A question that’s asked often is, “How does a music producer get paid?” That answer has shifted dramatically in the music industry the last few years because, historically, record producers got paid based on album sales. They received a royalty anywhere between 3% and 5% based upon their stature and the number of sales that have been made on the record.

That model has changed because sales have decreased. Now, producers get paid a percentage of income. They get a percentage of licensing if they haven’t written the song. They may also get a percentage, in some instances, of any kind of endorsement deals that come out of the song and the success of that song.

That being said, because producers aren’t making the same money and have the same revenue streams, oftentimes, producers will ask for publishing on songs they didn’t write. If you’re in a situation where you’re not able to pay a producer or a producer is producing for you for free, that’s often a great tradeoff. You give a small percentage of the publishing where the producer gets a piece of the songs that they’ve worked on without accepting money. But if a producer hasn’t written those songs and the producer is being paid for their work, asking for publishing is a definite red flag. Make note of this as you continue your online music education.

The first records were essentially documents of performances. It was essentially just a matter of sticking a microphone in front of a singer or a band and recording that performance, then preserving it and playing it back.

However, as technology began to mature and get a little more sophisticated, some record producers began to use that technology to influence and shape the way that music sounded on a record. An early pioneer was Les Paul, who worked with record cutters, record lathes, and early tape machines to do things like sound-on-sound recording and overdubbing, as he did with Mary Ford’s “How High the Moon.” This was the beginning of a whole new era for the music industry.

About 10 years later, a young record producer by the name of Phil Spector literally used the acoustics and electronics in the studio to create what he called a wall of sound in the record “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes.

The mid-1960s were when the idea of the record producer really started to mature. George Martin, working with The Beatles, used all kinds of electronic trickery to make their recordings sound really, really interesting. Whether it was the use of tape loops, interesting new musical instruments, or placement of microphones, everything was used to shape the sound of music.

Currently, music education, including online music education, offer music producers even more ways to play with sound and create new and interesting effects for recordings.

As a professional in the industry, I’ve learned that whether they’re DJs, dramatics or bands, they need the ability to communicate with a production staff and tell them what’s going on, when it’s going on and where it’s going to happen. And the stage plot is an industry device that’s critical to that communication.

It’s the visual means of communicating between parties who will work together but aren’t with each other currently. Who in the performance is going to go where? How should their equipment be laid out? Essentially, the general use of space and the technology layout inside of that space.

Better Stage Plot Knowledge in Music Education Means Better Music Show Productions

The better those stage plots are, the more accurate they are, the more information they have about the performance, and the better the overall production will be. You’re allowing the artists and the production staff who make the show happen to communicate and meet each other’s expectations effectively.

As much as I’ve used all these pioneering technologies in very different ways and spaces they weren’t really intended, I’ve drawn from VR spatial capture, 3D modeling, and old-school architectural approaches and blend those together when I make my stage plots.

They enable me to have a top-down, 2D, floor-plan-based discussion with a technical team, then take that flat thing and look in three dimensions at scale before I have a production conversation with the artist. Visually, they can see that same space rendered in front of them in real-time.

Students in Online Music Education Would Benefit From Stage Plot Knowledge

I can drop in the staging, musicians, et cetera, and I’m having an active conversation over the visual space and place for which the artist is creating their work. It becomes a very powerful tool.

When all those ideas are out of their head, I’m able to weave that back into the stage plot, flatten that back down, and share the updates with the whole squad. Everything maintains its up-to-date-ness.

Stage plots are certainly supercritical to creative, professional work. I think the new technologies and tools that are available are not usually exploited to make them as multi-dimensional and as rich as they could be. But I love doing it all the time.

One interesting piece of music industry history is the start of the phonograph. The phonograph started as a cylindrical piece of wax, and then it became a shellac disk, and then later on a vinyl disk, and so on. This was a way, by using acoustic and electric technology, to have somebody perform in front of a microphone, and get that recording onto a piece of material that could be played back in anybody’s home, using a phonograph record machine.

The principle of the record business is the same principle as the publishing business. If I were to just give you a piece of vinyl with no grooves on it, it wouldn’t be worth anything to you. What makes it worthwhile is the information that’s on it. The idea is what’s valuable. However, it’s not just the idea that’s on the record—it’s the performance of an idea.

To outline the difference, there is the idea that’s fixed in form with paper and ink, and then there is the actual performance of that idea, which is then fixed on the vinyl record. So, the two parts of the music business become the idea and the performance of the idea. And in the record business, you’re not only paying the performer who’s on the record, but you’re also paying the author of the idea that’s being performed.

