I’m Canadian, so I glaze over in most discussions of U.S. domestic policy. Accordingly, I have basically ignored the debate over Internet radio royalty rates. But my interest has increased after reading two well-reasoned opinions on how the debate bears directly on independent musicians.

The first, in Business Week:

The outrage against the CRB rates isn’t fueled by concerns rooted in maintaining territory or corporate interest. It’s about the growth, development, and survival of both Internet radio and independent artists … It’s reasonable to assume that small broadcasters are more likely to be liberal in their allotment of airtime to independent artists. When July 15 rolls around, few smaller stations will survive, and as a result, fewer independent artists will receive royalty payments … When we support diverse broadcasting alternatives, we’re supporting the growth of independent music and the survival of niche-based genres that have become all but extinct on conventional corporate radio.

The second from an indie artist writing for The Baltimore Sun:

Because we aren’t regularly appearing on MTV, and American Idol’s Ryan Seacrest probably doesn’t know our names, Internet radio is one of our few real opportunities for exposure to large audiences. With more than 7 million Internet radio listeners every day – most of whom are tired of the redundancy they find on broadcast radio – the opportunities abound for the artists who before had very few.

If you’re as out of touch as I was, Digital Music News has a great round up of the main issues:

(1) Exactly what is the debate about?

The ongoing debate is focused specifically on streaming performance royalty rates in the United States effective January 1, 2006 through December 31st, 2010 (retroactive rates are being included in the current rate increase). It does not includes publishing royalties, which are defined by a separate process.

And Peter at CDM adds some thoughts:

Note the big attached “ifs”, which are vaguely worded in the official SoundExchange announcement, and sound all the more threatening given, according to SoundExchange, the previous rates are already in effect.

Tags: business

(With all due props to Brad, who had the idea first … )

I link to a lot of great home recording sites, so it made sense to combine Hometracked’s outbound links from Live.com with Google’s Custom Search Engine tool.

The search includes all the reference sites I’ve ever linked to: Blogs like CDM and Musicthing (and Hometracked of course,) forums like Gearslutz and ProSoundWeb, and magazines like eMusician and Sound On Sound. And it specifically excludes the online stores (zZounds, Musician’s Friend, et.al.,) and affiliate sites. And the resource list is updated as I link to new sites.

Compare a regular Google search for “inter sample peak” with a Home recording search for the same.

Tags: hometracked, search

Steve Albini (yes, that Steve Albini) hangs out on the 2+2 poker forums, and decided to entertain music questions from the poker community. It seems an odd location for that discussion, but the thread has some great Albini quotes:

Well, mixing isn’t the magic bullet it’s purported to be. A recording is about 90 percent as good as it’s ever going to be from the moment of the first rough playback.

In order to maintain a professional level of concentration on the task at hand, and to allow the band to make a record that represents them accurately, I try not to even think about whether or not I like the record. Having said that, sometimes everybody can tell that a record is going to be awesome anyway, and of the records I’ve worked on that ended up being really great, the majority of them showed their greatness in the first couple of hours of work.

Almost any competent engineer could have done what I have. I have been incredibly lucky to be working in a music scene that spawned a huge number of distinctive, talented bands, and I made myself available to them. There is no doubt in my mind that I get some credit I didn’t earn, for working on records that were going to be incredible no matter who was in the chair at the time.

If a record needs aggressive mastering to “save” it, then aggressive mastering isn’t enough to save it.

Albini’s minimalist (by professional standards) approach to recording is something every recording engineer should aspire to. Capture the right sound at the microphone, and mixing takes care of itself.

Tags: professional-engineers

I’ve been away from Hometracked for the last week because I had a chance to record in a great space: A Muskoka cottage with 14-foot cathedral ceilings and all-pine interior. Perfect for recording drums!

I was certain the space would yield a better drum sound. Still, I thought it would be interesting to hear how big a difference the room actually makes. So I took lots of measurements, and recreated the drum and mic configuration when I got home.

First, though, here’s a rough mix from one of the drum tracks I recorded at the cottage:

I used a standard arrangement: Recordman overheads; kick, snare, and floor tom close-miked; and my T4 as a room mic, in omni mode about 15 feet from the kit, up high. My home studio doesn’t have anything near 14-foot ceilings, but it’s spacious enough that I could get all the microphones, including the T4, the same distance from the kit that I had them in the cottage.

Here’s the same piece recorded after I got home:

Again, this is the same drum kit, tuned the same way, recorded through the same microphones, played by the same drummer. Literally the only thing that changed is the room in which the drums sit.

The difference, predictably, is most obvious in the solo’d room mic. Here’s how the drums sounded through the room mic in the cottage:

And here’s how they sound through the same microphone, at the same distance, in my home studio:

The clearest differences are the snare drum, which sounds much bigger in the larger room, and kick drum, which sounds like a different drum altogether in each recording.

