Sucker I am…Louder I am.

Back in late March I was the unexpected recipient of a great April Fool’s joke by Scott Dorsey of Recording Magazine. I was so fooled by the prank that I even posted a blog about it (Louder is not Better). Now, granted that if I had read the article on April 1^st I probably would’ve picked up on the gag, but I got the magazine around March 27^th.

So, my hats off to Mr. Dorsey for a very well played April fools joke and my apologies if I made any offending comments. But I must admit that I still believe that there are loads of people in the music industry that think that over-compression and mastering albums so loud that it removes all sense of dynamics is a good thing. I would even think that Mr. Dorsey’s idea for his April Fools prank may have come from the fact of how ridiculous the practice is.

Money from TV Performances

Recently I had the good fortune to get a lot of airplay from CW Network on one of my dance instrumental songs. My wife was pretty excited about it and later asked me “how much did you make from it?” Don’t get her wrong, she is not materialistic or anything like that, but she was simply asking the same question that so many people ask when their song gets airplay. However my answer was the same as almost every songwriter has to confront with. “I Don’t Know”. At least not yet.

The fact is that one of the most confusing (and mysterious) accounting practices resides in the music business, and that is royalties from the performing rights organization (PRO’s). I have been a member of BMI since 1986, yet I still don’t exactly know how to calculate my royalties until I receive my statement and sit down to break it up. And unfortunately you get those statements every 3 months, so it’s very difficult to know what you’ll receive before hand. Even if when you have a cue sheet and know how many plays you got, calculating what your check will be is not an easy task.

Mixing with Headphones

A lot of sound engineers and producers will say “never mix with headphones”. I say; “mix your music with headphones only if there’s no other alternative”. Plus I would add that you should not mix with headphones if you’re mixing for an album or for something that will become the end result with no further production involved (ie; commercially released download or streaming).

With that said however, there are situations where you can do good mixes with headphones. Examples are demos for publishers or even final mixes for television projects. These types of ventures can be finalized with a good set of headphones if you are careful and have alternative form of references of your mix such as your car or home stereo.

DYI Online Sales

Lately we’ve been seeing a shift by established Artists who are moving away from the major record labels and releasing albums independently online. Groups like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have shown that they can sell a significant amount of albums without being signed to a major label. Even country veteran Dolly Parton has joined the new music revolution and has seen sales that have eluded her for over a decade.  

But what all of these Artists have in common is the fact that they have already reached major success from their previously major label releases. So what are the chances that new up and coming Artists and bands will be able to find that same type of success on their own? Unfortunately; not very good.

Louder is Not Better…

There is an editorial on the April ‘08 issue of Recording Magazine (available now to Taxi members) from Scott Dorsey which I feel highlights the lack of interest the recording industry has taken towards achieving top quality sound recordings. In the article, Dorsey talks about “how louder is better when it comes to mastering your albums”. Dorsey suggests that it’s ok to sacrifice the dynamic ranges in recording mixes for the sake of getting your mix to sound louder.

This is a concept that is heavily shared today by just about all the major record labels and most independent companies as well. The idea is to get your song as loud if not louder than the songs on other albums. This process involves heavily compressing and limiting the signals while at the same time eliminating almost all dynamic ranges that are found within the actual performances of the songs. This procedure takes place at the mastering stage of an album, where in many cases it actually the record execs that tell the mastering engineers that they want their album to sound “louder”.