Welcome to Episode 68 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. My name is James Cross, and I'm here with Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona. How are you doing today, Matt?

I'm doing pretty awesome. James has everything over there on the East Side. That's great to hear, and things are wonderful on the East Side. It's just been, uh, an interesting couple of days, but only in the best way, because yesterday there was a Facebook comment in our band. I've group saying that streaming and I believe Spotify specifically is killing music careers. And so I did the math as a reply to that comment, and it was like a one line comment and my comment was an essay like, literally, it was probably like two or three pages of college ruled s a basically talking about how Spotify is actually going to pay more in the long run than CD sales would have and did the math for it and all of that.

And I want to preface this with saying, I think Spotify should pay more, and the way to do that is to raise prices or eliminate the free plan because they're paying out roughly 70% of their revenue. It's not that they can pay double that, because then that would be 100 40% of their revenue. They are a business. They have to make money. They're already paying 70%. What they need to do, though, is increase their revenue and they need to increase their revenue per stream. So getting new subscribers doesn't do anything unless those subscribers converting from the free plan because the ad supported plan pays less per stream, then the paid plans do.

And then there's also like the family plans, where you get four or six accounts for like, 15 or $16 which is a lot more accounts than one person for $10. So that is also driving the royalty rates down per play. All that aside, I had a really great time writing that post or that comment that I then made it into a Facebook post and I was still so heated about it last night. I went on Instagram Live and did an Instagram live about it. Now, for the record, we're recording this on February 24th, So that was the 23rd.

This episode doesn't come out till mid March, but if you want to go check out the recording of that Instagram Live, I'll have it linked in the show notes At Band I've Got Rocks slash 68 both the Instagram version and the Facebook version. In case you're not on one, you can watch it on the other. But that's what I've been heated about lately, and that's what's new in my life. But to get to the point here for this episode last week, we talked about budgeting for a studio release, whether it's a single or an EP an album.

We focused mainly on the EP because that's kind of the format that is most viable for a D. I Y artist, and it lets you release music more frequently this week. We are going to be talking all about building your team for a release so you can find the best people to work with you on your music. Matt, I know you're huge into having the right team for any recording. You do. So why don't you go ahead and take us away? Absolutely. A production team is huge when you look at your band or, you know, Or maybe you're just a solo artist and you're looking at it's like, Man, this is These are all the people that are a part of my project.

That's not the case, you know, when you look at Britney Spears and Justin Bieber and you know, like all these Jay Z, Beyonce, there, the face of the company, they are not the dozens to hundreds of people that are employed behind working the magic. There's a lot that goes into the entire next release. Obviously, it starts with your product, so you want to make sure that when you're choosing the people that you work with, that they're going to have your best interests at heart. This starts with who produces your music.

There are so many people out there eager to get your money, but there's only going to be a handful of them that are really fired up about what you're doing and the people that are fired up about what you're doing or the people that you want to be a part of your team. So there's a lot of steps when it goes into an entire release. But Step one is having a quality product, and you can cut this up as many times as you want. You know that you need a full length album.

Are you going to have one person that acts as your producer, your tracking engineer? You're mixing engineer and you're mastering engineer. You can do that. Sometimes you can get all in house bundle, everything all wrapped up into one nice little package for one you know, specific cost. That's a jack of all trades engineer. You know, it's it's somebody who is pretty good at all of those, but they're not necessarily the best at each one of those you can find specialists. Essentially, you can get really, really, really technical with this.

You can have one person that's gonna help you with production. And when I say production, I mean these guys are gonna be listening to your demos when you demo a song and you're like, Cool, I'm gonna have somebody listen to this. The first person you want to take it, too, is a production engineer. You want them to listen to that and go? Mm. This needs to be rearranged. Your lyrics need to come in earlier. You're you need to have an 808 here. You're backing tracks Need to be more prominent here.

It's not thick enough or sonically your guitar here and you're backing tracks here. You're getting really close, tonally to each other. And so now that's starting to get muddy and things like that, or it will be muddy once you get around to the mixing. In my opinion, the producer is going to be more of a visionary. It's gonna be really somebody who can take a step back and look at your whole project, even all of your songs as a whole, and find extra things that will help the project hold continuity from cover to cover.

