Ten things I learned producing my first vinyl record.
Going analog in a digital world.
It’s every audiophile’s dream to produce their own record and it’s never been easier. Musicians, DJ’s and record labels are spitting out music at an unprecedented rate, helped by the accessibility of music production software and spurred by the rapid growth of social communication and direct-to-fan music platforms.
But out there, drowned amongst the millions of Spotify streams, Justin Bieber trolls and Little Gaga Monsters, crouched at the bottom of dusty basements and keeping trans-atlantic removals companies in business, lies the vinyl lover. That’s me. And despite my parallel love for digital music, the world it’s opened, and the artists it’s led me to, doing it the hard way is and always will be the holy grail.
Thanks to an amazing bunch of people, a few years of hard work and a successful crowd-funding campaign, i’ve recently fulfilled my dream of producing my own vinyl record. A double-transparent vinyl compilation (11 tracks), alongside a series of custom wooden CDr cases, posters, t-shirts and an 18-track downloadable version. More on that here.
It’s something I’ve wanted to do since my brand-new Stanton stylus crackled over my first 12" in the late 90's. And i’m now deep in the middle of posting records out across the world; my fingers hurt from the packing and my apartment is a cardboard bomb-site. But it’s been a long, enjoyable experience these past few years and I wanted to document it for several reasons:
- Producing vinyl is something of a dying trade. I’m a vinyl collector and I don’t want to see my favourite (expensive) pastime disappear.Needless to say I wish more of my favourite music was available in physical formats (selfish, I know).
- It seems that unless you’re already working in the music industry, it’s hard to find advice on how to approach vinyl production. It shouldn’t be approached lightly given the time, cost and effort.
- It’s one of the most rewarding things i’ve done.
This isn’t an anti-digital piece. If I can’t save my records in a fire, it’ll be my hard-drive. This isn’t mean’t to stir debate amongst audio quality either (leave-it!) And I’m no expert in music production— i’m still learning. I just hope I can inspire more music to be produced on the format it deserves.
1.Your passion should come first.
That pixelated devil on your shoulder telling you to take the easy route? Finances may be holding you back, Soundcloud, Spotify, Bandcamp, iTunes etc may look like the only options, but the reward isn’t anywhere near comparable to physical music — neither for you, nor the listener.
Yes, I was lucky because I have an established website and community to back the project, so it’d be wrong of me to preach to the struggling independent artist, but if your ambition lies in vinyl, then put your heart into fulfilling it. That piece of plastic will get you through the long nights, negative bank accounts, arguments and numerous trips to the post-office. Hard-work pays off.
If your passion lies in giving everyone free downloads of your evening’s musings then so be it. Just don’t succumb to what everyone else is doing because you feel you have to. We all know you have to stand-out in today’s saturated music world. Some of the most beautiful pieces of physical music I own are made from CDr’s, cardboard cases, second-hand photos and hand-written notes. These are the artists that I appreciate even more now I know the work that goes into them.
2. Surround yourself by people who’ve done it before.
Don’t try producing a vinyl record on your own. If you do, and come away unscathed, I salute you. I couldn’t have done it without some invaluable wisdom along the way.
After I finished university I worked for a record label. Being completely honest, it scared me for life. Chaotic. Disorganised.Unrewarding. I swore i’d never work in music again,(i’d just be the one buying it all). So when I decided to take this project on, I knew i’d need help and luck along the way.
I reached out to those whose music I had collected, who’s physical albums epitomised my goal. Dennis Huddleston (36) is a fine example. Doing it all himself and producing some of the most beautiful vinyl I own, he gave me some invaluable advice. My mentor however, came in the form of n5MD label owner and producer Mike Cadoo. His label has been an inspiration for years now, and he’s been with me every step of the way in this process. Words cannot express how grateful I am to this man.
So, don’t be shy. Don’t be too proud to ask for help. You can’t re-upload this one.
3. Create a vision (maybe even in Keynote).
It would be easy for me to release a record of (what I deem to be) ‘good music’. But for this release (and all of the digital releases that led to the final record), I decided to box the approach in, give a brief to the contributing artists and be strict on what would and wouldn’t be included in the compilation. I needed a reason for this to exist. And for those that know me, you probably won’t be surprised if I told you I created a presentation for this idea…
How did this help me? These values guided my decision making.
When you work with musicians who are friends or very close to you, it’s hard to communicate when music isn’t good enough. It’s all subjective and down to personal opinion after all. But by creating boundaries and a clear brief it’s easier to communicate when something doesn’t fit, and you’re more likely achieve what you set out to do.
I’m sure this seems like an obvious point to many, but I found it to be a vital and useful restriction when listening to demos, choosing artwork and ultimately deciding the format.
Not only that, but as an end result, I hope people will listen to the record as one piece — realising the vision and values that have held strong throughout. It’s a hard task to achieve when dealing with multiple genres and artists ranging from ambient, to electronica and experimental. Fingers crossed I achieved it.
4. Be inclusive, but retain control.
The community that’s grown as a part of my music blog and label is one of the most rewarding things i’ve had the pleasure of being a part of. I wanted to include them in this process somehow. The decision I made was to let anybody who contributed towards the crowd-funding campaign, vote on the final vinyl track-list. I had 18 tracks and could only fit 11 or so on the vinyl, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity and one that could generate a bit more buzz over the crowd-funding period. I was even planning a second stage to decide on track-list order…
It didn’t work. I quickly found that I was in this position because people respected my curation and the vision I created. They wanted me to decide the track list. Damn my cowardice.
Also, I thought the artists would do their bit to drum up support for the crowd-funding, (they definitely did) but this ended up being a bit of a popularity contest — which is the opposite to what I intended. One of my biggest objectives with my label is to promote the lesser known artist and believe it or not, not all of them are on social media.