Sometimes, when we talk about the music industry and say that there are two sides to a record, we aren’t literally talking about the two sides of a record. We’re talking about the publishing side, which is the initial idea, and we’re talking about the master side, which is the actual performance of the idea and the person or people behind it.

Just as it is with sheet music, a performer is not necessarily going to know where to buy vinyl, where to press it, where to create the little pieces of paper that go inside of it, or the names of all the stores that sell records across the country. Because of this, we need record executives, who are able to take care of those things. So, the record business, just like the sheet music business before it, becomes a partnership between musicians and entrepreneurs—between artists and business people.

A record producer has two entities to pay. The first is the publisher and songwriter, who are the owners of that song. The second entity is the performing artist, who usually gets a royalty per record for the distribution of the performance. That’s how the music business operates; you either own the song, or you can own the performance of that song in fixed form.

The music industry today operates on those same principles. The only main difference is that today, in many cases, the performance of the song is not fixed in physical form, but instead available digitally.

Performances started in much the same way that songs did: in the oral tradition. A performance wasn’t something to be bought and sold. But then came the idea of modern theater, and the modern venue. The idea behind it was very simple: there’s a performer in a room. People are outside the room, and there’s a person at the door who’s going to take $5 from you. If you pay the $5, you gain entry to the room, and you’re going to hear the performance.

That is essentially the core of the business of being a performing artist. Of course, that artist can also record things on vinyl, or a CD, or on a digital file, and that’s worth something as well.

If you’re interested in learning more about how performing artists monetize themselves and their performances, as well as many other concepts regarding the music industry, think about exploring online music education. It is by far the most accessible and convenient way to access the lessons that come with a solid music education.

“A few decades after the start of Tin Pan Alley and the sheet music business, an entrepreneur comes along with another invention — essentially another way to fix a musical idea in form,” explains Dan Charnas. “And that entrepreneur was Thomas Edison. And in addition to inventing the light bulb, he also invented the phonograph or gramophone.”

John Carlin adds, “Thomas Edison was a true genius, maybe one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century. He invented a way to record music and commercialize it, and that’s really the key. Now, the interesting thing about Thomas Edison is that he was deaf when he was a young man. Someone had cuffed him on the ears, and he had lost his hearing. And not only did he have bad hearing, but he also was thought to have very bad taste in music. However, he was a mechanical engineering genius, the equivalent Bill Gates or Steve Wozniak in our world.

“Edison created this machine, the phonograph, which utilized a wax cylinder. It was a round device, and a needle would etch the sound into the wax. To use it for recording, people would push their heads or their instruments into a big horn, and the horn would record on the wax. Then, when you played it back through the machine, the sound was amplified through the horn.”

Carlin describes Edison’s early efforts as “somewhat of a niche business. He would sell the wax cylinders, but he was mainly interested in selling the machines to people. So, in the early days of the recording industry, the music was essentially given away to sell the machines to musicians and get them into people’s homes.”

With music education, you can learn more about the music industry’s roots and many other useful and interesting concepts. With online music education, you can learn all these things without having to leave home.

One of the catchphrases I use with students in many of my classes is “Make sure you’re possessed by your music every time you step on stage.” I kind of coined that term while watching “Stop Making Sense” by the Talking Heads, which is a 1984 live music performance film that features The Talking Heads.

David Byrne from the very first song is really just possessed by the music. You can see it in his body movements, facial expressions, voice performance and instrumentation. Every part of his performance reveals a person who is completely embedded in their music and their process.

Music Education

I use that film as a teaching tool in not only the persona class but in classes throughout the semester because it really focuses well on stage setup, instrumentation, sequencing and collaboration. The film displays literally every aspect of the music industry and associated careers that we cover in classes. An online music education can reveal to you more about opportunities in the music industry beyond this topic. A formal education can help you narrow down your career choice and consider everything required of you to achieve success.

My point of view is always going to be that of a talent manager. That’s my background. That’s what I came up in, and that’s who really nurtured my thinking. As a result, everything that I do is always going to be from the perspective of finding a way to evolve a vision. I want to be able to know how to achieve this, who a partner should work with, and how to share the vision with its intended audience.

The advice I would give, to any artist who is looking to understand their brand and what they want to say, is to find a point of view. What do you care about? Do you care about how you look, or fashion? Do you care about types of music and telling people what influences you? Find your point of view, and start there.

Keep in mind that this is not an exact science. This is not some miraculous thing where you can snap your fingers and suddenly you have 30,000 followers. It doesn’t really work like that. It takes time, dedication, and putting your effort into the right areas.