Now, that might be, you know, just simple things of being like, Hey, you should use these new tones because the stuff that you're using those were popular eight years ago. like now you want to use something that's a little bit more relevant. Now a producer, we have lumped all of these terms together because of how much money has made an exodus from the music industry 20 years ago to record an album, it was $100,000. 10 years ago to record an album. It's $10,000 and that's because of things like, you know, new plug ins.

New, you know, like all of gear is being digitized and so, like, resources are much more readily available, whereas you used to have to pay, you know, $100,000 for outboard gear. Now you don't necessarily have to do that, but really, what you still need to be paying for is the expertise that these people are going to be bringing. So a lot of producers have taken on the role of doing everything all at once in these later years, and it sounds enticing because you're like, Oh, cool, I can get everything done for the low price of $5000 or whatever or $10,000.

We'll keep in mind that if you chop that up and you say I'm going to have somebody do my production. I am going to have one person do my tracking. I'm gonna have one person to my mixing and then I'm gonna have somebody else entirely do my mastering. There is a lot of power in that move, and I really recommend that we had the same person do our tracking as our mixing. But then we had somebody else do are mastering now. The reason that we did that is because we had recorded two albums with him and pretty much every single person, both professional and unprofessional, that had listened to it had nothing but positive things to say about Paul Leavitt and his ear.

We were lucky to work with a producer who started recording on tape. Paul Leavitt has literally forgotten more about music production than most people will ever know in their entire lifetime. And so, like, we ended up getting really lucky to have one of those jack of all trades people who has multiple gold albums, you know, And even still, we still chose to have outside ears when it came to production and somebody else who with different outboard gear when it came to mastering. So you want to make sure that on your team you need aces in your places.

If your product is full and you have everything you need, then you don't necessarily need to go find a different specialist and things like that. But never underestimate the power of bringing in a fresh perspective, bringing in a new set of ears, bringing in somebody with different gear. You might send off your mixes to somebody from mastering and you listen to it. You're like, Okay, like, yeah, it's a nice Polish master, but is it really like, right as rain? You know, Is it exactly what you want?

And some of the time you're going to pay top dollar just to have those final touches? I know. Last week I mentioned that when we recorded our album, we had one person do the tracking and the mixing, and then he also did a master as well. Paul did all three of them, but he did the master because that was already included in his price. Our plan was always to have somebody else re master it, which we ended up doing. We paid $10,000 for that re master, so that's just to put a small point of reference into your mind as to what a cost like that might end up.

You know, if you're gonna be working with top level producers with top level engineers, you know, these people have taken years to perfect their craft, and that time investment means that they deserve money for their craft. And so if you're gonna go like, oh, I've got $200 per song for mixing and mastering and tracking, you're shooting yourself in the foot. And we talked a lot about the budget for that in our last episode. So if you haven't listened to that one, go back and listen to that and we kind of dive more into more specific costs and things like that.

But what you really want to do is never be afraid to bring in a fresh perspective. And some of the time, even if that means that you've got to pay somebody 100 bucks just to listen to your music and give you an opinion that's so powerful, and I would encourage you to find as many of those people as possible, even if you have to pay, I mean, it's better if you find people who who you don't have to pay. But at the same time, if you pay somebody to listen to your product, they're going to tell you exactly what they think of it versus like if you find your friend and say, Hey, man, listen to this like your friends are all gonna be like.

Dude, this is sick. I love it. You're my favorite band ever. I can't wait to buy it. They're going to inflate you, you know, you're gonna just gonna be like, Oh, man, I wrote the best album ever. But in all actuality, they're just excited that they know somebody who's pursuing a life in music. There's a natural like idealization of musicians, you know, You tell somebody you're going on tour and people are like, I've always wanted to go on tour and then once they realize that going on tours like being sweaty, not showering for six days at a time, sleeping in different WalMart parking lots, eating crap food, fighting with all of your best friends, and at the end of it, if you're still lucky enough to be in love with music, then you got to do it all over again.

