Website to mix/master songs for you...

I can imagine alot of people using this service.
As you say, even if it's just a place to meet experienced Mastering engineers, or for new ones to practise and hone their skills; I think it could be good for all parties. As much as some people may be negative about it, if you sort out some of the legal and technical issues, i'm sure their is certainly enough of a market for it.
 
PeterPan17 said:
Me being a 17 year old kid who records, edits, mixes would definately use this for final mastering.
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I don't want to put you on the spot personally, Peter, but just your own opinion as a typical 17 year old kid who records, edits and mixes; what would you pay to have your CD mastered? And - based upon your personal experience only - do you feel your answer is typical of those in your situation?

And also, why is it you feel you are capable of recording, editing and mixing, but not mastering?

G.
 
Isn't there enough bogus mastering websites out there as it is without giving them all a new feeding ground. I'd like to hear from Mr Script on this one as his own mastering website has suffered from people stealing his equipment list description and even his pictures from his mastering suite to pose as their own. Have you tried searching myspace for "mastering"? my local music press is full of £5 adds for mastering, a lot of which actualy BOAST about getting you the loudest mix possible. It's a joke

All this is gonna do is = less business for the only people in the business that really know what they are doing.

Imagine... Here is your formula,

100 kids with the latest crack warez of T-Racks or Ozone + no experience / a chance to make money = squashed mangled fcuked up wreck of a mess

Sorry but you really have to look at every negative point when even thinking about setting something like this up. Maybe setting up some sort of guild of tried and trusted mastering eng's that have a list of real and checkable credentials. But then if they are that good they don't need to be bidding for work, or do they? Have things gotten that bad?

Just my 2 pence worth :confused:
 
i wouldn't say this is a dumb idea but if i was reputable sound engineer i wouldn't even think about attaching my name or reputation to something like this.not crappy recorded tracks anyway which you know would happen.if you want a professional recording you need to go to a professional.if you can do a great job on the individual tracking yourself great but then get off your butt and go to studio and be present during the mixing and learn some things.going to a studio will only benefit you with the knowledge and experience that can only be had in a studio.if money is an object i'm sure there's a lot of folks who would take these kind of projects on to make some cash.
 
looked at your local Craig's list lately?

Master Your CD/Demo with Us!

Is your band or solo act tired with unsatisfactory experiences in recording studios? Most of the time, a studio producer is great for recording and mixing, but they don't always have a fresh ear at the end of your project to give you the right sound. Some studios and disc printing companies also charge $500+ to master tracks, prompting most artists to by-pass the mastering process altogether due to the extreme cost, leaving the artists with a lesser product than they intended to create.
I will master your songs...cheap! $15/per song and $10/per song after the first ten. You can send .aiff, .wav, or .mp3 files or the finished disc itself through snail mail. I have 15+ years of studio experience. Contact me today!

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Still trying to get the best sound out of your home studio project? XXXXXXXXXXXXXX specializes in demo mastering. We've got 15+ years of studio experience. We are currently running a New Year special: $10 per song or $99 for a full-length disc (up to 80 minutes)from Jan. 1st through the 5th only. Our process includes compression, noise reduction, equalization, stereo widening, bass management, mastering reverb, maximization, and peak limiting. We can give your recording that 'radio ready' sound. Contact us today!

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MASTER ANYTHING CHEAP.ANY TYPE OF MUSIC. SEND A FRIEND REQUEST OR EMAIL XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
from $20.00 a track.pay via paypal. send via email. its that simple !

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Tired of running across ads for mastering in other states? Wonder if your last master was done by someone who didn't know how to use a compressor? Wonder what your mix will sound like through some REAL audio equipment worth some hefty dough?

XXXXXXX Studio, the private audio powerhouse of engineers C&W, is again accepting mixes. Send your tracks to XXXXXXXX and name your price. What is mastering worth to you? Want to light one up and smack some bitches? We reserve the right to reject work that brings the community down. SERIOUS ARTISTS ONLY. If your mix isn't ready for mastering, we'll let you know what needs adjusted.
 
I think it is a good idea actually. I don't know how it will turn out in a business sense, or if happy customers will end up with great mixes, but it's an interesting and good idea. Putting mixers directly in touch with people who need their songs mixed. I don't see how that is a bad thing.

As far as legal, do make sure you have that all sorted out. I would suggest that your site function strictly as a middleman. So for example, you might never even have the audio files on your servers, they would go directly from the client to the mixer, or via third party servers.

How do you plan to charge for this service? I could see getting scammed any number of ways on that. You'll have to make the model bulletproof for all concerned.

Interesting idea though.
 
mcmetal said:
i wouldn't say this is a dumb idea but if i was reputable sound engineer i wouldn't even think about attaching my name or reputation to something like this.not crappy recorded tracks anyway which you know would happen.if you want a professional recording you need to go to a professional.if you can do a great job on the individual tracking yourself great but then get off your butt and go to studio and be present during the mixing and learn some things.going to a studio will only benefit you with the knowledge and experience that can only be had in a studio.if money is an object i'm sure there's a lot of folks who would take these kind of projects on to make some cash.
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You make some good points, but those points would be much easier to read if they were in sentences that had capital letters at the beginning and spaces at the end.

