15

Secrets of Success on the New Recording Frontier

The recording industry today is a cornucopia of opportunities, challenges, and mysteries—not to mention pitfalls. Unlike the past, with its relatively simple scenario of “how to succeed without really trying,” the current business environment here in the U.S., in Europe, and in Asia is an unfamiliar road map. We are no longer recording studios—we have become professional audio service centers. Where are we going? How do we get there? What is the next trend? What are the secrets of survival? Once we know that, maybe we can make a decent profit!

Generalizations and insights abound. “Diversify or die!” (I emphasized this many years ago.) “Audio and visual content are coming together.” (Ditto.) “Niche marketing is the only answer.” (This has saved many small operations.) “Motherships and satellites.” (I introduced this concept to create synergy among various factions.) But what about the individual problems of your particular situation—what is going to work for you?

To get some believable answers to these questions, I talked to a number of successful facility operators around the globe who had all been involved in our industry for at least 10 years. In my eyes, that alone qualifies each of them as a smart survivor to whom we should listen. What they had to say, even from their diverse points of view, had a surprising sameness: “It's the people.” “Service, service, service.” “You must have the right vibe when you walk into the place.” “Anything that makes the client feel special.” “If you are not involved in some way with picture, you are trying to push a Pull door.” “Multimedia is the only way to go!” “Never underestimate the power of good catering.” “The best compliment a client can give me is to tell me he wants to live in my studio because he is so comfortable here.”

Next, I went back to my experience at Record Plant and realized that our marketing formula worked from the beginning because I was totally business-oriented, and my partner, Gary Kellgren, was totally creative. Between the two of us we had everything covered. He did the mixing and made all of those decisions that related to the art of recording. I found a way for us to pay for what he decided we needed in order to stay ahead of the competition. That meant I had to play the role of the tough guy to make sure our clients paid for the services we furnished for them. One of our first successful rules was that Gary never said “No” to anyone. He had to get along with the clients and make each of them feel special. If he could not say “Yes,” he would tell them they would have to talk to me.

I was the only one allowed to say “No” to a client. I had to discover who was real and who was a flake, and I was not involved in the creative process of making the music. My job was to make all of the decisions concerning money, to provide the funds for Gary to invest in the necessary new equipment and ambiance to make the creative end product better, and then to market our services and promote our success stories to show that we had the reputation of “doing it better” than our competition. My advice is to find partners who do what you don't do—listen to them, trust them, and let them do what you don't do.

Another comment of interest: “To be successful today, you have to align yourself with picture. Picture is now an essential part of sound. Unless you are an artist/composer yourself, and your own main client, recording just music today is a real uphill battle. It is no longer simple to get into this business. Today you must take one of two paths: either invest heavily and become multifaceted, or pick a niche in your market and exploit it to become the most noticeable and the best at it. Also, become an expert in the used equipment market. Never be the first person in your area to own a new type of equipment, because the price will seriously drop after the first year, as other manufacturers compete—or it will just disappear.” Good advice from a guy who in the mid-80s swore he would never get involved with visual music. He said he would always be “strictly a record guy.” Times change quickly in our industry, and if you are one of the smart ones you will change with the times.

But what about the clients? How do they feel, and what excites them? To keep it simple, I asked two superstar producer/engineers and two successful A&R executives, each a leader in his field after more than 15 years in the trenches, to tell us what attracts them to a particular studio. I asked them to assume that the facility they were talking about, large or small, was acoustically correct, had the right hardware for their needs, and offered an acceptable price in its market for the services that it provided. They were in total agreement about almost everything.

Here are some of the producer/engineer comments: “What attracts me to a facility is cleanliness, that everything works, and that they have a friendly, considerate, articulate staff. It starts when you call to book time. You want to talk to someone who is knowledgeable, can confirm the room and the rate to you, and is going to be able to handle whatever your setup is. You want people who know what you are talking about and can commit to fulfilling your needs. Many times I have to talk to people who are just put behind the desk and aren't knowledgeable about your request. That's a bummer. If the studio isn't taken care of cosmetically, then you wonder about the reliability of the equipment. You want to work in a place where everybody takes pride in working there, not with people who are just putting in their time or who are burnt out. The assistant engineer is the representative of the facility when I am in the studio—his or her attitude makes or breaks that studio's reputation on the street.”

