If it's good for the goose…

Boy. Yesterday's post sure kicked up a lot of dust. Good. Recording studio quality isn't getting better, it's getting worse. As half-baked home studios proliferate, the few excellent studios like Cookie's Blue Coast and a handful of others struggle. And when quality recordings become fewer, there are fewer new juicy cuts of music to enjoy. One of my readers pointed to a book which uses pretzel logic to make a point. In a nutshell, the author suggests high-end audio equipment is farcical because if it were any good, recording studios would use it. As if recording studios had a clue. As we map out the build for our own studio we look at the state of the art in mixing consoles in the hopes they've gotten better over the years. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. With few exceptions, modern recording consoles wouldn't pass muster with even budget high-end electronics, let alone serious attempts at maintaining great sound through a complex chain. Somehow, we grew to assume "the pros" who make the recordings must have greater insight into sound quality than those who listen to their work. To set the record straight, what's good for the goose ain't necessarily good for the gander. And one last rant before we close on this topic. Our plans are to offer studio time to musicians for free. We believe musicians, recording/mastering engineers, and audio quality, are all getting the short end of the economic stick and we aim to fix that. How will our model work? In the same way our One CD worked. Artists record in our studio, at our expense, in exchange for letting us print and distribute a private label release of their music and give them the lion's share of the revenue the release generates. This frees legitimate artists from the economic burdens of studio time, distribution costs, and all that goes along with getting their music in the hands of anxious fans. They can then take their mastered files and do whatever they want with them on their own label. For free, with a check from us in hand. That's a long-winded way of saying this. Artists and engineering people no longer pay for studio time, we pay them and the world of music lovers wins. What's in it for us? Plenty, though making a profit isn't one of them. We get true live music recorded perfectly, and there's nothing more valuable to a manufacturer of high-performance audio equipment. We get to build a community of music lovers looking forward to a monthly release of new music. We get to rub elbows with the people we love and admire. And we get the pleasure of knowing we're making a difference in the world we love, high-performance music. What's not to love?