t care about music.  They care about people.  Your fans will be fans because they care about YOU.  They care about your story, the value you can bring to them as a leader, and the difference you can make in their lives, simply by being brave enough to put your creativity out for them to see.  Remember to tell your story, create an experience, and think about how that story affects other people more than how it affects you.

7.      Shallow Relationships

It’s tempting to try to build as many relationships as possible.  We all want to get as many fans as possible, as many business connections as possible, and as many touches on social media, radio and blogs as possible.  But if you’ll refer to pitfalls 2 and 3, you’ll remember that many of the quick, one -off relationships you gather will end up being valueless.

Instead of forgoing a deep connection in favor of more, be sure to cultivate your best relationships.  Take great care of your super fans.  Build lasting partnerships with a few incredible collaborators.  Be truly there for businesses who fit value you.

When it comes to building new relationships, build them slowly.  Introduce yourself, add value to the relationship, and be patient.  Nothing alienates a potential fan more than spamming their messenger box with a link to buy your record when you don’t even know them.

This is yet another version of focus.  It’s far better to have 1000 super fans all spending a $100 a year on you than 10,000 followers who spend a dollar and forget about you.

8.      Not Vetting Music

Here is a thing that gets swept under the rug too much:  most music sucks.  There, I said it.  You can do all the right things with your promotion, your relationships and your branding, but if your music is terrible, you’re facing an uphill battle.  The truth is, though, if you’re serious enough to read this, you’ve probably got what it takes, so don’t sell yourself short just yet.

But be honest.  Do you really take the time to get feedback and actually make changes?  This is the thing that separates professionals from amateurs when it comes to quality.  It’s not expensive gear, it’s not flashy studios and it’s not that major label musicians magically have 50 times your talent.  It’s simply that truly professional work is vetted.

Professionals seek feedback at every stage, from ever-widening circles of unbiased listeners.  Over the course of a production, change after change after change is made, until what is finally released to the general public is polished, crisp and excellent.  If it’s not, it’s scrapped or continues to be honed.

Processing your work this way will give you confidence when it comes time to promote it, will virtually guarantee that your audience is impressed, and will involve more people, meaning more people will spread the word.  So, vet your work!

Go Forth!

When you go down this path called Art-For-A-Living, you really can’t predict how it will look, and everyone’s path is different.  Heck, it’s not even the same landscape every time.  The music business can look like a jungle, an ocean, a vast expanse of barren space, or a warzone.

However, those of us who have been meandering, careening and bumbling through the land for years can tell you what to avoid.  There’s not much we can tell you about where you’ll go and what you’ll do, but hopefully with some of these warning signs posted, you’ll be able to get somewhere beautiful.

Go forth, then, and create and thrive!

I’m a vocalist, producer and writer who is always collaborating.  Look me up if you have an idea on Facebook or Instagram

The 5 Best Reverb Plugins Compared
August 30, 2022 by Aaron
Flypaper by Soundfly, Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness, Published Work
aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, best reverb plugins, flypaper, home recording, music business, nquit music, plugins, professional audio, professional music, recording, reverb plugins, soundfly

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.

Reverb is like water. You can live without it for a few days, but eventually you’ll die. Ok, it may not be that necessary, but without a few good reverb plugins in your DAW, you’ll be hard pressed to get a good mix, as reverb is one of the most essential tools in mixing. Reverb creates a sense of space, makes a song come alive, and gives mixes depth.

So, we’ve compiled five of the best reverb plugins around, in case you’re in need of an upgrade in that department. It would be hard to claim that this is the only possible list of five top verbs, as there are so many incredible plugins out there, but these five come up repeatedly and have become staples in many a studio.

Without further ado, in no particular order, and a drumroll please….

Valhalla VintageVerb – $50

Overwhelmingly the most mentioned plugin in our informal surveys of producers and musicians. VintageVerb is a simple, intuitive plugin that offers three distinct modes:

1970’s Color Mode uses algorithms inspired by digital reverb hardware from the 1970’s. This mode reduces bandwidth to add artifacts.

1980’s Color Mode emulates digital hardware reverbs from the 80’s. Bandwidth is less limited here, and the mode does just what it says – makes 80’s sounding reverb.

NOW Color Mode gives you a more modern, clean reverb sound.

Valhalla VintageVerb is great for vocals, and while it may not be everyone’s go-to for other tracks, it has a flavor all its own, and as such is loved across the board.

Audio Ease Altiverb – Around $650 to $1100

Altiverb an expensive choice, but the love shown for this convolution reverb is as much as any other. Altiverb comes in two flavors – regular at 499 British pounds and XL at 849 pounds. This translates to somewhere around $650 and $1100 depending on current exchange rates, although you can do a good bit better at a dealer like Sweetwater.

