Inside the Music Industry
 

So, inspired by Lumberjim's tell-all expose of the car buying world’s seedy underbelly, I thought I might try something similar.

I work in the music industry. In the actually trenches fo the industry: touring as keyboardist for headlining artists, programming and producing records, writing songs, and doing studio sessions. I’m not the guy you see on MTV (at least not in the videos – a few live concert clips), but I’m the guy who worked for 9 months to get that guy’s record done. The music industry seems to be one of those things surrounded by factoids but about which little is actually known. Like how much it actually costs to record an album. Or why it takes so long for the artist to recoup their advance and start making money. Or what “triple-scale” means, and how many guys really are.

So hit me. Ask away. I’ll answer as candidly as I can. Or don’t ask, and I’ll slink quietly into the background. This scotch is tasty and typing takes time away from sipping.

-sm

By your observations, who is most responsible for an album's success?

I have a question.

Where has the variety gone? Seems like I can count the sub genres of each music style (pop, rock, hip hop, etc.) on one hand.

Seems that music reaching mass markets is getting more and more generic and vanilla. I sense a stifling influence on (or a pigeon-holing of) artistic creativity and wonder what's causing it (or it I'm mistaken).

Take the top 20 artists now, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, etc. and compare the variety, the level of talent, creativity and innovation - seems to me to be at an all-time low. I asserted in another thread, for example, the death of the lead guitar. That is but one example. Within rock, it seems, the vocals, the rythms all sound the same. Compare that with the explosion of creativity in the early 80s or mid 70s.

If you are in the industry, it might not be obvious to you since you are exposed to so much more than the average consumer but to me, who only listens to FM radio and to MTV on occasion, this is what I see. I used to get a lot of enjoyment from discovering new artists but now, when I want to discover something new I don't survey the landscape, I look backwards to find something I missed.

If I had to guess, I wonder if the record companies, through extensive marketing studies, start with a defined end product and work backwards to find artists to play it. Reverse-engineered music if you will. Anyway, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Better still, if you could point me to where all the new/cool/interesting stuff is hiding out these days. If it weren't for the Ministry of Sound , I'd be going nuts.

I don't think I can narrow it down to one person. It takes a perfect storm. Most albums lose a fistful of money – good albums, with good songs and a strong artist. For a record to make back the money invested in it takes

1 slamdunk radio song
An artist with a personality interesting enough to work on the promo circuit
An A&R person who has enough clout within his own label to secure a marketing budget
A radio promoter who’s timing is perfect (#1 song the week before the album hits the store is the goal)
A video that’s got enough eye-candy to play on MTV every 40 minutes
A video promoter with enough push to get it on MTV's very, very short playlist

And all of that is just to get enough records sold to cover the initial cost of the album. You have to do it all over again with a second song if you want the thing to be profitable.

Nelly Furtado’s first record for a textbook example of all of this. “Like A Bird” was timed perfectly, sent the album sales to platinum, the second song, “Turn Out The Lights” started putting it in the black.

-sm

I didn't think that MTV even had music-related programming every 40 minutes, much less videos anymore... :confused:

In real life, I hate that question. There's no way to answer it without being a pretentious ass. But, this is the cellar, and ya’ll have already figured out that I am a pretentious ass, so what’s to lose :D

I worked as a touring keyboardist for several years with a ton of different artists. The highlights include Melissa Etheridge, Meredith Brooks, Jennifer Love Hewitt (the tour lasted all of 2 weeks between her movies), and then some artists that you’ve never heard of, but who are amazing – Kenna, Charlie Mars, Jarvis Church (he produced Nelly Furtado, under the name Track and Field).

I was just leaving the road when Meredith and Jarvis were starting to produce, so I got to work on the records they were making – Hillary Duff, Jennifer Love Hewitt (who can actually sing. And yes, is that hot in real life), and then the Nelly Furtado record. Through Meredith, I met David Jerden, and did programming for the rock records that he was producing at the time.

Them’s the highlights. There are some stories. I’ll drop them in later. Just as a teaser.

-sm

they don't, but it's shorthand for MTV2, VH1, CMT, CCMA, all the other vid stations.

-sm

Believe it or not, there are A&R guys are asking the same question! I didn't really get into this thing until the late 90's, so I don't know how it worked before then, but these days, so many artists have read so many books about how to get signed, that they're forcing themselves into prepackaged molds that they think the label wants to see.

When an artist like Creed hits (i know, i know), for the next 6 months the only thing that comes into the A&R guys hands is Nu Metal.

From the label side though, the big picture is this - it's a numbers game. The label only has so much money to spend on making records. Most of the time, they're going to spend it on things that are slam dunks. Think about the car industry. They may have creative design teams that are building amazing prototypes, but they make their bottom line with endless variations on SUV, Minivan, and Sports Car.

There are still artists out there doing creative things. But they aren’t doing them with a 2 million dollar advance, radio promotion, or TV time – its too big a risk. They’re doing it on smaller labels, with smaller budgets, and hit their smaller fan base with amazing music.

I don’t know where to point you for the “secret stash” of good music, but I can point you to some artists you should listen to. Go get Kenna’s “New Sacred Cow” – produced by the Neptunes, it’s a new wave meets james brown thing. Jarvis Church – never released here, but available in Canada. Charlie Mars – I don’t actually know if his record has dropped yet. It’s the record that Coldplay should have made.

Stop relying on mainstream media to get your music choices. I find artists through word of mouth and recently reccomendations off Soulseek. The web is full of sites dealing with local music scenes, find some that suit your tastes and start looking around.

