Nap-Time Musician, Or: How Releasing My Music For Fun Changed My Perspective On The Music Industry
I found out just how hard and expensive being an independent musician is, and why we should support the artists we love.
I am not a real musician. I am a career special education teacher, a father of two young children, as well as a lifelong music lover and collector of vinyl. I have played instruments for years, been in bands, performed live countless times, and even had one of my bands appear on a nationally distributed compilation. But I never really thought of myself as a musician. At times, I was a part-time or hobby musician, someone who played a few licks in my spare time, recording crudely with whatever I had available. And since becoming a father, I was at most a nap-time musician. It was good fun in my limited spare time.
For my 30th birthday, my friend Brian decided that perhaps my hobbies should merge together. He collected money from my friends and family with the goal of using it to get my music pressed on vinyl. It’s probably one of the most unique and amazing gifts I have ever received. The problem? I didn’t have an album to press.
So for the next 18 months, I began the process of writing, recording, and creating an album, which resulted in In The Violet Hours. I was pretending that I was a legit musician, despite this being no more than a fun vanity project that would probably leave me with plenty of extra copies of my record.
And through this whole project, completing each step and emptying my bank account a bit more, I began to feel an even greater appreciation of just how hard independent artists need to work to get their music made, find an audience, and eke out a living without going into massive debt.
My journey through the album-making process, predominantly because it was hobby-centric, was generally stress-free and enjoyable (though not cheap). And it taught me more than I ever thought I could know about what independent musicians are up against when making music and trying to find success.
Writing
I started writing songs as soon as I could figure out how to play a few chords on guitar. I still have most of the song lyrics I wrote while in elementary and high school, typically written on the back pages of guitar tabs or scraps of school homework. Many of the songs I wrote were just about what you’d expect from a teenage boy living in the suburbs — songs about girls or about being misunderstood.
I kept writing songs. I recorded many of them. I got older. I still wrote about girls. That changed when I met my wife, Alysse, in 2008. I only had one girl to write about. It took me a while to write some songs about her that weren’t too trite, and a few found their way to my album.
Writing songs is one of the few cheap things a musician can do. It costs, at most, a piece of paper and a writing instrument. Given that just about everything else about being an artist costs a lot of money, it’s nice to be able to feel creative without worrying about all of the expenses involved in sharing music to the world.
Recording
Brian and I started recording on computers in 1997, when the technology was both incredibly limited and expensive. Some of our earliest recordings involved recording guitar into the left speaker, vocals into the right, then mixing to mono as a finished product. It wasn’t very impressive. Eventually, I learned how to use more complicated multi-track recording software, though due to poor quality microphones, many of my earliest recordings lack any sonic fidelity. I also stubbornly refused to learn the nuances of different effects. I just know that I like reverb.
I bought my first Macbook in 2009, and using GarageBand, coupled with a USB microphone, made recording easier than ever. Much has been written about how its ease of use allows for those who may not have access to studios the opportunity to share their music (this Pitchfork article details the phenomenon). GarageBand was as capable as any recording software I had previously used, and I quickly adopted it for all of my recordings.
I considered finding a studio to record my album. Though my microphone quality has increased considerably, it still pales in comparison to the quality of equipment in just about any studio. However, studio time is not cheap, and even the most efficient artists need to spend lots of time putting together their tracks in a studio. Seeing as I was recording just about every instrument on my own, it was easier to do it at my own pace.
I started recording In The Violet Hours in July 2014, setting up my laptop and mic whenever I had a bit of time, between work, family, and other obligations. My ‘studio’ was a small nook adjacent to the kitchen that doubles as a pantry and storage area. Most tracks were done in as few takes as possible, since my time was often limited, and I’m not much of a perfectionist. My friend Dave added violin, and Alysse sang on many of the tracks. I added a few other friends’ vocals, and my album started to take shape.
Mastering
I finished recording the album about one year after I began. The end of the recording process also coincided with the end of the school year, and I felt the perfect combination of relief and exhaustion. I was proud of being done, but the tracks were far from being ready to share.
I always knew mastering was an important part of the production process, though I didn’t really know just how much. Brian and I tried to figure out how to get the album mastered in an affordable way, while still getting it done right. There are plenty of people on Kijiji who will master your song for $10, and while that was tempting, it was also a terrible idea. We had limited funds from Brian’s birthday crowdfunding, so we knew that we’d need to be conscious of cost to ensure that we’d still have money for pressing the album.