Maybe you were even lucky enough to make money on some of your early tours. You know, each and every one of these things, like they're all taxing. You know, it's all tough, But people idolize this, you know. And so if you have people that are listening to your product and say, Oh, they're a musician, I want to listen to their product. They hear something that sounds good and they instantly say, Oh, man, this is fantastic. When in all actuality, that wasn't what you were going for, you were going for somebody to be like, Well, you know, this needs to be refined.

This might be a producer. A producer will go through the process with you. They will tell you if your arrangement sucks, they will tell you if your lyrics are weak, they will tell you if you need, you know, better tracking better, mixing better mastering. Maybe they actually have a catalog of people that they work with regularly. Or maybe they do it themselves. A lot of producers have multiple people in house. James. I would imagine that you probably do some of the drum editing at your studio, right?

Typically, I try to outsource that just because that's not the stuff that I'm best at, you know, to go exactly to that. But I have guys that I'm like, Hey, you know what? This is the person for drum editing. I'm going to send that to that person, and that's who does the editing for me exactly. Case in point right there. So James knows that he is not going to do better than somebody that he would outsource to. So what does James do? James puts his ace in the place, so that way his product is the actual production.

So if he were to turn around to somebody that's paying him and give them back something crappy, that's gonna be the same effect as if you put out a crappy album and you're giving that to your customers. So it's on James to make sure he has the best drum editors. It's on James to make sure that he is working with the best possible people so that he can deliver the best product to the musician. Now, take what he's doing. You know that's what you want, right? Like if you go to eat at Applebee's and you order a burger at Applebee's.

You want that to be the best damn burger you've ever eaten in your life, right? That's why you pay for it. Nobody walks in saying I'm gonna pay money for this. I hope that at least comes out mediocre. That's never the goal. So how do you do that? You do it with specialists. You do it with people who are willing to tell you when something is wrong bringing a good producer ask people around in the industry and say like, Hey, do you know somebody that would be willing to listen to our music beforehand?

You know, like you were saying last episode, I believe, James, where you talked about how you do three revisions on a song. If somebody records a song, you do three revisions, and then they get to the end of those three revisions and they say, Oh, you know what? I still have more things that I want done. There's nothing wrong with that. You can absolutely still want more things done, but James will then start to charge you more. And you know that this is knowledge that's up front.

And James is basically he's going to do everything he can within his business parameters to give you the best product because a James's name is going to be on that. He wants you to be proud of it. Just like the person buying the burger wants to taste the best burger ever. When I'm the one who owns the burger shop, I also want that burger to be the best made burger ever. It's not just about what you eat. It's about what you produce, what you put out. So if you can find producers that are experts at producing and they have a network of trusted collaborators, use those people.

You know these people are incredibly important, and there is no shortage of people that you can use. Like if you want 100 people to listen to your album to give you critiques, then you can say like, Oh, 75 of these people said this 25 said this like I'm gonna take the majority and then I'm gonna turn around to James and say, Hey, James, 75 of my 100 listeners said this. So I want to go ahead and make this small tweak. James would be the producer who can help get those things happening.

But in a sense, all those 100 people, those are also part of your production team. These are people who are you're listening team. They may not be the specialist who's going to physically go in, and EQ sounds out and tweak your mix there, the people that are going to tell you what the market is going to think of it and so like these people are just as important. It's called a focus group. Focus groups are incredibly important. Every specialist is incredibly important. Last episode we talked about how you need to have asked these very important questions ahead of time.

You need to know how much it's gonna cost you. You need to know if you're paying an hourly rate or a project rate. You need to know if you know if you need these three different people. Have you talked to somebody about production and have you talked to a separate person about tracking? Have you talked to a separate person about mixing and a separate person about mastering? Each one of these is going to basically come together and create this wonderful culmination of things that is going to appeal to a much broader spectrum in the market.

So however you want to divide it up, you can back in the day they used to have multiple audio engineers that would work on a single project because there was enough money in the industry to do that. Well, now this is where we get a lot more of these jack of all trades people where it's like they know how to do everything. But they used to outsource. They used to say, I don't want to go spend two hours making a drum set. I want to hire somebody else to do that.

