Episode 26 - Music Business: Pt. 2
Show Notes
Music Business: Pt. 2
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 26
Nov 10, 2020
w/ Jon Castelli - Week 24
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Q: What was your progression with fees?
Producers tend to get paid by doing free creation and once a song is going to get put out you do a deal and negotiate a rate.
Jon offers a price break for an album over 10 songs.
There’s been a steady incline in his pricing. Jon plans it with his manager.
Jon is more flexible with reduced rates and hookups if the client is more flexible with deadlines and it isn’t rushed.
However, Jon never goes below a certain rate because he believes it’s important to maintain the value of what we do.
Jon doesn’t necessarily believe all mixers should automatically get a point on a record.
Side note: That point comes from the artist’s share.
Royalties 101:
Standard label deal, the artist gets 15-20 points for themselves. Therefore labels take 80-85% of the share.
The mixers point comes from the artist’s share.
For this reason Jon wants to be compassionate and not necessarily deprive the artist.
At a certain point in your career you should demand it. Especially if you’re affecting the copyright of the song with a valuable contribution.
3-4 points is standard for producers. Especially if they’re not getting their own fee.
Most people don’t know this comes from the artist side.
Jon thinks that should be changed.
Commodity engineer vs. artisan engineer.
Someone who does exactly what they’re told vs someone the artist picks for their aesthetic.
Become an artisan engineer. That is your goal.
Artisan engineers are more likely to deserve a point.
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The majority of major label projects do not make money. Therefore the labels are playing the numbers and making multiple artist plays.
The artist typically gets an advance and the label makes its money on the back end.
If you’re the producer you’re a part owner in the recording.
If the artist is self-released you should probably do a 50/50 split.
Once the artist sells it to a label then you need to renegotiate that.
You give up your ownership as a producer/engineer for money and royalty. This can change dramatically based on what kind of artist it is.
Oftentimes the way producer deals are structured is that you get a fee (say $10k).
$5k of that is your fee and the other $5k is an advance against your future royalties. Those are known as recoupable.
Jon’s mixer agreements are similar. He has a good lawyer and usually gets 25-50% recoupable in his agreements.
It’s not always going to be easy to talk about money. Sometimes you have to have tough discussions with people and sometimes those fuck up relationships.
It’s always going to be uncomfortable to talk about money.
If you need to talk about money with an artist and don’t have a manager, talk about money up front and not during or after the creative process. Agree on a rate and then move on.
Come up with a day rate.
Total average gross and divide it by however many days you want to work throughout the year and that’s your day rate. Go in with that rate and expect to negotiate.
Jon is in mix genres. That is, he’s made a deliberate choice to be a mixer in certain genres of music.
He loves low end so he works in pop and hip hop.
You need to know where you want to exist.
In any freelance industry you need to know your rates. Understand it and write it down.
Do it confidently and from a place of understanding that you’re a service and a work for hire and a creative. Price yourself accordingly.
You need to have an entrepreneurial brain.
You want to have money conversations early.
Don’t talk right off the bat. But don’t go deep into a project without discussing it.
There’s no way to know the best time to broach this. You have to feel it out and make a judgement.
Matt won’t touch files until that front-end check clears. Some people just don’t want to pay you.
Matt does things on spec but with the agreement that if you’re going to use his song then they have to pay his full fee.
Everything is an entrepreneurial decision. Everything is case by case.
You just have to go through those things to know how to get better at them.
You want to do pro-bono stuff for artists you believe in, so you have to weigh what your time is worth and whether you can afford to do so.
It’s uncomfortable to talk about money and who gets how much, but the more you can do it the easier you’ll feel about it. It’s not always going to be perfect.
Q: When do you decide you need an assistant? How does that process work?
Matt:
When you’re doing too much stuff that isn’t your main job, then you need to get an assistant.
If you should be mixing and you’re spending too much time doing stems.
Jon:
Jon was told by others he needed an assistant.
Jon is getting hired to elevate a piece of music. Not color code his Pro Tools sessions before a mix.
Ryan Nasci was an assistant. Now works for Jeff Bhasker.
Ingmar Carlson just wrapped up with Jon 2 years ago. Now mixing on his own.
Josh DeGuzman - Current assistant.
Jon is also mentoring each of them.
Tony Maserati: None of this info will ever be in a book. It has to be passed from person to person.
Jon wants the creative environment to be as a transparent and clean as possible. Anything else takes away from that clean flow state to get there. This allows Jon to do his best work, and quickly.
Assistant:
Stems
Manages uploads to Dropbox.
Delivering to mastering.
Sometimes Josh will take mix/setup notes. Jon likes to do them when he can.
Jon double checks all of that stuff when Josh does it.
Josh pares down giant sessions to stems that are easier for Jon to handle.
Jon usually does 24-48 tracks in his sessions.
Matt:
Matt doesn’t have a full-time mix assistant.
Q: How do you choose your assistant? How does one get in the door?
Matt:
You just try over and over again until the timing is right.
It’s a numbers game. Stay in touch with a lot of people. Hit up the DM’s until someone takes a chance on you.
Jon:
Jon asks engineers he respects for recommendations.
JT is an engineer that Jon asks for recommendations for great engineer. He’s 6lack’s engineer.
Jon wants to know who’s making dope shit.
Someone’s accolades or resume are not going to impress Jon. Jon probably gets 7 emails a week with someone reaching out to work with him.
Training Assistants:
Matt:
Hire a good person who can adapt quickly.
Jon:
His pre-requisite is that assistants shouldn’t know how to use Pro Tools.
Jon uses it in a specific way and he wants to train them from the start.
Jon doesn’t want to hire anyone out of audio school.
Most of the people Jon knows who inspire him sonically did not go to audio school. They’ve got a unique perspective because of it.
Jon wants to recommend not taking a student loan. Spend that money on equipment to start. That’s more important to your education.
Matt:
You need to be a self-motivating entrepreneur to be successful.
That’s almost the opposite of going to a school for these things.
You’ve really got to get up and do it yourself.
Getting out and mixing records is more important than anything else.
Q: How do you do stems?
Jon keeps every instrument separate.
Instrumental
Acapella
TV Track. (No lead or lead down)
You don’t know how to do stems until you do stems.
Stems = Instrument groups together
Stripes = Committed multi-tracks. (All processing baked into the audio files)