Brian connected with the Lacquer Channel in Toronto, and for a very fair rate, we were to be present at a night session with one of their mastering engineers, Milan Schramek. Milan did an amazing job. So much about the mastering process is a mystery for musicians; it is nothing like recording or mixing. It is an art form in itself. In 5 or 6 late night hours, Milan took the album and made it sound whole.
Just out of curiosity, I ran some of my unmastered tracks through some online mastering software tools — ones that ‘have algorithms for mastering’. Milan’s work is so much better. If I didn’t have mortgage payments, I would have him master every recording I make.
And with a finished product came the pricier part.
Production — Vinyl
Brian and I knew that we needed to press as few copies of my album as possible, since most of my friends don’t have turntables. Most per disc costs are somewhat reasonable at 500 copies. When pressing 100 copies, much of the cost goes to the setup fees, and the per disc costs are quite high.
We found a broker called Standard Vinyl, who had the best rate to suit our needs. For $1200 + tax (Canadian Dollars), they would press 100 copies of standard (140 gram) black vinyl, no jackets, black and white labels on the albums, plus send us 4 test presses. We liked that they didn’t have any extra fees. We didn’t love the 27–31 week turnaround window they shared with us, but we were probably the lowest priority for them, well below every unnecessary Record Store Day album that would probably go to the presses months after us.
One of the biggest challenges I found when it came to creating record jackets is that because they are made using a printing press, the minimum order is usually 500 jackets, and that would would cost around $600 with tax and shipping. I needed 100, and since it wasn’t really possible through traditional means, I had to figure out some alternatives. After a few crafty attempts, I found a solution.
Duplication.ca, a Toronto-Montreal broker of all things media replication, sells 110 blank white covers for $45. The nice thing about using these was that no folding would be required. I took the artwork that Erika Jacobs made (she also took the photographs), and brought it to a printing house, where they printed the front and back covers separately on 10 pt 12x18 cardstock, cut to 12x12. I paid $180 for 110 copies. I then used rubber cement ($3 at Staples) to glue the covers onto the front and back. Rubber cement dries smoothly, and because the album cover already had a white border, the jackets looked good. For the spine, I ordered a customized address stamp from Vistaprint for $10 with the album name, my name, and the release number.
At roughly $240 for 110 record jackets, they definitely weren’t cheap, but saved me from having 400 unused jackets, which would have been far more wasteful.
The per copy cost of pressing records for any independent artist is insanely high, even when pressing in higher numbers. I used to balk at paying more than $20 for a single album on vinyl, but having gone through the process of making a record myself, I know that the profit margins are quite low given all of the costs that go into their creation. I don’t feel so bad about paying a little more, especially directly from the label or an independent record store.
The records arrived on my doorstep in April 2016, but the album release show was months before that, in December 2015, on account of Alysse and I expecting a baby #2 to arrive (Ramona was born February 2nd). We knew it would be unrealistic to put together a show with a newborn, so we decided the release show would happen before the vinyl came out. But I needed something to share.
Production — Cassettes
In theory, cassette tapes are one of the least practical physical mediums of the current era. They have limited audio fidelity, are prone to wearing out, and always need to be rewound. However, they are also surprisingly fun due in part to their impracticality in 2016. More and more artists are releasing their music on tape, and usually at much cheaper prices than CDs or vinyl. Part of the attraction is the low price, fast turnaround, and the fact that they are way easier to ship.
At my album release show in December, I was going to give everyone a cassette, whether they could play it or not (it came with a download code for most of those who could not).
Duplication.ca had a deal on dubbing 100 cassettes, working out to roughly $150 with clear cases. I bought printable J-card sheets and cassette labels from Duplication as well ($10 for J-card sheets and $10 for labels), and printed the modified album art (again thanks to Erika) while at work.
I have given away, sold, and tried to pawn off many of the copies of the cassette tape, and somehow still have almost 40 copies left. It’s not easy to share music in a format that very few still collect.
Performing
Finding a venue for the album release show was surprisingly frustrating. Many venues will either charge a band considerable overhead for sound, expect a significant bar tab, or just ignore most inquiries. I absolutely understand this from a venue point of view. How would they know how many people I would bring?