So, whilst I took all the voting and feedback on board, I made the final vinyl track-list decision as it related to my original vision for the record.
Amongst a world of valued opinions, I had to grow some balls and make the call.
5. Social media alone isn’t enough.
I’ve spent the past five years growing an amazing community of people that support the music I ramble-on about, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without them. But i’m either terrible at my real job (possible — I work in social media), or I had a sudden realisation that social media alone didn’t help me achieve my goals with this project.
I have no benchmark to be able to tell you how well it would’ve done without the help of social media, but two things became apparent during the course of this project.
Firstly, I didn’t communicate it enough. I ADMIT IT. I’m scared of over-publishing on Facebook and destroying my edgerank. I kept posts to a minimum. And guess what, Facebook did too (don’t get me started on that).
I’ve spoke to numerous people who failed to see any of my posts on the project. I’m sure there’s plenty of you who witnessed too many, but the learning here is to not think that everyone has seen your latest update.
Think of different ways to reach different people with different content, different platforms, different approaches. Next time, i’ll be making lots of changes. However, don’t become that artist or label who spams every hour with the same stuff. Social media is a different beast when it comes to music — it’s saturated, noisy and built on the ability to grab attention with words or pictures first — those tweets don’t play themselves (yet).
Secondly, friends, family and word-of-mouth still rule when it comes to a project of this significance. It wouldn’t have succeeded without them. I’m sure a lot of the support can be linked back to this being my first record, but i’ll be going back to the drawing-board if it doesn’t get my friends and family excited next time around; even if they hate horizontal ambient drones that send them to sleep at the wheel.
6. Don’t underestimate the money part.
Firstly, this is expensive. Secondly, it’s expensive.
I spent the best part of 6 months going around in circles deciding on how to fund this project. I knew that my lofty double-transparent vinyl ambition was going to set me back quite a bit, but I wasn’t going to go into this one half-heartedly. I’m a ‘completer-finisher’ by all accounts.
I debated funding it all myself to ensure the label and artists kept the majority of the money. I looked at subscription services such as drip.fm. I debated revisiting my entire back-catalogue of digital downloads to re-issue as paid alongside new tracks. I wondered if all of the artists would pitch in with me? I thought about a pre-order model to garner interest before diving in. But, after contributing to a few projects myself and seeing the process first-hand, I settled on Indiegogo — Kickstarter’s potential rival and one that seemed to be a little more geared towards music.
The main reason though; it was all or nothing. I chose to not receive any of the funds if the campaign didn’t reach the target I set (luckily it did). I didn’t want to end up with a half-assed product, and Indiegogo put that psychological barrier in place. It made me work harder and it paid off.
One big opportunity I did see when assessing the funding options is the emergence of vinyl-specific crowd funding platforms such as Ninja Tune’s Beat Delete. I don’t see why they can’t apply this model to prospective releases too — not just back catalogues. Indiegogo and Kickstarter work OK, but the world is crying out for a music specific funding platform that can integrate track previews, streams, press, downloads etc. (Who wants in?) Until then…
7. Crowd-funding is a joyride…
This wouldn’t be complete without a few key learnings from my crowd-funding experience. I could write a separate post for added detail but one major surprise that’s worth pointing out here was the psychology of the price/reward structure.
I went in thinking most people would want to help out in some way or another, but probably with as little amount as possible. I was wrong. The most expensive items were the first to go ($100+) and I can only put this down to the quality of the product at hand (an amazing personalised wooden CD case). But the lowest amount ($5) had absolutely zero takers. Turns out, if people are going to support you, then they are willing to invest if the product is good enough.
If I were to do this again, I would focus on differentiating a range of amazing products as opposed to token gestures (such as names on vinyl or thank you’s). If someone’s made it to your crowd-funding page, they’re most likely wanting to support you, so make it worth their while.
8. Postage kills.
Indiegogo hasn’t quite nailed the postage part, so I ended up estimating costs for anything posted outside of US and asking people to donate more. Big learning. Not only have I ended up seriously underestimating this cost, but the US postal prices to anywhere International are absurd. This isn’t so much a rant as a warning to anyone looking at producing physical music (especially vinyl) in the USA. It will cost someone in Europe as much as the actual record to get it shipped out. BUT don’t let this kill your idea, just be transparent when pricing your music (and hope that prices one day come down!) If only there was a music format that didn’t require postage…
9. Human-craft rules.
I guess this point can be applied to the entire topic, but if there’s one thing that epitomised the physical versus digital argument, it was the custom CDr case that was also available alongside the vinyl. Each case, hand-crafted by Kevin Bryce (who makes guitars as a day-job) used several different types of wood and was inscribed with a personal thank-you message. I crave signed or numbered editions, let alone something that was made specifically for one person.
Add exclusivity into the equation (only ten were made) and I managed to stumble across a winning recipe that multiplied the chances of the project reaching its target. I’ve told Kevin he needs to make more of his skill and I really hope he does.
To put it simply, I asked a bunch of people, most of whom i’ve never met, to contribute money towards a product that didn’t yet exist. I countered this by including them as much as possible and aimed to create something that would end up meaning more than a file in iTunes. If anybody else wants to approach it this way with their next release, I’m with you. I’ll pay the premium and i’ll cherish it that much more.
10. Lastly, you’ll always make mistakes.
I checked the PSD’s and proofs a million times but I still spelt the name of my good friend, Nick Brzostowski wrong on the vinyl cover. You could say done is better than perfect, but not when it’s the designer of the artwork. Sorry Nick, I can’t edit that one!
