Preface
The purpose of this book is to provide audio professionals with a business guide for their profession. If you aren't serious about this industry, you shouldn't be wasting your time here. This is not for wannabees or anyone just starting to think about the world of professional audio as a possible career objective. This book is for those who are passionately dedicated to audio recording and know that this is where they want to spend their professional business lives.
This book is about managing your audio business: the recording or postproduction studio of any size—from 2 to 200 employees—in a professional and profitable manner. The book is based on 30-plus years of practical recording industry business experience—taking the proven principles of major corporations and applying them to this industry. This book is about profitable survival in the pro audio jungle.
I founded The Record Plant Recording Studios in the spring of 1968 and sold it in 1989. It is still one of the world's leading independent recording studios today. After earning my MBA, I began my business career in the corporate world of toy manufacturers and cosmetics marketing. Through a series of curious adventures, I ended up in a new world populated by creative and technical recording professionals who, for whatever reason, had decided to dedicate their careers to the pursuit of good sound and music. In this industry, I was the weird one. I guess I looked like a narc and talked like a banker, yet somehow seemed to belong in this crazy business even though I was not a musician, audio engineer, producer or technician.
I am a founder of SPARS (Society of Professional Audio Recording Services), founder of The World Studio Group, and, most recently, the driving business force in the creation and success of the Music Producers Guild of the Americas (MPGA). I have a monthly column in Pro Sound News titled “Mean Business” and am sincerely dedicated to the better business of recording in the global recording industry.
The creative professionals I met in the beginning all had a common problem: they knew almost everything about recording and electronics, but did not know how to run a business. I was the opposite. I was a marketing entrepreneur, who somehow guessed that with a touch of sophisticated business technique, the recording studio business could be profitable. As a natural course of events, I had an impact on the way recording studios operated, their environment, their pricing, their marketing, the facility management of creative professionals, and ways in which to attract and keep the best clients. All of this was aimed at staying on top of the heap in an industry with too many facilities and not enough professional operators.
To succeed, you must analyze the various types and sizes of pro audio facilities and their customer bases. It is also essential to understand creative management, marketing, promotion, and the modern economics of pro audio. The professional of today prepares for tomorrow by anticipating recording for new media and is ready for diversification.
Today's professional audio industry is truly a global business. Being aware of changes and new opportunities in pro audio amplifies your chances for success. To initiate profit, we briefly look back at the history of pro audio to determine what is today's state of the art and foresee where the next revenue centers will most likely develop. Starting from a world view, we then examine national, regional, and local issues within the audio recording industry in its entirety.
Professional audio recording is a mean business. It requires professionalism, moxie, and a lot of luck to survive. It is the passion of dedication mixed with business skills that will ensure your potential success. It is a small, totally integrated industry. The insiders compete vigorously but trust each other much of the time to help one another in times of need.
Read on—you might hear your $ound of Money...