I was optimistic I could get 50 people to come to the show, but many venues didn’t seem to believe me, so it took some persistence to find the right place. Eventually, The Central, a small but conveniently located bar, gave us the Sunday night we were looking for. When it all came together, I put together a small band, and we performed some of the album’s songs live for the first time.
We managed to fill the venue on a quiet Sunday night, with most of our friends heading to work the next morning. I can only imagine how challenging it must be for musicians to get consistent audiences on a regular basis — the time and commitment to sharing music in a live setting is a task to be commended.
Streaming
Bandcamp is the best website for emerging and independent artists. It’s a wonderful place to discover music, and a place for artists to sell digital and physical merchandise at rates they set themselves.
About five years ago, I uploaded pretty much every song I had ever recorded to Bandcamp. For me, it was a great way to store and share my music, even if some of my earliest work is probably not meant to be heard. I can’t say I got a lot of plays. Releasing In The Violet Hours on Bandcamp was an obvious first step in sharing it to the world. Recently, I switched all of my music to a free/name your own price option; I’m not looking for the few dollars that may or may not pour in for downloading my music. But independent artists are.
Based on my own journey, I started to really think about the many costs associated with making and releasing music. I have started to send money to artists above their posted prices on Bandcamp, especially if they are sharing music for free. Artists pay a cut to Bandcamp and Paypal, but much of the money goes to them. And even if the cut isn’t high, the revenue is still a lot higher than those from streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.
I was curious to see what it takes to get music onto streaming and digital sales platforms. Most of these streaming sites use aggregators such as Tunecore and CDBaby to distribute songs and collect royalties. Having a company collect royalties sounds pretty nice before you realize that you have to pay either $30 per year, or $50 lifetime (depending on the site and their approach to revenue sharing). And that’s only moderately worth it if you already have enough of a fanbase to regularly download and stream songs. iTunes offers 70% of song download revenue to the artists, but that’s assuming that someone decided to pay $10 to download from the iTunes Store instead of from Bandcamp for free.
Streaming, for emerging artists, is one of the hardest ways to make money. Streaming services pay roughly $0.004 per song stream. To make back my $30, I would require roughly 7500 streams. As of this writing, with my album on streaming services for over a month, I have 53 total plays. And a whopping 21 cents profit. When bands are on record labels, their cut might be even lower.
I use Spotify daily. I discover artists, I listen to my favourite albums. I make playlists. I know that in many ways, most of the artists aren’t getting much from the streaming other than exposure. I try to buy physical or digital products from the bands I discover and enjoy. Streaming services are an amazing way to intake vast amounts of music with little effort. But I don’t think very many independent musicians are paying rent with the streaming revenue.
Total Costs
The chart above details all of the costs associated with making my album. About half of the money came from my birthday present. Because I was able to record at no cost, I saved considerably. I have mostly given away my album to family and friends, selling a few copies online. However, it doesn’t go very far to recuperating many of the costs. I did this for fun, knowing I’d end up in the red. Many independent artists, however, don’t have full-time careers to fund the production of their music.
The other hidden cost is the amount of time it takes to go through the entire process. For some, that might be time that needs to be taken off of other jobs for recording, touring, distributing, or being visible. My guess is that many working musicians make far less than minimum wage when all hours committed to the creation of music are tallied.
How To Support Musicians
Musicians are amazing people. Committing time, love, and energy to creating music is not an easy feat, and in 2016 it can be very challenging to make money in the music industry. For those of us appreciate music (and that would likely be just about everyone), there are many ways we can support those who continue to create the music we consume:
- Buy digital music, whether from iTunes or Bandcamp. Pay for name-your-own-price albums.
- If streaming an artist you like, consider allowing your account to loop the album repeatedly overnight to allow the artist to get (slightly) more revenue (read this excellent article for more about this)
- Buy physical media. Buy a cassette even if you don’t have a tape player. Buy a t-shirt. Buy some buttons. Get a turntable and pick up some records
- Go see bands when they tour. Buy merchandise directly from the band
- Tell your friends about new artists
- Encourage artists. Email them. Tweet at them. Most are so excited to hear from people who appreciate their music
With all this in mind, I feel less concerned about you buying my music. I’m an impostor. If you do choose to buy my music, I’m just going to then spend the money on other artists. And then put my kids to bed.
My music is available at http://danielfield.bandcamp.com. All photos were taken by me unless otherwise indicated.
