Dan Daley is a Recording Academy/GRAMMY.com contributor.
Basketball players aren't the only professionals happy when they score points. In the business of music production, points refer to the royalty percentage that is generally part of a producer's compensation.Typically, a producer negotiates between 2 and 4 percent of the retail sales of an album he or she produced, as well as a cash advance on those royalties. While…
Beyoncé and John Legend have gone blue. So have Andrea Bocelli, Led Zeppelin, Dave Matthews, Roy Orbison, the Pretenders, Rush, and even Mozart.These artists aren't adding another color to their musical palettes. Rather, they are among the growing number of artists whose music has been released via the high-definition Blu-ray Disc format, either as music videos, live concerts or audio-only.…
The same technological renaissance that transformed how music is recorded is now reinventing how it's performed onstage, which is where an increasing number of music artists are finding their revenue stream.The 2012 NAMM Show, which took place in January in Anaheim, Calif., is the American musical instrument industry's largest gathering, an often cacophonous din of drums and guitar amps competing…
Guitarist Kris Karlsson steps off the stage momentarily just before his set backing up singer/songwriter Paris Carney. The venue is the lounge at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel, which along with the Hilton Anaheim across the street, frames the entrance to the Anaheim Convention Center, home to the winter 2010 NAMM Show, the raucous annual bazaar where makers of musical instruments…
Women are all over the music charts. One scan of the Billboard 200 will yield albums from a wide range of female artists spanning genres such as hip-hop, country, rock, and pop.However, in reading an album's credits, the recording, production, mixing, and mastering of music remains an overwhelmingly male domain. Given the strides women have made in the workplace in…
If you've noticed a jump in the amount of original music in television and movies in recent years, you're not only hearing the work of the respective artists, but also the work of the music supervisor — a role that has emerged as a new A&R force in the evolving music industry."Our job is to find the right [musical] fit…
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court? Almost. Tony Visconti is a Brooklyn, N.Y., native whose chance encounter as an aspiring young composer with legendary producer Denny Cordell (the Moody Blues, Procol Harum, Joe Cocker) led to a 22-year run living in London creating his own respectable career. His record production portfolio includes work with artists such as Badfinger, Marc…
Dating back to 1999 and the RIAA's lawsuit against Napster, illicit downloading of music has been one of the leading music news stories of the past decade. While piracy has greatly affected recorded music sales, it has also emerged as an issue in the professional audio community. Specifically, the software that's used every day around the world by recording artists,…
In 1979 Tascam freed multitrack music recording from its exclusive home in the commercial recording studio with the 20-pound TEAC 144 Portastudio, a device combining a 4-track cassette recorder with a mixing console and equalization in a single package retailing for $899. True to its name, the device offered portability, functionality and passable sonic quality at well below the tens…
When three-time GRAMMY-winning producer/engineer Joe Chiccarelli heads into the studio to work with artists such as Manchester Orchestra, My Morning Jacket, Counting Crows, or the Shins, he steps into a bit of a time machine. Chiccarelli is transported back to an era of music-making that involves huge reels of two-inch tape spooled on to half-ton multitrack decks. "If you have…
