This video defines the recording industry as a whole, looks briefly at how the recording industry has changed over time, the main businesses that are involved with recorded music, as well as how musicians interact with the recording industry and of course the support network of professionals that keep its processes running smoothly.
The music recording industry is the business of finding talented artists and good songs, putting them together in a recording and selling the result in either physical or digital form to fans. It covers all types of music that is in a permanent state – by that I mean any music that doesn’t require a human to be there creating it at the point of audience listening to it, so vinyl, CD, .mp3, youtube, but it does not include any instance online where the performance inputted at one end, is steamed, and being listened to by the audience at the other end – That then becomes the live industry and is covered by performance royalties.
Heres the defining bit, in very simple terms, a composer writes a song, they own that idea, but they loan it to a musician to record it. The musician records their version of that song, thereby creating something new themselves. Imagine Madonna using a Michael Jackson Song. The two have distinct styles, and although MJ clearly has the idea and the songwriting, when Madonna comes along and records it, she will add her own feel that will entirely change it. They both have different types of ownership of the idea: MJ’s is the publishing royalty as he is the songwriter, Madonna’s is the Mechanical Royalty, as she mechanically made a new version of his idea. The recording. This is then loaned to the record label to distribute to fans and the label takes a cut of the resulting income.
The recording industry is the most publicly followed part of the music industry. People have come to use music industry and recording industry interchangeably as a result but its roots lie in the late 1800s when technology allowed for sound to be stored and later reproduced. The recording industry grew very quickly to be the largest part of the music industry and has only recently, in the last 10 years, begun its fall from that power as a result of no longer being able to regulate copying of the records it gets its value from. Today the recording industry is hurrying to move its sales online to access the customers again, but is still being held back by inadequate international copyright laws that allow people to steal music without consequence. Luckily, its a large industry, it always needs musicians to help it along and is still actively looking for them.
The main company in the recording industry is the Record label. A record label employs an Artist & Repertoire Representative to go out and find what styles of music will sell well. They are then tasked with finding artists that are talented in that genre, and songs that sound great, take the two to a recording studio and let a producer put them together into a great recording ready for sale.
This is a long process and todays market sees A&R reps waiting for aritsts and genres to develop themselves based on audiences, changing from the slightly more proactive and taste-MAKING process A&R used to do, to a more financially secure RE-active selection of talent. As a result of this, the songwriters and the artists are most commonly the same individuals now, but A&R will decide which of the selection of tracks available the artist will use to become the most marketable.
An artist development manager or the manager of the record label (depending on the label’s size) will take into account the wider industry and trends, and use their expertise of having usually been in other roles around the industry to make a judgement as to how many albums, what territories – or countries around the world – to promote the record in, what the potential future earnings could be from the artist and discuss these with A&R reps who have become specialists at particular genres or markets.
The Marketing department in the record label will decide on the branding, the ‘image’ as well as the target demographic for customer, age-range, possible re-use, re-mix and synchronisation opportunities from the recording and they will devise a route to market: The master plan of how to promote the artist and the recording as cost-effectively as possible to the target market.
The A&R rep will chat with the artist and come up with ways in which either party is happy for the records to be used, how much money they each think it will make, how long they want to be associated with each other for what the other party can provide and once they have been verbally agree, the A&R rep will create a bullet-pointed list of those conditions, just to formalise the agreement. This is called the Heads of Agreement and once signed by both parties becomes a legally binding document. So that there is no uncertainty as to what the document means, and because the english language is open to very different interpretation, lawyers are then called in to beef out exactly what each clause and phrase means in a kind of glossary of terms known as the associated long form agreement. this is the point where the artists’ lawyer and the record label’s lawyer have a great back-and-forth trying to decide exactly what each phrase means whilst keeping their client’s best interests in mind and a good music lawyer in this respect carries enough wisdom to be able to negotiate quickly with the other party while leaving everyone feeling happy. They bill by the hour of course.
Lest we forget, contracts are only there for when it goes extremely wrong. 90% of the time you should have a healthy working relationship where everyone involved wants the best music and the best delivery to the most people – not least because it is in everyone’s interests. What this means is that labels will not act unreasonably because they are the ones who showed faith in you in the first place. Make sure you or your artist manager keep an open line of communication with your contact in the label so that everyone knows what everyone’s intentions are. You shouldn’t have to be referring to your contract all the time; if you are, consider whether your relationship with your label has the trust it needs for a healthy relaxed environment.