Another comment: “The atmosphere of a studio is really important, from the non-snooty attitude of the owners to the lounge area for the artists and a separate office for the producer. It means how it is lit, the proper environment—so you are always comfortable and have nothing to complain about, so you have no excuse but to create the best music of which you are capable. It's got to be like home.” The A&R veterans were equally aligned from their corporate music point of view: “The right vibe—if you have to ask what that means, you don't have it. It is the difference between spandex and flannel. Less glitz and more comfort. That is what's important. There are a lot of trappings that used to go along with recording that are now less interesting to the Alternative bands that have become the mainstream. It is much more difficult to tell the difference today than in the past about what equipment was used on a record once it is finished. Now the leading artists are setting up home studios to record at least some part of the project there and then take it to a professional studio and transfer it to whatever recorded format they want. The days of uncontrolled spending are over for most acts. Even the artists who can demand the higher budgets because of their sales are spending their money more carefully.”

To test these U.S. views globally, I spoke with some facility owners and users in Europe. A summary of their remarkably similar views: “Now artists are given private production setups as part of their advance because of their increased involvement in the production role, combined with the need to cut costs. It means that working in commercial studios for overdubbing and mixing is more likely to involve the house engineer. This is great news because the prominence of freelance superstar engineers and mixers has dissuaded studios from training their own, and Europe, in particular, has depleted its crop of quality young engineers. For the future, the days of the superstudio are by no means over. London can probably maintain ten or fifteen world-class rooms but it currently has around fifty. The remainder need to be able to operate profitably at a more modest level of daily revenue.” Sound familiar? The global village of recording has the same equipment and faces the same economic problems of over-supply. Perhaps if we continue to join forces, we can share more information and help each other solve noncompetitive problems.

So, where are we going, and what is the quickest way to get there? Diversification seems to be a pat answer, but it works, as we explained in the previous chapter. A friend of mine who owns one of the largest audio facilities in the southeastern U.S. provides an excellent example of the principle of diversification. They have been in the business for more than 30 years and continue to be on the leading edge of almost every new audio industry trend. They are not only a leading world-class music recording facility, they have their own record label and publishing company. Also, they manage music and video producers and audio engineers, have been involved in video and film audio production for many years, and were one of the first facilities to make a serious commitment to interactive multimedia when it was an emerging technology.

They believe that the secret of their success is their facility staff. The owner commented: “Your staff is either going to make you shine or keep you kind of ordinary. Anybody with a big checkbook can buy hardware, but they can't necessarily do something beneficial with it. We try to help our folks grow. We try to pick out new employees who are folks with a genuine interest in other people and what is happening to them, and who care about and have pride in what they are doing. You are not going to change a person's personality in a dramatically positive way after you have hired them. They have to show you they are that way in the beginning and that they have potential in your environment. As an example, we have one person who is now a platinum record producer—he started out answering the telephone at night and has grown with the company over ten or twelve years. We have tried to find good people who have the capacity to grow and then have given them an environment where they can achieve that growth without having to move on to another organization or another city. This is one of the main motivations that has led us into so many new areas. Our people want to experience and learn about new industry trends, and our company provides the opportunity for them to do so. Giving them a voice in their future, I think, is much more important than a better incentive plan.

“We treat our clients the way we do because they are important to us as people rather than someone who is passing through and only represents a certain amount of business. My crystal ball isn't any more clear than most anyone else's, but one thing we always try to do in this service industry is to get ourselves into situations which will increase the net worth of our business. That is why we are involved in production and publishing and our own record label. We have the production capacity in terms of time available in our studios, and try to use that asset effectively in order to build additional equity in our business. We try to think of additional ways to use all of our assets, people, and hardware, and to enhance our reputation, which we believe will give our business the most possible value. As long as the entertainment industry is growing, audio is always going to be a part of it. It is safe to say we are not going back to silent movies. Any of the new developments we are hearing about now in entertainment provide us with a new audio opportunity. We try to take advantage of each new successful idea that comes along.”

These examples of how successful facility operators and clients feel about how our industry should work are the best source, in my opinion, of how it should be done. To make your business better, seek out these same kinds of “experts” whom you trust and believe in. Listen to them carefully, and do what they suggest. I guarantee that your chances for success will increase dramatically.