I want to hire somebody who's got so much practice tuning drums and miking drums in perfect areas that I don't have to take, you know, 30 minutes to try to figure out why I'm getting this extra reverb or extra boom in this large room. I want somebody who's a champion of that. When you go play a show and the headliners sound technician is on stage and they're going, Yeah, yeah, it's never the lead singer of the band. It's not. Not any one of the band members a lot of the time.

It's not even an in house person. It's the audio engineer that's on tour with the band, and they have them on tour because they are going to figure out the exact right Sonics. They're going to figure out the exact right placement of things. They're the ones that are going to basically muddle through all the crap that nobody wants to hear, and they're going to solve that problem ahead of time. So, like each and every one of these people, they're all like one facet of your team, you know, and the larger you get, the larger this team is going to get.

Right now, we're literally just talking about the production of your album. Once you get later on, you have, you know, label people. You have promotion people, you've got managers. You've got, like, all sorts of these things. And like when you get to the end of it, your band is no longer this like 34 or five piece band. There's about 10 to 15 different people that actively work as a part of our production team, and now they work at all different levels. It's not going to be you know some of them work at the actual music production level.

Some of them work at the touring production level. Some of them work at the publication production level, and so it's all different. But the point is, and what I really am trying to hit home is specialists, you know, aces in their places. You want to have people that really know what they're doing in their field. And you're going to do that by getting to know these people, you know, reach out to them, talk to them, figure out who they are, find out what makes them tick. Like I know that James loves a f I. So if ever I'm writing a song that sounds, you know, kind of like, uh, early two thousand's email.

I know for a fact that I can take that song to James and play it for him, and James is not going to turn and say, Oh, yeah, I'll listen to that for 10 bucks, you know? I know that he's gonna be like, Oh, cool man, I like emo music. This is my jam. I grew up listening to this, so like I always like to say, develop relationships with people. Figure out exactly what makes them tick and then put those people in the right place that they need to go.

If they're not a right fit, don't be afraid to move on to somebody else. You're not going to hurt anybody's feelings. Business is one of those worlds where if you go and you have somebody produce something and it doesn't sound that great, you have no obligation to go back to them. Yeah, exactly. And to wrap this section up before we move on to some other people who might be involved in the production process. I want to touch back on the jack of all trades topic because, yes, Matt, you're absolutely right.

A lot of times that's people who used to outsource work, and now they don't anymore. But on the other hand, it's also newer engineers who don't really know what they're doing. I think they can do everything and are trying to grasp at every last dollar that they can get. They think it's a competition to get that money. They would rather have a project and do it from start to finish for $500 and get every last bit of money for that song instead of saying, Hey, you know what?

Mastering Not really my deal. Look, you pay me the full 500 I will send this off to the mastering engineer that I trust, and I will handle the payment to him. You don't have to worry about anything. I'll take care of it or say, You know what? You pick a mastering engineer. You give me 3, 50 or 400 for the recording and mixing. You can split that up to just recording, just mixing. So that's option one. Finding somebody who really will split things up and on your own. You pick the right person for every single phase of the project.

Number two is you find a producer who does this for you, or, at the very least, strongly recommends who you should pick for. The recording mixing and the mastering. Number three is also a one stop shop, but not in the sense that it's one engineer, but in the sense that it's one team who works together. So they're unified under one studio brand, and they have specialists for each one. Personally, I like the second approach where you have a producer who helps you pick the right people because that has more flexibility than the team who does it all.

And it has more experience than you just going out and picking engineers by yourself, because that producer will know the sound you're going for and will likely no more engineers than you do, so that they can help point you in the right direction for picking the right engineers. I honestly would strongly recommend staying away from a one person, one stop drop just because that tends to be the engineer who is less experienced and is just grasping at every single dollar. That's just not going to be the best result for you in the long run.

You know, if you find an engineer like there are people who do that really well. But they are the unicorns in that world. They are the exception, not the rule and finding somebody to work with you. Who is capable of saying you know what? I'm not good at X y Z. You should outsource that to somebody else. You should hire a different engineer for mastering or mixing or whatever it is. That's how you know you're working with somebody who actually understands what they're doing because they have the guts to say I'm not good at this.