So
Once the contracts, terms and conditions are agreed the artist receives a bit of the money that the record label thinks they are going to earn from the final records. This money is for the artists’ living allowance and to pay for recording studio time. It is known as an advance, because it is a payment of the money the recording is going to make, but has not yet made. It is not a loan, in as much as it does not need to be paid back, but because it is a payment of the earnings coming into the record label from that artist’s record, that money actually has to come INTO the label before they will pay any more money out to the artist, so you could say it does feel like a loan.
The A&R rep will give advice, but the advance will then be used to pay for studio time and maybe to pay for a high profile producer to add their sound to your songs and playing styles. Recording studios offer skilled sound engineers, technicians and producers so that every idea can be realised in high quality and the producer will run a mixdown of the takes – jargon for adjust the volume of each instrument and singer for each song recorded – which is sent off to a mastering house, the mastering department – or today, just moved from one program on your computer to another. where the tracks for an album are ordered and prepared onto a ‘master tape’. I’ll go into more detail about this whole process and the music tech involved behind it in another video, but for brevity lets crack on towards manufacturing!
So the tracks are ordered into masters which the record label keeps hold of, and which they use in manufacturing plants to create the cds ready for retail, or more frequently now they use expensive equipment to compress these digital files so they retain their high quality sound ready for upload to online ecommerce music distributors.
From this point they will set a release date for the albums, bring in different publicists for press early release, a radio plugger to promote the tracks to the major market radio stations and depending on the market they will circulate the track around the DJing circuit so that it is hitting the market before general release.
Another way of promoting the album is through touring the artist, which is where the live industry comes into its own with its own full business structure to deliver those performances.
So as a musician, you will probably begin gigging and live performance off your own back finding venues to book you through local personal contacts and maybe generate a small run of cds ready to sell as well as merchandising items to develop the brand. If this is sustained and profitable, you will catch the attention of A&R reps who will court you, that is they will have chats with you finding out your intentions, your current budget, if any other record label have been in touch or whether you have any publishing deals or booking agents they need to take into account. If you both decide that the artist and the record label make a good match and you can each see yourselves working together then they will draw up a heads of agreement, you or your manager will sift through it and your lawyer will negotiate the fine print. You will be given some much-needed cash and will be able to go out and devote your time fully to becoming a professional musician. You will spend many hours recording away in rooms without natural light and produce something that you will be proud of. You will submit it to your record label who will then call you in to discuss touring options, photo shoots, videos for marketing and some publicity stunts – maybe an off the cuff remark about something ‘accidentally’ to get people talking as well as doing press interview rounds to make sure everyone is aware and to build your buzz for the new release. This will be finished off with heavy touring being on the road, seeing many new places and working to random hours of day and night, hopefully with a set of people you love to be with and delivering to crowds who love to see you.
After about 9 months this process will thin out and you will enter into conversations with the record label about them taking up your next option period (simply put, the next funding for an album, recording an album and touring it) and whether it is profitable for them or if you have out-grown them and need a bigger budget and label. lather, rinse, repeat!
For this process you will receive a mechanical royalty from the sale of your record. This is the recognition that you have part-created it, and although this royalty is not as substantial as the publishing royalty received for owning the song that made it all happen, it can provide a good alternative income. Of course, today you are likely to own both the publishing royalty and the mechanical royalty, so its all good!
Don’t forget this hasn’t covered the publishing industry, live industry, music industry history, as well as support services to the industry or many pioneers in the music industry, as well as different job roles available, or step by step guides to becoming a musician in todays industry, all of which are covered in more detail on my website theosmithmusic.com
I hope you found this useful so you can crack on and don’t forget to let your musician friends know about it!
Record labels, Recording studios, marketing,manufacturing plants, physical sales, mechanical rights, majors verses independent record labels, DIY production, producers, session musicians, artists, A&R reps, radio pluggers, linis with live industry for promotion, touring, links with publishing for synchronisation to tv, radio, mixed media,
Theo Smith
Leave a Comment