Tag: music2deal

Music2Deal Interview with Anca Lupes – one of the most experienced professionals in Romanian music business.
Interviews · music business · music industry

Music2Deal Interview with Anca Lupes – one of the most experienced professionals in Romanian music business.

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Anca Lupes – is one of the most experienced professionals in Romanian music business. One of her main advantages is that during her career in the music business she activates in almost all the areas of this industry –media (press, radio, TV), concert promoting, record companies, management and booking agencies. Due to her extensive experience, in 2006 she starts teaching Music Business. In 2009 she becomes the first Romanian music business professional to graduate the Master in Music Business Program at Berkelee College of Music. The same year she becomes part of an international music business consultants network – Musiconsult. Currently she is partner in Star Management, a 360o company specialised in business services for artists and the music industry that she established in 2004. In 2016, she founds Mastering The Music Business – a DIY conference for independent artists & music business professionals.

 

 

What exactly is the Mastering The Music Business and how did it come into existence?

Mastering The Music Business is the first music business conference ever organised in Romania.
After years of teaching music business and consulting in this field, I realised it was time for Romania to have a music business conference, where independent artists and music business professionals could meet their peers, learn from each other and start new projects together, also meet music business professionals from more developed markets and professionals from related industries such as advertising, video games and movie production.

 

Why Romania?

As a live music market, Romania has thrived in the last years, especially since we were included in the European Union in 2007. Tenths of festivals of all genres are happening all over the country, with new ones emerging every year. Compared to its neighboring countries, Romania is a much bigger market – with a population of approx. 20mil inhabitants, vs Bulgaria (7,3 mil people) or Hungary (10 mil people) also with the biggest economic growth in Europe lately. On the other hand, it’s time for the very talented Romanian musicians to start being more mobile outside our boders and of course we are welcoming any live artists interested to make their debut in Romania. Last but not least, we want to give Romanian music business professionals the opportunity to meet specialists from all around the world.

 

What are the plans for the next coming Mastering The Music Business event, what can we expect?

As usual, there will be panels discussing current topics of the music industry, presenting success stories, key professionals giving lectures and holding workshops. Evenings will be reserved to showcases so we will have everything for everyone: learning, networking and entertainment opportunities. Although with a focus on independent artists, MMB is opened to everybody in the music industry so our delegates are managers, booking agents, labels, media people, promoters, collecting societies, business consultants etc.

 

Why is it an absolute must for every music professional to attend the event?

Because this is the place to find out about new trends, technologies and all opportunities currently available to independent artists and their teams, to meet other professionals, open new markets, to exchange ideas and start new collaborations. For people from abroad, this is the place that gathers all relevant artists and music business professionals in Romania.

 

How do you want the Mastering The Music Business event to develop? What are your future plans? How could the event look like in 2020?

By 2020 MMB will grow to be an effervescent meeting place for all kind of people from the local and international music industry, all of them with the same eagerness to be informed, up to date, connected and at the best of their abbilities.

 

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Romanian Music Industry Facts & Figures

During communism years that ended in 1989, Romania had one radio station, one TV station and one record company, all state owned. Hard to call that ‘music industry’. :)

We have all agreed here that Romanian music industry was officially born in 1996, with the passing of the copyright law. It was also the green light for all international majors to find local companies to license – BMG, Sony, Warner, EMI, Polygram … everybody was suddenly here.

21 years later, the Romanian music industry has come a long way and trying hard to close many gaps that are separating us from other European markets.

Bucharest is the capital city of Romania (over 2mil people living here), enjoying an effervescent nightlife with many live music clubs, of all genres from EDM to metal.

Around the country there are many live music clubs, in all big cities. There are also lots of theaters and other small & medium venues with capacities ranging between 300 – 4000 places and big sports venues with capacities ranging between 1500 to 11000.

All three major record companies are represented here –Sony and Warner have local licensees and Universal has its own office. There are also some relevant independent labels (Hahaha Production, Global Records, DeMoga) and the alternative/indie movement is powerful and thriving.

There are over 20 major radio stations/networks, mainly CHR (3 in Top 5) and 5 music TV stations (local).

 

Links:

www.starmanagement.ro

www.masteringthemusicbusiness.ro

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German · Tips

How To Prepare To Work With A Music Producer

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Brad Chapmen
by Brad Chapman

Brad Chapman has been doing vocal pre-producing for over 35 years, and developed a signature technique for producing FEEL while working with producers and artists such as: Quincy Jones, David Khane and 100+ Grammy winners.

 

1. Personalized Warm Up Exercises:
Learn how to warm up your voice with exercises specifically for you. Canned warm ups or YouTube warm ups, most likely won’t work well for you (they might even hurt you.) Your warms up should be specifically for you.
Singing songs is an ineffective way to warm up, as you could be tiring out your voice; rather than warming it up. Why do I stress this topic? Being warmed up to your best vocal condition, will keep you from being distracted by your voice and keep your mind on the story line and emotions.
My phrase for this is ‘sing from feel’. Feel the emotion first and then sing them out. If you do cardio and or a steam room, do these before you do your warm ups. Especially if you have an early morning performance.

