“You become a one stop shop which you have to do because of budgets these days. You can’t afford loads of people… programmers and mix engineers, etc.”
tommy D So how are the producers earning now? As we discussed earlier, many producers are preferring, or indeed looking for their side projects, to find and develop their own artists, and tie them into a decent production contract or, one stage further, working with them toward a 360° deal. Some might say these appear to be sor- did and exploitative, but in fact can be written into producer deals with labels too these days as a matter of course. As we established earlier in the chapter, the producer is now looking to find their earnings from somewhere other than the recording as record sales are not where the money is currently to be had. Tommy D, the British producer, believes strongly in the DIY upsurge. “If you find a great artist, don’t bother selling it on to someone else. Structure it so that you can help them, so that they can get something great, which in turn will help you —it makes sense. [It’s like] we’ve gone back to the ‘60s again with people like George Martin and Joe Meek… they found artists and chose or wrote their songs with them and then developed them. It’s not like it used to be [say in the 1980s]
anymore where you’d be sent some demos, meet the band down the pub and then spend three months recording the album with them, then see them play Glastonbury six months later. There just isn’t the revenue anymore. Producers need to start thinking like Jay-Z and Puff Daddy… they’re looking outside of the box.”
Setting up your own label and production company alongside merchandising, brand, and the live shows appears to be the vital way to make money these days. As a producer, you should consider very wisely how you might involve yourself in all these income streams. As we began our interview with Tommy D we’d caught him looking at clothing wholesalers websites for “good shaped T-shirts for merchandising purposes,” not in the studio as we’d have expected. Tommy suggests that producers might not be in front of a DAW most of the time these days, and might migrate that creativity to the social media web- sites to generate interest in their work and acts. Tommy adds though that “it [social media] will never take the place of the major as they have the market- ing machine.”
360° DealS
360° deals have started to become more common for artists being signed these days. A 360° deal is one where all income streams of an artist are split up in varying amounts. This is often justified because physical record sales and digital downloading and streaming have reduced the income available from the recorded product. As a result, live income and other aspects of an artist’s pot are being shared out.
In this type of deal, a percentage of the income take on the door on tour in addition to the merchandise could be sacrificed as a share of the distributed income. Similarly, any other income stream could be up for negotiation within the 360° deal.
360° deals (with a label)
While the 360° deal might seem incredibly unfair for the artist, it is an increasingly common and, labels would argue, essential way for them to recoup the investment in the artist and to bring future acts to prevalence through marketing and hype.
Much has been written about how unfair the 360° deal has become as the label strips yet more income away from the artist’s dwindling pot.
360° deals (with a producer)
Producers are, as we discuss in DIY Movement later in this chapter, becoming increasingly more innovative and developing artists under their own steam. In order to achieve this and for them to recoup any potential income, they have embraced the 360° deal. The producer’s choice to use the 360° deal is not one of greed or manipulation, but simply one to ensure they gain a return on their development. Producers who are signing their own acts to their personal labels may be placing not only their time on the line, but additionally investing considerable money in ensuring the artist is developed. The 360° deal is discussed as an option to recoup this investment, so the wheel can turn for future acts.
Thinking about the 360° deal, producers that develop their songwriting skills, purely in focus of what will be a hit, partly because of their knowledge of the production industry, will place themselves in a better financial position. A share of the PRS income, MCPS and any synchronization those collaborated tracks might bring will keep the wolves from the door and keep his studio open. It’s all then cyclical: if the producer keeps earning, then he can continue to develop new acts, which keeps the wheels of new artists’ music flowing.
As we covered earlier, 360° deals might even be preferable for the artists, if they do not wish to have a large record contract around their necks for the future. Given that, it could be iffy that they will recoup any fees from record sales. A glum picture, perhaps? It has certainly got a lot of people thinking. What’s the new industry model? Is it cloud services or is it live performance?
Now is the time to think cleverly about the deals you make, the work you com- mit to and how you can make the career as a producer pay. If you’re likely to work with an artist who is going to be a guaranteed chart success, a normal points deal might work just fine. On the other hand, it is clear that if you stumble across talent and you think you can make it work, there may be defi- nite benefits to keeping the work in-house—go for the DIY deal.
