People argue that music should be available to download for free, because there is no marginal cost in making a digital copy of a file. That's all well and good, but does absolutely nothing to help the artist recoup what he/she spent making the damn thing. Notice I said recoup, God forbid anyone filthy their hands by actually making money on recorded music, that would taint the art, wouldn't it?
Here's the thing: I've been making recordings for the last ten years or so on the cheap, at a fraction of what we used to spend when I was producing records for the majors back in the eighties. Back then, a budget of $85,000 was considered small.
Now, thanks to the revolution of affordable recording equipment, I can make records relatively cheaply, but certainly not for free. To record in my undisclosed tropical location, I spent about six grand on portable recording equipment. High quality, professional digital stuff. Now, I've been able to use that equipment on several projects, so let's not even consider that expense. Let's look at what it costs to make a Mamborama CD.
I won't add in the time that I work on writing the songs, but on the last record I spent a year just writing and arranging. Before recording a note, that little plastic CD represents a year of my life just composing. But that's my problem, so let's look at actually recording the material.
Mamborama depends on recording with real musicians, and I always seek out the best hired guns I can find. Guess what? These guys are professional musicians. They expect to be paid, and deserve to be paid for their time and creativity. Having said that, I still have to negotiate with them, because these are completely independent records I'm making. I put up the money for them, I'm not playing with someone else's money like I was making records in LA. Generally, I'll pay between $50 to $100 to each musician for each song. So if you want three guys singing background vocals, that's $150 each song. I write for four horns. That's $200 each song. The lead singer gets $100. Each song. The percussionists cost about $150 each song. The bass player gets between 50 and 75, depending on who it is.
I'm fortunate in that I don't need to pay for an engineer, because I do that myself, I enjoy it. I always picked the brains of every engineer when I was doing studio work in LA, and I learned from some of the best. Sometimes, I have to pay for transportation to get drums and whatnot to the studio, but that's minimal.
Basic tracks are always recorded in a studio, because I need an environment that's isolated from street noise, and I like to track the drummer and conga player at the same time, to get some interplay between them, so I need a studio with two rooms, so the tracks don't bleed into each other. But since I have my own equipment, it's easy, and there are plenty of small private studios that I can rent for this for around ten bucks an hour. But it adds to the budget. Overdubs can be done at my apartment. We recorded most of the last record in a spare room in my apartment. We called it Estudio Fula (bad studio in Cuban slang). But it worked, and was certainly cheap.
OK, now it's got to be mixed. As I said, I do my own engineering, and although I would love to hire someone with ears and expertise beyond my own, it's just not in the budget. I do a fair job, could be better, but I have to work with what I have. Mixing takes several hours, sometimes a couple of days, for each song. Sometimes I come back to a tune and redo the mix after living with it for awhile. Hundreds of hours go into the mixing, and planning the sequencing of the songs. But it's just my labor, that should be free, right?
Next step is mastering. Mastering is the process of settings the levels of each song, and the last chance to beef it up with some EQ or compression. A little more bass here, a little cut in the midrange there. It's essential, and can make or break the CD. I always depend on a good experienced mastering engineer to do this, because at this point, I've heard the record so many times that I don't even know what I'm listening to anymore. I want some good, objective, outside ears to fine tune my baby. This adds around 700 bucks. I can get it done cheaper, or spend much more, but I've relied on this particular engineer for years, so I have no problem paying what to me, is a very reasonable fee. It's a lot of work for him, and a luxury for me to sit back and wait to check out his work. It's usually spot on.
Now, you need graphics. To hire a good graphic designer, be prepared to pay at the very minimum 500 bucks, and that's cheap. It's a lot of work. Fortunately, I like working with graphics, have some experience in it, so again, it's just my labor. Cheap. It takes about a week to do all of the parts and get it right.
Now, manufacturing. For 1,000 finished, shrink wrapped CDs, it's going to run about $1500 bucks, plus shipping.
So, do the math. It wasn't free for me to make these records. I did it extremely cheap, but it adds up. More labor than anything else, but clearly a labor of love and obsession. In the end, the finished physical product represents about three years of my life.
Of course, the problem is that CDs are going the way of eight-tracks and cassettes, digital files and iPods are much easier to manage. I prefer them too. But does the lack of a touchy-feely physical product devalue the content? With every thing I did to make the music, only the final manufacturing costs of CDs is optional if you're talking about solely digital files. The digital files don't invent themselves, the musicians will always want to be paid, and hours upon hours still have to be spent to realize the final recording, regardless of whether or not it winds up on a CD, an mp3 or whatever.
But, who doesn't like to get something for nothing? And, I feel that all of the rationalizations that I read on the internet about downloading music just amount to exactly that; rationalizations for getting something for free. It's a strange time to be a musician.
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