Pay someone else to do this, please, because I want your project to succeed when they say that they have your best interests in mind. If they're saying no, I can do everything. Give me all your money. They don't care about you. They care about themselves. They might make your project sound okay, but they're not looking out for you. They just want to make money off of you. So find the producer or engineer who is willing to admit that you would be better served by sending your music to someone else.

Guess what, everybody? Every single album ever made has liner notes. There's credits you can literally see who produces the albums. You can literally see who mixes it, who masters it and then, you know you can do. You can send those people emails. You can start building a network of your own people. You know, if you're recording a folk album, you probably don't need to go to Joey Sturgis. Joey Sturgis specializes in metal. He's not going to put out a product for a folk artist. That sounds great.

He might take your money. You might say, Sure, I'll do this. But the point is is I mean, he's an expert in what he does, but he is not an expert in your genre. And so that's kind of like a little sub point is that you could work with Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin is one of the greatest producers in history. But maybe it's his the way that he does things, you know. He has a tendency to, uh, to do live recordings. If you play metal, you cannot do a live recording with metal.

It doesn't work. You have to record everything individually with metal, because everything is so precise and you know lots of Syncopation and things like that. And so if you start to do a live recording, you're going to get a whole lot of muddled sounds and things like that. So you're gonna put out a product that's not great. So what you need is a specialist who works in your genre. I record a podcast with James Weekly, and I also, I write all different kinds of music. For the most part, I just show James my stuff that I know that is more towards the genre, you know?

And I showed him some of my other stuff And you know what James has told me? Oh, wow. I wouldn't know what to do with this production wise, you know, I like the music, but production wise, I wouldn't produce this, you know? And that right there alone, right out of the gate, is like, Oh, yeah, like James cares more about my product being better than he cares about. Like, Oh, maybe I can make a little bit of money off of this And this industry is full of snakes.

So find the experts in your genre. You can tell if they're credible because their name will be plastered everywhere. Their products are everywhere. Go listen to your favorite artists. Go open that CD cover and look who produced it. If you don't have the actual physical CD and can't find the liner notes, get on Google. Google, who produced it? It's not like traveling to space, you know, it's not like this crazy thing that's impossible to do. You just send an email and believe it or not, they'll message you back when you're in business people aren't above responding to their customers, so keep that in mind.

If you don't know how much production is going to cost, start by calling or messaging your favorite producers. Find out your all time favorite album. Find out who produced it. Send them an email. Get a price quote. That's how you do it exactly. And you know, if they are really successful, you'll know because they'll have an assistant emailing you back. And you know, Okay, this is going to be expensive, but it's gonna be worth it because they are staying busy enough to support themselves and an assistant.

One last note on finding credits all music is an amazing resource for that. If you don't have the liner notes in your hand, you can go there and pretty much every commercial releases listed on that. But before we wrap up this episode, there's one more type of person who you might end up working with when you're recording your album that we haven't talked about yet. And this is if you are looking for extra musicians to be on the album now, this could be if you are missing a core member, you know If you don't have a drummer right now, then you hire a session drummer.

They can either be remote or they can come into the studio and do the work there. Or it could be something that's more sparse on your album. Like you say, Hey, you know what this one song really needs a piano or since, or some kind of orchestral instruments for the arrangement to really fill things out. Going back to Great Britain by Gallows, who is a hardcore punk band of all bands. On that album, they had a string quartet, and it sounded amazing. That is one of my favorite albums of all time, and that was because the record label gave them a million dollar advance, which is unheard of in 2000 and nine.

This was back in 2000 and nine, or maybe 2008 when they were recording it and they got a million dollars to go make their album and they said, You know what? We're going to spend this million dollars and make this album everything we want it to be, and they got a string quartet to play on their album, and it sounds massive. Another interesting fact that whole album was recorded without a click, which is really incredible because that album, even though they're hardcore punk, was more bordering on metal core.

And they did it primarily live, which is insane. And I don't mean they played everything live at once, but they did scratch tracks with the drums and then overdubbed things, but it wasn't edited on the grid, and that's what's impressive. Like. That's really difficult to pull off now. Maybe they went back in and tempo map. The drummers takes and put a grid to that for all I know. But either way, any kind of metal or metal core or even hardcore album not being on a grid and sounding as good as that album did shows how good of a band gallows is or was.