Musicians and producers will continue to have the thirst and drive for success and no doubt will sign a deal they should not have. It is important that musi- cians and music professionals do what they do for the love of it, but it is equally important that they are paid fairly for it. With the slices of the income pie being eroded from all sides, producers and artists should invest time and energy in getting the deals right. And again, we advise you to consult a lawyer.
See Appendix F-1, The Tape Store for links and resources about the legalities of the music industry.
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What is Music Production. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-240-81126-0.00007-X
© 2011 Russell Hepworth-Sawyer and Craig Golding. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
“The work for me really needs to go into pre-production. If the songs and the artist are ready, and we have a clear idea of what we need to do in the studio (including time scale), then the process of recording becomes less daunting and more relaxed, resulting (I hope) in better performances. Studios are stressful because they cost so much; the important thing in a way is for the artist never to feel that they are losing or wasting time in there!
“Once you’re in and recording with my bands, things are almost out of the producer’s hands, save just guiding the process, making certain decisions to keep things on track and within time and budget and keeping out of the way of the creative stuff. After that, ideas about mixing and mastering bottom out of many pre-production decisions and the recording sessions. I’m quite hands off.”
Mat Martin, hobopop productions.
IntroduCtIon: What Is pre-produCtIon?
Pre-production, if you identify with the name, simply describes what should happen before a production starts, whether that is before shooting a film, or pre- paring for a West End or Broadway play. Following on from this comes produc- tion, which in music terms is considered to be the recording and mixing sessions clubbed together, despite often being discrete processes in their own right. Once the mix is achieved, it is moved onto postproduction, which in music terms this time means editing and mastering.
As a term, pre-production also can be an often misunderstood part of the process of making music and is often certainly underutilized. It’s misunderstood because many of its facets, like music production itself, are not always easily described. For example, pre-production can represent the preparation for a recording session, including thorough rehearsals that could include some pretty advanced recording that may or may not appear on the final mix. Alternatively, for electronic artists pre-production and production can, to some extent, merge
into each other as we’ll discuss later. Producer and engineer Mick Glossop (Van Morrison, Frank Zappa) notes that “every band and project is different, but the principles [of pre-production] can be the same.”
Arguably the process is defined from the moment a project is devised and comes into existence. Danny Cope, songwriting expert at Leeds College of Music, often refers in his work to the inter-relationship that exists between song composition and music production. Cope discusses a blend of the studio and the song, which has become a modus operandi for so many when beginning to produce records. Many artists record and produce as they go along in session, and for reasons we’ll later explore, the divisions between pre-production and recording do not always remain clear-cut. In the example we explore, we are considering pre-production as a separate entity which can lead to incredible benefits, certainly in band recordings.
Decisions made at pre-production, or eventualities, may have immediately led to certain pre-production elements being applied that may need to carry on through to the final record, whether it be a specific sound of a unique synthe- sizer plug-in, loop, or the heavier use of rhythmical delay than normal on the vocals or guitar on which the whole track is now sonically hinged. In some cases it is the pre-production stage that will inform the performer or production team whether a composition, or an idea within it, will or will not work and hint at the developments that still need consideration.
Throughout this chapter we refer to the traditional production process, which signifies a model and nothing more of how we sometimes perceived the stages to be: clean cut and definitive. Once upon a time, these stages were devised partly through necessity and were partly defined by the composition process itself.
Compositions in the pop genre were perhaps typically based on a piano or gui- tar and subsequently etched into memory or were translated on to manuscript paper to be realized at a later date. The composition would then have been rehearsed with a band, or the manuscript passed on to hired musicians at the start of the recording session. By the simple virtue of this arrangement, the divi- sions between the stages were much clearer. The recording session was expen- sive, because of the sheer cost of the equipment housed, or even developed and commissioned by the studio in question (such as EMI in early days); and the range of personnel required for the session from hired musicians, engineers, and tape operators through to arrangers and the producer.
Recording sessions in the early days were often restricted to three hours as set out by the unions and it was assumed that the ideal performance could be cap- tured within this time. Given this, the importance attributed to the preparation and rehearsals that make up what we can refer to as pre-production was para- mount. An example of this was one of the Beatles’ first sessions on September 4, 1962 between 7:00 and 10:00 pm in which 15 or more takes were recorded of “Love Me Do” and a number of takes of “How Do You Do It.” Within these three
hours mono mixes were made of each of the pieces (Lewisohn, M., 1989). This length of session could have been a demonstration session for management, or could quite easily be the recording session for release.