Record Labels Unveil Greed 2.0

theodp writes "Unsatisfied with $2.49 ringtones and as much as 70 cents of each 99 cent iTunes download, Newsweek reports that record labels want a bigger cut of digital music profits. One example: If you type in 'Madonna' - a Warner act - at the Google Video site, and the results are accompanied by ads, Warner wants a share of those ad dollars." Even more ridiculous demands than those put forth in previous stories.

Comments

Re:The RIAA is irrelevant.

[ericdano]

No true at all. There are a ton of small studios around that can and do produce some great sounding music. You can also invest $5K or so in your own equipment and get the sound that you want. People don't have to record to 96Khz+ using Nuemann mics. You can get great results using just Shure stuff. Hell, my favorite stuff from Evanescence was done using average stuff. Their engineered stuff sounds.....engineered, and not as good to me.

So, studio time myth is busted. Marketing though is where the RIAA and Labels could help you....

Re:The RIAA is irrelevant.

[Matt Perry]

Studio time is expensive, man.

Only at big studios. The audio world is undergoing the same type of change the video world is undergoing. Fast computers and cheap software have removed most of the financial barriers for creative people. There's a lot of boutique studios that are cheap and have top notch audio engineers, most of them run by engineers who used to work for bigger studios.

hiring a producer

You be the producer. Don't you know your own music well enough to know what you want? If you are renting studio time, take advantage of the audio engineer's experience. That is, after all, a large part of what you are paying for when you rent studio time.

studio musicians

There are a lot of excellent musicians online that will record tracks for you in their home studio and send it to you via email. They cost a lot less than paying a session musician to travel to a studio (+ studio time). One person I correspond with on a mailing list used this technique with his last album. He recorded all of the songs using a drum machine. He sent the tracks to a drummer who listended to the songs, recorded new drum tracks, and then mailed the new drum tracks back on a CD. The guy imported the drum tracks and mixed them in. It didn't cost him an arm and a leg either.

whatever you need to get the sound you want) can be really expensive

I can be but it need not be. There's a lot of really great software available for mixing and audio processing. For example, I've been trying out Guitar Rig after seeing it on a friends computer. He plays gigs with a laptop, a preamp, and a firewire audio interface. He uses a foot controller hooked to the MIDI input on his firewire interface to control Guitar Rig. No need for a ton of pedals. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Great software for everything from mixing, recording, virtual instruments, audio mastering, and more are out there and can be had for very little money.