L.A. Record Plant Closing

[Docbop]

Really sad to see an early part of my music life go away.     I was around the original  West 3rd St quite a bit back in the day.       Isn't the NYC Record Plant part of Berklee School of Music now or do they have the old Electric Ladyland????

 

Article on Record Plant closing

[J.F.N.]

Someone definitely is torn:

 

"Longtime studio engineer Gary Myerberg said: "There is no money in the recording music business. That's basically like a flyer for your show. I don't think there's much hope for the recording industry in L.A. ... If you want to go to the studio and spend $2,000 a day, just take that and buy a laptop and a sample library or tell AI what song you want to make, and it'll make it.”"

 

The industry has indeed changed and is in constant motion. About a decade and some ago, those who were in line with reality started reforming their business offering well equipped production suites, and high tech mix rooms, and possibly a booth or small room for overdubs etc. shared between the production suites.

[ProfD]

The Alesis ADAT was really the beginning of the end for big recording studios. 

 

Affordable recording technology enabled folks to get off the clock when it comes to studio fees (time, tape, duplication, etc.).

 

Retooling to accommodate digital tape and ProTools allowed big studios to stick to around for 3 more decades. Nice run.😎

 

[Reezekeys]

2 hours ago, Docbop said:

Isn't the NYC Record Plant part of Berklee School of Music now or do they have the old Electric Ladyland????

 

Avatar (originally the Power Station, now renamed "Power Station at BerkleeNYC")

[Reezekeys]

54 minutes ago, ProfD said:

The Alesis ADAT was really the beginning of the end for big recording studios

 

Maybe, but I remember it was common practice to start at home on ADATs then bring the machines to recording studios and dump to 2" to improve the sound of early digital. Then studios started buying ADATs and DA88s.

 

IMO when sample libraries improved to be almost indistinguishable from the real thing, that was kind of a tipping point. Pair those with convolution spaces and you could get away with not needing an actual studio space to capture the sound of acoustic instruments.

 

Then of course the style of music and music making making changed - EDM and modern pop can be produced sitting on a park bench, on an airplane flight or in a bedroom. Who needs studios?

[Geoff Grace]

I'm sad to see the closing of yet another world class studio. I worked at the LA Record Plant a few times during the 90s, and it was a great facility.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[ProfD]

8 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

Maybe, but I remember it was common practice to start at home on ADATs then bring the machines to recording studios and dump to 2" to improve the sound of early digital. Then studios started buying ADATs and DA88s.

Correct.

 

Some folks were using ADATs and DA88s to dump to  2" tape in a bigger studio.

 

Many smaller studios were built around those digital tape machines. Lower rates.
 

8 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

IMO when sample libraries improved to be almost indistinguishable from the real thing, that was kind of a tipping point. Pair those with convolution spaces and you could get away with not needing an actual studio space to capture the sound of acoustic instruments.

Right. For certain styles of music, those smaller studios were putting out radio-ready music.

8 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

Then of course the style of music and music making making changed - EDM and modern pop can be produced sitting on a park bench, on an airplane flight or in a bedroom. Who needs studios?

Bingo. That is the heiroglyphics, er, handwriting that was on the wall 30+ years ago when sequencers, digital tape machines and samples were being used to produce music.

 

Big studios survive because they 1) can accomodate larger scale recording projects and 2) have ties to record companies feeding them work.

 

Despite advances in technology and changes in music production processes, every aspect of the recording industry purposefully moves as slowly as a cruise ship making a U-turn in order to continue making money. 

 

But, a whole lot of folks took advantage of the technology, cut out the middle man and made a small fortune off the Vegas strip.😎

[RABid]

Everyone likes to blame AI, but AI has not really started affecting the music business. Programs like Ozone have enabled musicians to get closer to the mastered sound. The scary part will be when studios start using AI generation to replace the loss in business from musician's home studios, then start funneling those creations to TV and movie houses as sound track material.