(Sorry to nit, but man, that's hard to read.)
 
SonicAlbert said:
I think it is a good idea actually. I don't know how it will turn out in a business sense, or if happy customers will end up with great mixes, but it's an interesting and good idea. Putting mixers directly in touch with people who need their songs mixed. I don't see how that is a bad thing.
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I think what most of us how have some reservations about it have is the business end of it and how the bidding system will or will not work to the various player's (dis)advantge.

I have nothing wrong with the idea of getting people together. I am currently working on setting up an on-line directory on IRN of people and services both offered and wanted, and have no problem with others who may have a similar idea. (BTW, the IRN member's directory should become available this summer.) But there's a difference between offering up a directory and taking it a step further and offering an active system for business agreements to be negotiated. Not only does that introduce a host of potential legal issues, but basing one's income upon a percentage (or whatever) of the actual agreed-upon bids seems to me in this market to be tying one's wagon to the mule that won't pull; the majority of the interest in such a site will be from those service providers most willing to work for nothing or for peanuts, and from clients least willing to pay a living wage, if anything at all, to have the work done for them.

I'll tell you what. We all can debate our points of view back and forth, there's only one real way to find out, and that's to do some real market research. And I don't mean a completely impotent BBS poll, I mean a detailed survey/questionnaire that can be properly analyzed and processed without bias.

With this in mind, I have already started work on a questionnaire/survey form that I'll put up on my website. Give me a few days to get it all hammered out and set up, and I'll announce when it's up both on my website and on this forum. Once up, I'll let it run for a few weeks to hopefully get a statistically significant number of responses wroth analyzing. At that point I'll publish results for everyone to read.

Shackrock, who knows, maybe this will completely justify your idea and tell me that I'm just a crabby old man ;). Or perhaps it may reveal some trends or ideas that may cause you to tweak or optimize your business plan to meet the market better. Or maybe something else altogether. But it should prove to be better than any educated guesses or gut opinions that any of us have here.

G.
 
I like the idea. I wouldn't charge a fee or anything for the transaction the way to make money on a site like this would be advertising. If you charge a percentage or whatever I think you would have more liability.
 
shackrock said:
I wanted to reply to this one at least.

As I said earlier, I had mis-typed into making it sound like I was talking about mixes here. When in fact I was talking about the mastering portion of the site. So you can put a client's final product to the best of his ability. Then, the bidder could put his final master up for comparison. Obviously there would be more rules than this, but yes I am not putting up everything on here right now - just throwing out ideas that were in my head.... like everyone is saying there's a lot of details to be worked out.


I think that this place could be a place for professional work to be done. Even if it's just a meeting ground to find professionals in your state to work on projects with you on person - it still would be a good thing. I will be thinking of all this, and hopefully can come up with something that can work.
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If I were to do this, I would charge a monthly fee for everyone who has access to the site. The fee would pretty much weed out the deadbeats and non-serious people immediately. Also, if structured right, there would be ratings based on satisfaction to the client because that is what really matters. The ratings could only be put up when the entire job is finished. There can be no rating on a "first mix" kind'a deal. Every mixing and mastering engineer has more than one run at making the client happy. No one can get perfection the first time. This could be a viable idea (I actually thought of this same thing a few years ago myself) but only if it is done the right way, and the wrong way is a free site.

Just my opinion.
 
What Glen said.

I have no problem with getting people together, either. But the OP insisted that he wants to make a profit from it. I'm sure a million people will claim they'd use a service like this, but I'm also sure about 999,999 wouldn't ever pull their credit cards out to spend a penny on it. Just my cynical opinion.
 
MCI2424 said:
The problem with surveys and questionaires is that most people who fill them out fill in what they would LIKE to have. It does'nt mean they will actually use it or pay for it.
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I agree, a survey is not that useful. The only way to know is to set it up and see what happens.

Also, the paid subscription model is a loser too. That just doesn't work for internet businesses for the most part. A small percentage of the deal is the only way to go, plus perhaps a small set fee per deal. For example, there's a minimum $5 charge per deal, plus a small percentage for anything over a certain amount. Very much like what eBay does.

I would totally use eBay as the model for this.

The difficulty I think would be to collect the fees. I mean, once you've put the people together, what's to say they wouldn't just go and make their own side deal and cut the middleman out?
 
Yep you guys raise a lot of points that I've thought and discussed privately with some pople, and in all honestly I think it's a good first draft of a business plan, and leave NO ROOM for scamming or anything. Think of Rentacoder.com ....very similar to that model.

I have some ideas that I will keep to myself right now, just so that once they are finally out there, hopefully it'll still be original and you guys may be surprised and use it! haha.

But yes - some market research would be awesome, let's see if anyone provides useful feedback to a survey, could be interesting. I don't have the funds for hiring a firm to do something like this, obivously - which is why I'm somewhat nervous still about this project in general - I'd have to at least get my money back! haha.
 
