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Cheap Audio Production
OneInEveryCrowd writes "Rolling Stone reports that four out of five new albums are now produced by a program called Pro Tools (or similar packages) that costs $495 for the home version or $15,000 for the pro version. The article describes a fairly amazing savings in time and effort compared to the older ways of producing an album. I realize that a talented producer can cost a lot of money and some bands drink a lot of beer, but why aren't the benefits of lower production costs being passed on to the consumer?"
why aren't the benefits of lower production costs being passed on to the consumer?
I suspect its because 99% of the cost of producing commercially successful records is not (and never has been) studio related. Sure, studio time costs a fair bit, but never anything like the amount of money that is typically spent on publicity, production, promotion, distribution, and stuff like that.
because there is no competition!
It it were a truly open market, then these increases in efficiency would be passed on to the consumer as lower prices. However, since the recording industry has done everything possible to insure that there is little or no competition, it just results in higher profits.
This is the danger inherent in monopolies and oligopolies.
it's depressing how such a featureful tool is used mainly for evil.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
"...but why aren't the benefits of lower production costs being passed on to the consumer?"
Pro Tools might knock a few tens-of-thousands off the cost of producing an album, but the real cost is the producer himself. Good producers can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for a big album. In short, it doesn't matter what tools Puff Daddy uses to produce an album, all that matters is that Puff Daddy produced it.
Because instead of having 4 studios that are full purposed, folks build their own studios and spend the money on their own equipment than they would have normally at the big boys.
:-) What kind of studios are they going to be running? Ones that are $100k - 300k in just equipment.
In the end, it STILL costs the industry the same amount of money or probably more.
That and the human element has gone up steadily as the pricing of the hardware has gone down. before the Home Recording Revolution occured, I was able to charge $20 an hour to show up and help someone with their gear...generally I was paid for by the studio I was in. NOW I show up at someones home, read the manual to them and charge them $75 an hour and I'm not even what I'd call professional (I've worked with several professional artists in the past and I'm going to be the head music tech for an up coming Al Green show next month, so I work with folks that are VERY professional...still pretty much a hobby for me so I can support my university and its research addiction).
And what happens AFTER folks finish their home opus? They generally head to the bigger studios to polish it up. Producers are going to ask a LOT of front money to work on this -- along with their own engineers that retrack certain items -- and they will STILL ask for points (though that generally comes out of the artists share...EVERYTHING comes out of the artists share
Looking at my HOME studio, I have 2 K2600s ($5500 each), Digital Mixer ($3k), Mac G4 ($3k), PC ($1k)Audio Interfaces for both Macs and PCs ($2k), Software (DAW -- Logic Audio $1k / Softsynths & Effects $2k). Thats almost $25k right there (Heh! Glad most of this was comped as I couldn't afford it). There is NO WAY IN HELL that Vig's entire studio is $15k at Stone tries to make out...I wouldn't be surprised to know it was on order of $150k at the MINIMUM.
BTW the $500 version of the CHEAP Protools is NOT Protools...its a cheap immitation with the same interface. its designed solely as a learning tool to get folks use to what the big boys use and hooked so that they can go into the studio with a little preknowledge OR convince them to buy the more expensive stuff.
Theres no doubt about it, recording a major label album is going to cost a lot of money. Indie albums will be MUCH less.
Don't take my word for it, I run one of the largest Logic user groups dedicated to digital audio. Take a look at:
http://community.sonikmatter.com
and check out our user forums. These folks know what they are doing and we have quite a few folks that have worked on albums that have resulted in precious metal on the wall. Again, I'm just a hobbiest that been caught up with the big boys because I was a geek when they needed technology taken care of and don't consider myself to be anywhere near their calibre -- but its a fucking shame to see that my bedroom studio is bigger and better than Butch Vig's if we are going to take this article at face value.
clif marsiglio
cofounder sonikmatter
Almost every time I hear a professional soloist or well-organized group play live music, I can buy a CD from them of their music. Recently I encountered a very good guitar/tambourine player in a restaurant. He didn't have a CD, so I referred my friendly local CD producer to him.
Music production is moving from the expensive studio to the musician's garage. I don't use Pro Tools, and I don't have a sound studio, but I can make a simple demo CD for a music group by mikeing their rehearsal hall for about $500. That's $250 for me and $250 to stamp the CDs commercially. My friendly local CD producer charges more but gets better results. If all you want is a demo or a CD to sell at your gigs you don't need a $100,000 producer.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
I just moved into a new apartment. The rent here is lower. I was thinking that the honest thing to do would be to tell my employer that since I now have an extra hundred bucks every month that maybe I should take a pay cut, since I don't want to appear greedy. Any thoughts?
do not read this line twice.
So yeah, there are a lot of programs that do this. But Pro Tools is, and has been for a decade, the industry standard in professional hard disk recording systems. Some great things you can do with a Pro Tools setup:
The basic thing is, Rolling Stone is finally catching on to the what musicians have been doing in the mainstream for about 7 years now, and that's completely tapeless recording, and the move of recording out of the studio and into other places. There are enough plugins out there to clean up sound from even very noisy areas, so the need for a completely silent "studio" is much less. Studios are definitely going out of business as a result of this move to home-studio-based recording, and ProTools is generally a compatability requirement.
Me, I use Cakewalk Sonar at home, and this is one area where no free software product yet comes close. I'm on the Ardour mailing list, and use Ardour periodically to see how it's coming along, but definitely nothing there yet to replace my studio setup.
So to answer your question, Pro Tools is simply one of many hard-disk recording packages. However, among professionals it is the most widely used, and boasts a much larger library of compatible software than any competitor. Oh, and until about 4 years ago, it was Mac-only.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
"$495 for the home version or $15,000 for the pro version.
why aren't the benefits of lower production costs being passed on to the consumer?"
Because that's one program. Install it on your Alienware PC and you'll still create terrible sounding crap.
Now pay rent on a building. Properly set it up for acoustics. Add perfectly matched, pro level monitors. Add some seriously expensive sound cards that can work with multiple sources and no lag. Add a set of mics at a couple of grand a pop. Add a mixing desk that connects to pro-tools so you can actually make smooth fine controls. Add a decent guitar/amp (about $5k), now multiply by about five for all the variations used on a typical album. Add a drum kit and a lot of heads (Dave Grohl reportedly got through a set of heads per track when recording Nevermind). Add pro-grade cabling so your sound doesn't get muddied up. Add a PC capable of dealing with it all, fast SCSI drives and all.
Those are just the bits and pieces I can think of, just being an amateur guitarist who never records but does spend too much time in guitar shops. I'd imagine there's a hell of a lot more.
All of a sudden, the $495 seems insignificant. Even the $15,000 for the pro version.
Yes, you can record music with pro-tools and a typical home PC. A lot of people do. And it sounds fairly good compared to recordings of say the 1950s.
Just because one aspect gets a bit cheaper, doesn't mean the process gets cheaper. It just means that the capabilities get higher. I remember paying $200 for 4mb of ram, $3,000 for a 16mhz 286. Now I can get a hundred times that power for about $250 yet I still buy $3,000 PCs. How can that be?