If you’re looking to build your personal brand on social media, I would challenge you to ask yourself: What are my values? What do I care about? What do I want people to know about me? Also, ask yourself what you want people to know about your music, your story, and where you’re going. As an example, if you’re a hip-hop artist, you might love hip-hop but decide that you’re not going to have any raps with curse words in them. And that’s going to be your MO.

Figuring out these things — what you care about, what you want to share with others through your music, and what you want to achieve — are crucial when it comes to building your brand and creating your story in the music industry.

Exploring music education is an excellent way to learn more about these concepts, and building your personal brand and viewpoint in the world of music. With online music education, all you need is an internet connection and a desire to learn.

As many of you may be aware, when you perform on stage, you’ll sometimes have a music director. The music director chooses the best way to implement musicians around the song that you’ve chosen to perform. This could be an electronic track played in the background, a symphony orchestra or an acoustic guitar. It could be an electric guitar accompanied by a drummer. All of these instrumentations are different types of music direction.

If you don’t have a music director, then you’ll either be doing it all on your own or in collaboration with your bandmates. Because there are so many options, what we like to do is choose the instrumentation that works the best with our story. So, after we’ve chosen our story, we’re able to see which instruments should also be characters in the story that we’re telling.

For example, is it an introspective, intimate performance that we’re trying to create? If so, maybe an acoustic guitar and some hand percussion would work. Is it more of a wild and crazy party? If it is, maybe a track and a live drummer would be best. These are the questions that we need to consider and understand when we choose the new characters that we’ll take along with us on our story.

So, the structure of a show, and sometimes, the sequence of a show, is how we lay out all of the different songs and speaking moments, as well as any poetry we might be reading, opening acts, or DJs after the show. We ask ourselves, what is the best way for us to tell the story that we’ve written? How do we get the audience amped up for the show, and in the right place emotionally to receive the story that we want to tell them? And finally, what is the best way to relay that story and exchange energy with them throughout the show?

To learn more about the music industry and telling your story on stage, many people explore the opportunities of music education. With online music education, you can even learn about these concepts from the comfort of your own home.

It is important for a producer, or an arranger, mixer, recording engineer or anyone associated with creating a recorded work, to understand that the artist has quite a tough job ahead of them. They have to expose their persona. They have to expose their meaning, the intention of their individual work and their overall art, to their peers within the music industry and their audience.

Our Responsibilities

What we have to do as studio personnel or production people is make sure that they’re consistent. We must make certain that the message is always on point and that we’re always headed in a direction that they want to head without killing creativity or spontaneity.

You have to tread a fine line. But, it is the responsibility of the producer to keep someone on point and relevant to their own message. You could get lost in the woods really easy through the process, through any creative process, and then the artist’s intent is never revealed fully.

Music Education

With an online music education you learn the knowledge and skills needed to guide artists during their music career and artistic journey. You learn about these and other important areas that studio personnel and production people manage on a daily basis.

The next thing with social media that also piggybacks on this story is really trying to bring your audience with you on some sort of journey. One of my favorite examples here is the wonderful Vulfpeck. They’re sort of a funk group out of LA. And something they did a few years ago was they wanted to do a national tour. But they were just out of college, and they really didn’t have the size following or the money to pull off a full tour.

So, they came up with kind of a funny idea. They posted a whole album on Spotify of complete silence. It’s called Sleepify. It was 10 songs, 30 seconds each, complete silence, no music. And the idea was they were going to reach out to their audience and say, “Do us this favor. For the next few weeks when you go to bed, play our album and press loop so the album is playing all night. And our hope is that maybe we’ll earn a little bit of money from Spotify, and we’ll be able to go on tour.”

Their fans start doing this, and the money starts coming in. After a couple weeks, there’s a few thousand dollars that have come in through the band. And, so they think, this has been amazing. It’s hilarious. Is there a way we can even raise the stakes more here?

So, they say to that same group of fans, not only if you keep doing it can we go on tour, but if you get your friends to do it, if we can really blow this thing up, we’ll make every date on the tour completely free.

They knew their audience. They knew their audience didn’t have a lot of money to spend. They knew that that would resonate with their audience. If there was a fan of theirs in a far-off city from where they were that never sees this band, they would happily go evangelize and tell their friends to do the Sleepify stunt so they could see the band for free.

So, it really blows up. Tons of people start doing it. The money is rolling in. Eventually, Spotify notices it because it’s a little bit controversial. They tear it down. That gets the band lots of press. At the end of the day, they ended up making tens of thousands of dollars from this. They were able to do the tour for free.

And to this day, their fans that were part of that still talk about it. Their fans feel like they were part of this journey with the band. And especially when you think about fans who might not have as exciting lives as an artist doing things like this, this is an amazing psychological thing to tap into. Make your fans feel like they’re part of what you’re doing.