Expense aside, Altiverb is sophisticated and rich, and arguably the top convolution reverb on the market. If you don’t already know, convolution reverbs take impulse responses (IRs) from real world spaces – cathedrals, concert halls, bathrooms, anything, and use complicated computer mumbo-jumbo to allow you to place your source in that space.

Altiverb has a massive library of IRs from around the world, all exquisitely crafted. This includes more than just music spaces. It also includes responses from vitage gear, specific stage locations, experimental responses and more. If you’ve never tried a convolution reverb, do yourself a favor and at least try out Altiverb’s demo.

Uaudio Lexicon 224 – $299

Uaudio’s Lexicon 224 is a digital emulation of Lexicon’s famous hardware reverb, which was the most popular studio reverb from its release in 1978 well into the modern era. If you’ve heard U2, Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, Grandmaster Flash or any number of other artists, you’ve heard the 224.

UAD’s emulation does the classic reverb justice, using the same algorithms as the original hardware and adding presets from famous producers who used the original, such as Prince’s Chuck Zwicky and Peter Gabriel’s Kevin Killen. Even Lexicon endorses UAD’s plug-in version, and for good reason.

The 224 is another great vocal reverb, but it shines in almost every situation. Its characteristic lush tails and classic 80’s sound will transport you back, but the truth is the sound of the 224 is equally at home in a more modern production. It’s a pretty simple plugin, with only 5 faders (just like the original remote control), so it won’t be hard to start experimenting right away.

Fabfilter Pro-R – $199

Fabfilter’s Pro-R makes the list not only for popularity and a decent price tag, but because it’s so innovative. The company claims the Pro-R plugin works in a more “musical” and less technical way, and that’s a pretty accurate statement. Some features that set Pro-R apart are a stepless room size control, tempo sync’d pre-delay, and probably the coolest thing ever – delay rate eq, which allows you to control the decay time of different frequency ranges independently.

Besides offering these cool features, Fabfilter’s Pro-R has an incredibly natural and smooth sound, almost never introducing artifacts or producing ugly, nasally “reverb” sounds.

Softube TSAR – $199

Last but certainly not least, Softube’s “True Stereo Algorithmic Reverb”, or TSAR. Softube’s sell on their reverb plugin is that it is NOT an emulation or a “static snapshot” of a space (a possibly unfair potshot at convolution reverbs). TSAR also boasts a “true stereo” response, which simply means it responds to a stereo input in a more realistic way. IE: if you pan an input hard right, the reverb won’t just be heard in the right speaker.

TSAR is another simple reverb. It’s got a few faders and only one algorithm. There’s no low-cut option, but you can always add an EQ to your chain to do what you need to there.

In the end, TSAR makes the cut because of its excellent sound quality, relatively low CPU usage, and of course because of its sheer popularity in our surveys. TSAR is a fair-priced, effective and high- quality solution.

There You Have It

In all honesty, we could have gone a hundred ways with this. There are a plethora of awesome reverb plugins out there. Companies like UAD, Waves, Liquid Sonics, and Eventide are just the tip of the iceberg. Even your DAW’s stock reverb plugins are likely to be awesome. That said, the five above showed up repeatedly in surveys, always get great reviews, and when we tried them, they all sounded magnificent in some unique way.

So, go out there and try some, and let us know your favorite!

I’m a producer, writer and artist. I’m not always spacey, but when I am, I prefer lush and classy reverb – sometimes. Let me know your favorite reverbs on Facebook or Instagram

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.

Categories

First things first. Let’s define the types of companies and submission opportunities out there. There may be some variance and crossover here, but generally everyone you could submit to falls into one of these categories:

  • Press – Anyone who writes or talks about music, usually in text format. This includes traditional print magazines and zines, online magazines, blogs, and podcasts.
  • Radio – Anyone whose purpose is to broadcast music, including terrestrial radio (commercial, college and public), online radio, satellite radio, and streaming playlist curators.
  • Licensing – Companies or individuals whose job is to place music in film, TV, advertising, video games, or other creative content which uses music. For our purposes here, this also includes publishers.
  • Labels – Record labels, both major and independent. Anyone looking to profit from promoting and distributing music.
  • Agents/Managers – Any person or company who manages artists’ careers or helps artists shop for labels, performances or other opportunities.
  • Venues – Any place where a musician might perform. This includes everything from coffee shops to bars to huge festivals.

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
February 22, 2022 by Aaron
Audio Instruction, Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Music Thoughts, Rants, Randomness, Published Work, Recording Magazine
aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, current music, dated music, do it yourself recording, home recording, modern music, nquit music, professional audio, professional music, recording, recording magazine, 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
July 30, 2020 by Aaron
Audio Instruction, Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Programming and Such, Published Work, Recording Magazine
5.1 surround, aac, aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, ac-3, aiff, audio, audio file types, cdda, lossless, lossy, m.c. murph, mp3, nquit, ogg, recording magazine, wma

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. 

The Author’s Database

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. 

Editing MetaData in iTunes

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! 

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