 
2. Constantly Train And Be Prepared:
Start pre-production now and never stop. You must always be preparing for the right moment. A quote from Grammy winning Jeff Bhasker is: “If you’re not completely ready for me, I won’t produce you”. This is something I hear more and more from seasoned producers. They don’t want to train and develop you. It’s up to the vocal artist to be trained and prepared.
Developing a strong belted-head-voice will keep the producer from having to fight to record your voice due to overloading the pre-amp. (Don’t yell on your high notes.) If producers have to limit the sound, this results in less color in your voice. Also, intimate passages are difficult to record unless you can control the volume dynamics thru belted-head-voice.

 
3. Work With Someone During Vocal Tracking:
Train your voice and ears for the microphone, headphones, floor monitors, and in ear monitors. There is always someone running your sound system or vocal tracking (at least there should be.) I realize that there are a few stories of artists like Prince and Todd Rundgren self-producing. (However, I doubt that they were alone during the vocal tracking.) The reason you want to work with someone during your vocal tracking is that it is quite complicated to engineer and focus on your emotions of the song.
The totally self-produced vocals I’ve heard, lack feel and that’s what the vocal needs the most. Remember always that singing is communication to your fans. Having a producer in the studio helps make sure you are communicating, otherwise you’re
singing to yourself. If you’re producer doesn’t know that, ask him to listen as an audience would and give you feed back. Your vocal expression if far more important than the Sonic’s of the recording.

 
4. Befriend Your Producers:
Become immediate friends with your producers. Get them to like you, so that they care about your performance. (The average producer is like the average audience. If you don’t take care of your electronics, then they assume that you are not a quality singer. If you ’piss them off’, they may actually intentionally create a bad mix, where you can’t hear yourself.). Note: Please refer to Music Connection Magazine, cover page ‘Don’t Piss-Off The Sound Guy: http://www.musicconnection.com/dont-piss-off-the-sound-guy/
Your producer actually can purposely or accidently ruin your voice and your career.
When people hear you sing and you don’t understand the electronics you’re performing through, your audience will blame you for sounding out of tune and strained; and they should blame you. When you can’t hear yourself comfortably with headphones, in ear monitors or stage monitors; you will sound tone deaf and/ or over the top (meaning that you are trying too hard to hear yourself).

 
5. Monitor Feedback Is One Of Your Enemy’s
Buy a small mixer, microphone, head phones and floor monitors and use them every day (even while doing vocal exercises.) Learn about how the equipment works. Then, you can talk intelligently to your producer and make sure the recording studio and the live audience will hear you at your best; and consider you a good to great singer. When you put headphones on at the studio, you must communicate with the engineer/producer in order to make yourself sound great to yourself in the tracking mix.
Have your voice working so well that when the producer, stage or studio, doesn’t need to correct you; or if he does, you can make corrections on the spot. Always test your mic before the music starts. If you start singing with the music and your mic is off, it’s quite embarrassing and again the audience will blame you; not the sound man.

 
6. Feel Your Song’s Story; Ignore Mistakes During The Performance:
Ninety percent (90%) of your singing must have feel. Make sure that your vocal problems do not distract your conscious mind from the feel of the song. Your mind should be at least 90% on the story and how you feel about it.
The producers call this ‘feel’. They will always ask you for more and more feel, and emotional expression. They know that is the only way they can produce a performance
that means something to your fans. If you make a mistake, learn to ignore these and continue singing the song’s story with emotion; and stay in the feel of the music and the story.

 
7. Train Until The Song’s Technique And Emotions Are 2nd Nature:
How is this done? Repeat your song over and over again. You will develop the ability to stay in the story from beginning to end; never being distracted. At the same time, make the story’s emotions the only place you want to live in, as you feel the story.

 
8. Enjoy Your Performance And The Music:
Now, you will have a great time performing live and in the studio, and everyone attending will enjoy your great performance.

 
Brad Chapman Vocal Pre-Producer http://www.bradchapmanvocals.com

English · Interviews

Interview with André Gomes de Abreu, Director of BandCom (Portugal)

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Please tell us a bit about BandCom.

Right now, BandCom is the outcome of almost 4 years of an amazing journey through some of the best years – have no doubts about it – of portuguese music. Day after day, we’re in the middle of an amazing flow of energy, creativity and information.
So, we just use the social platforms to inform and give power to the people and the artists, since we have to accept the world is constantly changing and we have to create chances for the artists to be heard when it appears quite impossible.
Our great focus is on how we inform, struggling to innovate ways to present new music and new musicians. And we do this for absolutely nothing but our music lover pride which forces us into realizing how important is to preserve the past, the present and the future of portuguese music. And we know we are still very far away from it when there isn’t a single organized TV show about music in Portugal available to the public and the opportunities of rediscovering music turn to few and, worse, random, lucky, honorary moments.