They haven't really done much lately, but amazing stuff. So going back to the one stop shop if you're at a one stop shop where it's just one guy or one girl who's doing everything the engineer might know some instrumentalists in the genre they work with, but they're probably not going to know, you know, a great cellist or a great flute player or a great trombonist or who knows what you know. If this is a metal engineer who lives and breathes metal and doesn't get out of the basement at all, they're not going to be able to help you find a string quartet for that.

But if you have a producer who knows music and even though they're specialized in your genre, they know music so well that they have connections with great instrumentalists covering many different instruments. They will be able to help you, or they will no other producers to help you as well. You know they can reach out to their friends say, Hey, you've worked with this genre. Do you know anyone circling back to the core point, though, of getting other instrumentalists? No matter what, you have to resist the urge to say, Hey, you know what?

My friend played this instrument in the high school band. I'll ask camera. I'll ask her. That's not going to result in a good end product. The exception is if this person has gone on to do something with that instrument as a career and they're playing in, like a symphony or an orchestra or any kind of band professionally, then maybe you can ask them, But don't do that. If the last time that they played that instrument was in high school and it's now 10 years later, that's not a person you want on your album with that instrument.

You always want to find the professional because he or she will do a better job than your buddy 99% of the time. Last but not least, don't be afraid to ask. Producers and engineers always show off their best works, and so you need to know what their worst works are as well. You know, plenty of other musicians ask around, find somebody you know who's worked with the producer or engineer you're considering and ask them how it was. If they say, Oh, yeah, everything was amazing. We loved the work.

She did great. You know what? Now you have an unbiased opinion. Go for it. But if they weren't happy for any reason, they will flat out tell you Hey, this sucked. We would not recommend working with that person. This was no good. That guy's a jerk. Don't do it above all when you're picking your team and this goes back to last week's budgeting Episode two. You have to keep one thing in mind. This is the age of the Internet. Nothing can be deleted. There will always be a copy out there.

So if you put out an album that is subpar, especially if this is your first album, there's no getting rid of that. Take a look at Paris, for example. They were out there. They were using a different name. Originally, they're still recordings of that floating around on the Internet, even though they tried to delete everything. They have an E P that they put out before white noise and that BP just is not as good as white noise. From an engineering standpoint, you can't find it on any streaming platforms.

But guess what? It's still out there. I have a copy of it. I found it. You can't make those things disappear, especially if you ever get successful. Your fans will find those things as much as you try to hide them. So the decisions you make now, if you cut corners now that will stick with you for the rest of your life, so make sure that you are picking the right team so you can put out the best songs possible. In the end, you only need to remember one thing.

If something is quality and it is worth paying for. Mhm, mhm, mhm. Mm, that does it for this episode of the Bandhive podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening. We hope that this episode was helpful, as well as the episode we did last week about budgeting for your release as the to kind of go hand in hand. If you haven't listened that one yet, go back to Episode 67. It's the episode right before this one in your podcast app, or you can find it at Bandhive dot rocks slash 67 That's the number 67.

We'll be back with another new episode next Tuesday at 6 a.m. And this one is all about why Spotify is not as bad as you think. And if you want to get a head start, let me give you a little bit of homework. That is to go to Bandhive dot rocks, slash calculator and use the calculator I created that shows you the break even point between a physical CD or vinyl record and streaming on each of the top nine streaming providers here in the US Go ahead and do that punch in your numbers.

It's all customized for your release based on how many songs it is, how much it costs you to get the records or CDs printed and produced and all that kind of stuff and, of course, what price you would sell them for. Then it spits out those numbers to tell you how many streams you need to break even. And I think the results will be surprising for some of you because Spotify is not as bad as everyone makes them out to be. Though I agree that they could pay more, they are not the worst by far again.

You can find that at Bandhive dot rocks slash calculator, and we'll get more into the Spotify topic next week on Episode 69. So be sure to tune in anytime after 6 a.m. On Tuesday for the next episode of the Bandhive podcast. Until then, have an awesome week stay safe And, of course, as always, keep rocking