At the moment my listening list would be something like:

Ani Difranco
PJ Harvey
Fiona Apple
Croque
Hilltop Hoods
Cat Empire
The Shins

I think this is really overlooked by a lot of people. There ARE new artists, doing new things, sparking new movements in music. They just don’t have the inertia and market potential to land at Sony Music, or the mass appeal to make it to Clear Channel play lists.

You have to work to find them. But all good things are work a little hunting


-sm

A&R Guy
 

What does an A&R guy do?

Did anyone else notice that Jag listens to girl music? ;)

I knew I liked that dude.

Griff: Yea I admit it :P

I came across a list of them on Amazon one time, was a tad distrubed when I realised I had something from every artist.

On the flipside stuff like cat empire evens it out a little ;)

As smoothmoniker says, it just takes a little gunting. Down under there is a govt. funded station called Tripple J (availaible as a webstream as well) which caters to non-mainstream stuff and has incubated hundreds of kickass artists. First radioplay for many groups that go on to become big names down under and an equal number that find their neiche. I've disocvered probably 5 of my top 10 on it.

Nice upbeat sound Jag.

That is exactly what I'm looking for. Muchos Graçias, Señor.

My question for SM is more along the lines of hardware...

What's your favorite keyboard of all time? Your favorite VA synth (both hardware and software)? Your favorite classic analogue synth? What is the one indispensible instrument or piece of equipment for a live performance keyboardist (excepting stands, of course)?

Re: A&R Guy
 

The job is changing. A&R stands for "Artists and Repertoire”. They are the “green light” guys at the label, who can sign an artist and start a project. They find material for an artist to sing, or if the artist writes their own material, the A&R guy will cull through their songs and choose which ones make the final record.

The A&R guy will also pick the radio single, and coordinate with the radio promotions and marketing team at the label. Here’s where the job has changed – labels have become fiercely competitive even in-house. A&R people change labels so quickly, that their own track record at signing bands is more important than the success of the label. So every A&R person is competing against the others at his own label to secure songs, to secure the best release date, to get the best radio and marketing guys to work on his project instead of someone else’s.

Making a record is kind of an advocacy system. The manager is the advocate for the artist, the A&R guy is the advocate for the label, and the Producer is hopefully the advocate for the project (often a liason).

-sm

Too many. Of course, the B3 and the Fender Rhodes reign supreme, and will for a long time. I'm actually in the middle of rebuilding my Rhodes right now, and covering it in an old yellow tweed. It's getting harder to use those live though, because so many managers are bitching about cartage fees (a cartage company stores your equipment, then brings it to where you are playing – indispensable for keyboardists and drummers).

I’m not much into the VA hardware – I use a Jupiter 8 and a Mini Moog for analog, so there’s not much need for an emulator. On the software side, I like the Logic instruments – the ES1 and ES2.

My one indispensable instrument for live playing is my laptop. I run Logic software live onstage, and trigger samples, loops, BGVS, all the ear candy stuff from there. I think I’ve gotten more tours because of the wow factor of showing up to the audition playing a laptop than for any other reason.

Also, a vote for the Korg Triton. It’s a great bread-and-butter keyboard. Very easy to program, flexible routing and effects, and a great sound library.


-sm

elspode - do you play?

-sm

SM, what laptop do you play with? What's under the hood?

mac g4 12 inch powerbook 1ghz, 768mb ram, OSX 10.3.3

I run Logic Pro 6.4 as the software hub of the thing. the I/O is a motu 828, and an extrenal glyph drive for samples and audio tracks.

I chew through them pretty quickly. The stage is not the most gear friendly place in the world. I'm actually going to sell my old one on ebay. It has severe road damage - cracked case, fan sounds like a leaf blower, HD is whiring pretty bad, and the CDR doesn't work.

I'm thinking I'll put the reserve at $2900.00

-sm

I'm a guitarist who has a perverse fascination with synths. I currently own an ARP 2600, a Korg Poly 61, a Roland GR 30 guitar synth, a Roland XP 50, a Roland E-16, and a whole shitload of hacked and demo VA stuff. Had to sell my MiniMoog a couple of years ago during hard financial times, so I am, of course, plotting to get another. Wouldn't even mind having a Voyager, for that matter.

My keyboard abilities are pretty rudimentary, but I do know how to program and make lots of cool sci-fi noises.

What would be the minimum setup for MIDI to get a decent range of sounds and especially a full set of drum sounds/samples? Does one need a dedicated sampler nowadays or can most PCs serve that task?

Hot damn, UT. Maybe all that junk in your garage could become a band. A garage band of R2D2s, that always show up on time for rehearsals and have no egos. :D

Any good groupie stories?

A PC is going to work better than a sampler for most tasks. It’s much easier to map and edit samples with a mouse and screen vs. buttons and LCD banners. The only reason to use a hardware sampler vs. a PC is for live, where you need the bulletproofnessocity of a hardware box vs. a sometimes-unstable PC. I use the EXS24 software sampler for most of my drum programming and Gigasampler for orchestral. I use the Korg Triton sampling for live, as a redundancy for the laptop.

As far as minimum setups, that’s a really open ended question. There are so many programs and drum libraries that sound great and are fairly easy to use. I’m not really up on most of the entry-level stuff, so I’m probably not the best guy to ask. For mac, I know Apple’s Garage Band works well – I’m expecting the Logic Express to be really a great value. I’m not hip on the PC side of the equation.

For straight drum libraries, Spectrasonics makes something called the Stylus that has like 2 gigs of samples, and sounds amazing. I use BFD from Fxpansion for acoustic sounding drums. I spent som time editing a drum library for Russ Miller that’s coming out on Spectrasonics soon – it has some really interesting material on it.

Anyone else have a better answer?