BandCom seems to have grown from a blog promoting new artists to a well trusted site in Portugal where artists and industry representatives can find reviews, videos, lists of venues, record labels, agents, radio stations and more. Have there been any major “stumbling blocks” for you while growing in the competitive world of media?

Well, first of all, the first part of the question is a great compliment for us and we thank you for recognizing it.
Dealing with information, as we said previously, is what we do better. All that useful links are part of our work and have to be accessible to all the music industry players because the money to be made in there is theirs and the public has the right to know what can be done with few support after all.

This whole point about information is definitely one of the biggest stumbling blocks for everyone who has any sort of relationship with music. We faced it, developed many strategies to keep us updated so we can provide real news to anyone and now the major part of the portuguese industry see in us an important collaborator. A fellow team member who also needs to be updated, influenced and brought into some important perspectives and future events.

Second, there are some daily stumbling blocks which we can’t get over that easier: we need to create content constantly to be read by our followers. In this content/media chain, we must be the first critics of what we do and look for perfection that could be perceived by the readers too. And that is a serious and intriguing obstacle run against what the worst change can bring we can only hope to win someday.

Third, we have this sense of mission of something we’re trying to accomplish but won’t and/or can’t define anything about our relative importance in media so that we become really, toxically viral.
And that is a big, big driver not to stop. At least, we are safe from ourselves.

How is the Music Scene in Portugal at the moment?

We can see it from different and simplistic perspectives which lead us into a general conception: the portuguese music scene is healthier but not wealthier. If we do have a “scene” after all. If we know where do we came from right now.
From the public’s point of view, this genetic feeling of almost instant disapproval towards your artists with no apparent reason is being put aside as the public renews and knows their artists better. However, this economic crisis, and lots of other minor or even local factors, play a decisive role in, for example, keeping a music project active. How can you know anyone if some bands have to split so quickly they can’t challenge the status quo and go to places which maps almost forgot?

From the musicians’ point of view, I think there is a larger sense of community between them, I think they see/have more opportunities in and outside of Portugal, I think they work with better and more skilled people, I think they know the talent is in there. But 99% of them don’t live exclusively from their music, almost 99% of the mainstream media have no interest in new portuguese music because the public don’t demand it from them and certainly more than 50% of their audience finds not enough money to even enjoy a decent life and empowers itself with a false security of the power of a like in Facebook, a comment, a review.
Musicians can benefit from “likes” but don’t live from them and sometimes you don’t have to pay that much to attend a good show.
From the industry’s point of view, I think there’s a lot to be known, lots of mistakes to be made and a long way to recover. Portugal is a small and troubled market, most of the future artists are out of their reach and need to go through their maturity processes just like the stars of today – and when I talk about stars, I talk about gifted and somewhat successful people and not only true or false mainstream stars. Anyway, they know they need new Portuguese music to present to a new country.

Surely, the artists and their work are always the first on the line but we still keep dreaming. That’s what make us all Portuguese: Americans have the American Dream, Portuguese have their Portuguese Ambition, accepting a minimum level of imperfection and imbalance as crucial to be inspired to succeed.

What do you think is the single largest problem faced by the music industry today? How do you think it can be resolved?

Well, the one thing I’m 100% certain about is that the problem of the music industry today is bigger than just one small obstacle.
I don’t have all of them, and not even a miracle to solve any of them. First, we have to stay realistic but optimist as well and don’t fall into the easiest to say like “this is all bad”. Because it’s not. It’s not all about money, it’s not all about education, it’s not all about talent, it’s not all about bad choices, but they easily interconnect with each other and, starting with some Portuguese examples for you, people with less money tend not to be so invested in music and then it becomes easier for everybody to forget some basic, minimum requirements.

Even though is an industry like any economy bible can define, music industry has this harshly worked-out question: how can we democratically make something valuable today?
Isn’t this a problem about every artistic industry? For various reasons, everyone knows it’s a genuine problem of this industry.
And since the problem is multifactorial, the solution is multifactorial too. If we don’t keep trying on everything we know right now and accepting, adapting, developing new ideas, we will fail.

Your plans for 2015?

In the first days of the year, we’ll release all of the tops of 2014, so we invite everybody to stay alert.
Then we’ll put some plans of ours together. Generally speaking, we want to go bigger: bigger on the team, bigger on the number of articles we present, bigger on talent scouting, bigger on the relation with all the music industry players.
We don’t want to announce lots of things which can or can’t be a reality when we look at everything in the end of the year, but we are developing a new website and the first of a series of compilations of Portuguese artists we want to present worldwide and explain why you need to know and to see them live if you can.

Do you think Music2Deal.com can help get Portuguese artists to a further audience both Nationally and Internationally?

Music2Deal.com is an example of a new project which, instead of its pure profit, presents immediately very interesting ways of quality worktime for every professional. It’s the ultimate social network for the music industry.
We believe in the success of Music2Deal and we firmly believe Portuguese artists can only benefit from a network where everybody wants to hear them.

by Sara Shirazi

http://bandcompt.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/bandcom
http://twitter.com/BandComPT
band.com.pt@gmail.com