this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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Production cost for a full length album STARTS at around $10-15k.
In the modern era, that's not exactly true. This number is only relevant if you're outsourcing tracking, mixing and mastering which are all things that can be done in a bedroom nowadays. How do I know? Because I did so myself a number of years ago.
If you're not learning how to do these things yourself, you're simply wasting money or you're rich enough/your band is supported enough to not give a fuck.
The only thing we paid for was album art and mastering simply because I wanted one specific engineer to do it just cause. All in all we paid less than $2k for a full release. We could have paid zero if we did our own artwork and I mastered the album myself which is not exactly impossible for the average person to do.
I get your sentiment, but money is not necessarily needed en masse to release music any more. If you already have your instruments and associated gear, a REAPER license is $60 and you can use the included plugins to create a full professional quality release.
I had a plethora of plugins a while back but I've wiped them from my drive in favor of REAPER's stock plugins, the available JS plugin libraries and a few choice free plugins along with a single drum VST. That's it. I have pro quality mixes and masters with just that.
The days of the studio as a necessity are over. Studio time is a luxury, not a necessity.
I want to end this comment with a big "fuck you" to Spotify anyway because streaming services are cancerous to the music creator scenes.
I totally get where you're coming from, have done the DIY production thing, etc. And with full respect to the piece of art you put your soul into, I have to ask, was it a commercial success? As in, paying the bills at home? Because in my experience, you do end up having to invest those kinds of sums if you want to make a return at that level. I hate how music is commerce, trust me. But that's just what I've seen so far.
No it was not what many would consider a commercial success. My music is a bit niche, but it was a success in its own right. We had label support (non-financial, basically just printed CDs) for our debut release and more than recouped the cost and if we followed up with releases it likely would have had potential to snowball by re-investing the money into the band. We only released digital and CD digipaks of the album, no merch no extra anything and that gave us more than enough for a second release and then some. I just have no use for the music "industry" as it were. Music is not a means to an end for me, its an outlet and I do it on my terms. I don't jive with the industrialization of art in general and I certainly don't want to whittle my relationship with music down to how much money it can make for me. I get it if people wanna commoditize it though. That angle is just not for me.
Indie artists by and large self produce and a metric ton of them do so to an incredibly high caliber. Big tech Spotify man is not wrong, he's just an asshole. A leech, if you will.
I appreciate you taking my question in the spirit it was meant, and the thoughtful response.
I guess what rubbed me the wrong way about CEO Douchebag's comment was that it discounts just how relatively enormous of an expense production can be for the small artists trying to make a living. I've spent some time in the music industry and it has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The necessary evil of commerce intersecting with art is a big reason for that, especially coming to the realization of just how necessary that evil is.
But yes I agree, it is definitely possible to create excellent art of high technical quality from home.