The end result? The drums sound a little more natural in the high-ceiling, all-wood room. So the space matters, obviously.

I have a fairly large home studio, and it’s well acoustically treated, so I wasn’t expecting a night-and-day comparison – and this isn’t. But while either of these mixes would make a serviceable drum track, depending on the mix, I prefer the stuff I recorded in Muskoka, as it’s a bit more open and natural-sounding.

Perhaps the real lesson here, though, is that every recording decision affects the final product. Just as small tweaks can improve a mix, big changes, like traveling 2 hours north of the city with your drum kit and recording gear, also add up!

Previously: Better drum mixes with a drum reference track, Parallel compression for fatter drum tones

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Tags: drums, home-studio, snare-drum

For a sales video, this “recording guitar” primer from Presonus is surprisingly effective, especially if you struggle to get a usable tone from acoustic or electric guitar:

Tags: guitars, video

I ask most people I talk to where they listen to music: On a home stereo system? Through headphones? In the car? While I haven’t tracked the answers scientifically, I’d say the breakdown looks roughly like:

A recent CEA study adds that three quarters of adults online listen to music on their PC:

… penetration of the PC in US households (now estimated at 82%) has more and more consumers looking to their home computer instead of their TV, DVD player or CD player for a home audio experience. 86% of home PC audio users are satisfied with their computer-sourced audio experience.

This study and my informal survey above point to an important truth about mixing: If you know that most listeners consume your music in a specific format, you should ensure your mixes translate well to that format. When your mixes mostly end up as MP3s on iPods and PCs, it makes sense to check the results of your mixing decisions on those devices.

In fact, some argue you should specifically target the destination medium with your mix. For example, many professional engineers produce separate mixes for CD and radio, the latter constructed to hold up under the extreme compression, limiting, and phase rotation that radio stations pass their broadcasts through.

If nothing else, the modern listening habits outlined above suggest you should keep a pair of consumer PC speakers on hand, and periodically check your sound through them. You’ll have confidence that the growing number of listeners who hear your mixes through smaller speakers still enjoy an accurate version of your intentions for the mix.

Tags: mixing, monitors

For a full band mix, restringing your electric guitar probably won’t, by itself, much affect the overall sound of your recording. Especially if the guitar’s a little crunchy. Ditto for changing the snare drum head. Or tweaking the piano’s tuning.

But taken together, small changes like these add up, and can really bring a mix to life.

Here are some of the small things you can do before hitting record to see big improvements at mix time:

• Tune everything: Guitars, piano, drums
• Change guitar strings
• Change drum heads
• Turn off fans, lights, and monitors while you record
• Clean and polish cymbals
• Make sure no inputs are clipping
• Put fresh batteries in effects pedals
• Use balanced drum sticks
• Put cat outside.

Tags: guitars, tips-digest

Music sales widgets are the Flash based “mp3 players with built-in music store” we see appearing across the web. SNOCAP is arguably the best known vendor, thanks to high profile deals with EMI and Myspace. But there are at least half a dozen other companies offering similar tools.

Why use one of these widgets to sell music on your site? Consider:

Cost: Unless you’re a web developer, equipping your site with the features in these players will require outside help, and it won’t likely come cheap.

Fan retention: You could outsource media sales to a company like CD Baby, but that means sending fans AWAY (more…)

Tags: business, promotion

This collection of home recording studio pictures might give you some ideas for your own space. Or cause drool-inducing envy.

Tags: home-studio, pictures, video

Some recent articles you may have missed:

I daresay most indie artists experience a visceral glee while reading these words in Rolling Stone:

Just a few years ago, many [music] industry executives thought their problems could be solved by bigger hits. “There wasn’t anything a good hit couldn’t fix for these guys,” says a source who worked closely with top executives earlier this decade. “…Now, very few of those people are still heads of the companies.“

(Emphasis mine.) When Rolling Stone gets on board the record industry is dead train, can the record industry actually be anything but well and truly dead?

So who killed the record industry as we knew it? “The record companies have created this situation themselves,” says Simon Wright, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group … [M]any in the industry see the last seven years as a series of botched opportunities. And among the biggest, they say, was the labels’ failure to address online piracy at the beginning by making peace with the first file-sharing service, Napster. “They left billions and billions of dollars on the table by suing Napster.”

The article also has an incomprehensible quote from the RIAA:

The RIAA maintains that the lawsuits are meant to spread the word that unauthorized downloading can have consequences. “It isn’t being done on a punitive basis,” says RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol.

That’s right, the RIAA aren’t trying to punish the stroke victims, kids, and dead people they sue. They’re simply charging a premium for a basic lesson in cause and effect.

Riiiiiiiiiight. (more…)

Tags: music-business