MCI2424 said:
The problem with surveys and questionaires is that most people who fill them out fill in what they would LIKE to have. It does'nt mean they will actually use it or pay for it.
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True, which is why when one asks questions like I asked Peter Pan - i.e. "How much would you pay to have your CD mastered" - you are limited somewhat by how truthful their responses will be. But if you have a large enough statistical base, the answer winds up having at least some degree of accuracy for three reasons:

First, there is no percentage in a majority of people lying or exaggerating the answers to such questions - it's to the surveyee's advantage not to vary from the truth too much on such questions, and more than 50% of a large statistical base will get that.

Second, when they are untruthful, it's rarely to a significant pattern. When the analyzer sees responses that are all over the map and don't fit a pattern, that'll indicate either that there is no consensus answer, or that nobody wants to admit the truth to the question the way it was worded. Both results are meaningful in their own right.

Third, any properly-designed questionnaire has built-in checks in that it has ways of addressing or asking similar or related questions in more than one way, not always readily noticeable by the person taking the survey, that can yield exactly the difference between what they would like to do and what they would actually do.

It won't be perfect, but it'll generate a hell of a lot more accurate and useful answers than we'll ever get here.

G.
 
I think at the very least the argument against this, and NOT limited to this would be, studios have gone through a reinvention in the last 15-20 years. They went from large commercial facilities to kids in their basement making pretty darn good recordings. The trend has, and is, moving away from the commercial recording studio. I think if an artist is going to go through the trouble and investment to track his/her band at their home or wherever, they will follow through the project into the mixing stage. Why would someone that does not apparently have the ability to mix their own music be prolific at tracking their recordings? I feel most people that can engineer their material WILL want to, and WILL be able to mix it. Oh sure, you will find a few stragglers that may go for something like this, but I believe they will be few and far between.
 
jmorris said:
I think at the very least the argument against this, and NOT limited to this would be, studios have gone through a reinvention in the last 15-20 years. They went from large commercial facilities to kids in their basement making pretty darn good recordings. The trend has, and is, moving away from the commercial recording studio. I think if an artist is going to go through the trouble and investment to track his/her band at their home or wherever, they will follow through the project into the mixing stage. Why would someone that does not apparently have the ability to mix their own music be prolific at tracking their recordings? I feel most people that can engineer their material WILL want to, and WILL be able to mix it. Oh sure, you will find a few stragglers that may go for something like this, but I believe they will be few and far between.
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But what about Mastering?
What about people who want their audio for video cleaned up?
What about people who can't edit at all, and just have a file that they need cut at specific parts?

I think there's loads of audio work to be done, but you're right - we probably WONT see a ton of mixing requests up there, unless the mix is going to be done by a industry professional.
 
SonicAlbert said:
I agree, a survey is not that useful. The only way to know is to set it up and see what happens.?
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Alby, I don't know about you but I'd be very unwilling to invest thousands of dollars of sweat equity into a website with the intent of it generating significant revenue unless I did my homework first. (And before someone complains about the term "sweat equity", anyone who doesn't consider their time and effort as having real, measurable value in dollars will never make it in business.)

Shackrock has an idea. It may work, it may not. But when you have a thread like this one where there is a fairly evident pattern of those who are the most experienced and invested in the field tending to be the ones with the most problems or objections to the idea, and those who are the least experienced and understanding of this racket, and least invested in it, as being the most gung ho for it, that should be a solid indication right there that some homework probably needs to be done.

What happens often on this board is because it IS "home recording", it's populated by just as many hobbyists as it is small business or entrepeneurs. Shackrock is floating an idea that the hobbyists love, but the business-minded have a lot of trepidations about. The reality is, we're talking about opening a business here, not starting a hobby website. It can sound just peachy to the hobbiests, but by itself that doesn't mean anything as far as the business being a success, especially in the poster child industry for the "starving artist" that's lucky to be able to afford a new skin for his snare drum, let alone actual studio time with a qualified engineer.

Let's put it this way. Lets say you know nothing about this racket, but Shackrock comes up to you asking you to finance his idea of a service exchange website. Would you take his word for it or would you want to see some researched numbers in a business plan to indicate that when he builds it, they will not just come, but pay their way in?

Now, if Shackrock were just looking to start up a website as a hobby without any real efforts or expectation for making any significant revenue, I'd step aside and say, "Knock yourself out, my friend." But that's not what it sounds like he has in mind here, in which case just running it a flagpole to see who salutes is absolutely awful business advice.

G.
 
shackrock said:
But what about Mastering?
What about people who want their audio for video cleaned up?
What about people who can't edit at all, and just have a file that they need cut at specific parts?

I think there's loads of audio work to be done, but you're right - we probably WONT see a ton of mixing requests up there, unless the mix is going to be done by a industry professional.
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Well....I can't see anyone paying for editing either.People that have the software to record will most likely be able to edit I would think.Audio for video cleanned up? I could see that being a specialty ok. Mastering,yeah.People send out mastering all the time but to people that REALLY know how to master,especially if they feel they have really good stuff, like they are producing a cd. I just recorded a band live, great band.There regular "studio" cd they just finished( recorded by themselves) was send to Scott Hull ( I think that is his name).The guy that has mastered Steelydans stuff. I mean they have a really good sounding cd and wanted a really good finishing touch on it.
 
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