[ProfD]

2 hours ago, RABid said:

Everyone likes to blame AI, but AI has not really started affecting the music business. Programs like Ozone have enabled musicians to get closer to the mastered sound. The scary part will be when studios start using AI generation to replace the loss in business from musician's home studios, then start funneling those creations to TV and movie houses as sound track material.

Considering that most film and TV music has been contracted out for several decades now, those music composers and producers might use AI to speed up their workflow, output and delivery. In that case, AI usage will be a tool for them and invisible to the customer and consumer. No different from CGI graphics.

 

Whether it's big studios closing due to competition from smaller studios or AI being used in commercial music, the folks most likely affected by emerging technology don't seem to be  complaining about it. There's a reason for that too. Folllow the money.😉😎

[ABECK]

9 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

 

Maybe, but I remember it was common practice to start at home on ADATs then bring the machines to recording studios and dump to 2" to improve the sound of early digital. Then studios started buying ADATs and DA88s.

 

I was a second engineer at the time (e.g. unpaid assistant....lol)  and this was fairly common at the time.  Both DA-88 and ADAT.  Then some studios got wise and started building B rooms based around multiple ADATs and the BRC.  Pro-tools was just starting take a foothold, but was a pricy medium because you really needed to buy the expensive DSP units to compete with 24 track machines for real-time recording.  I would say once computers got powerful enough to truly record and mix "in the box", that was the death knell of legacy studios.  I can't put a timeframe on when that was, but probably circa 2010 before you could really do everything well at home and put it up against studio work.  The real winners have been the companies that manufacture and sell to that market.  There are a MILLION mics, preamps, plugins, monitors, etc...designed, priced and marketed to the bedroom warriors.

[Reezekeys]

35 minutes ago, RABid said:

The scary part will be when studios start using AI generation to replace the loss in business from musician's home studios, then start funneling those creations to TV and movie houses as sound track material.

 

Couldn't someone sitting in their mom's basement use AI to generate music for TV and movie houses? At least do the writing. I can see the need for large rooms only for recording big budget film scores, broadway show soundtracks, etc.

 

I remember when midi demos were taking hold in the NYC jingle business. The writers hired synth programmers to do that stuff. Then they got wise and learned how to work the gear themselves. Synth programmers were back to doing weddings or maybe Broadway.

 

I predict that for most commercial music, a clever user of AI will be able to deliver everything to a client, start to finish. From their mom's basement.

[RABid]

12 minutes ago, Reezekeys said:

Couldn't someone sitting in their mom's basement use AI to generate music for TV and movie houses?

Yes they can. The difference is contacts. If I call a TV or movie producer and offer my music for one of their shows I'm fighting a big uphill battle just to get heard. I big, famous studio should already have contacts. Creation is half the process. Being heard is the real battle.

[J.F.N.]

2 hours ago, RABid said:

Yes they can. The difference is contacts. If I call a TV or movie producer and offer my music for one of their shows I'm fighting a big uphill battle just to get heard. I big, famous studio should already have contacts. Creation is half the process. Being heard is the real battle.

 

This is why the market for Library Production Music has totally exploded the last 5-10 years. Both Universal and SONY has created new big organisations for this, and BMG has been on a shopping spree the last 5 years buying up a bunch of independent library production music publishers and distributors. What used to be an open market with a lot of independent actors, is today controlled by the big ones. Luckily there are still some big independent actors out there running their growing business, like West One and APM (working as a distribution channel for a lot of smaller publishers) making it possible for new composers to get into the business, which with the big ones is completely impossible, it's become a huge walled area with closed ports!

 

I guess the major labels have understood where they need to dig today...

[AROIOS]

5 hours ago, ABECK said:

...I can't put a timeframe on when that was, but probably circa 2010 before you could really do everything well at home and put it up against studio work...

Yup, that was the time I told friends that big studios are done.
 

You can see the writing on the wall even in the late 90's, when Steinberg released Cubase VST. I remember the shock hearing a friend's full production done all in Cubase VST at the time. ASIO latency soon became low enough for real-time playing and monitoring, and so began the revolution of ITB production (or crapification if you ask Beato 😆).

 

[ProfD]

1 hour ago, AROIOS said:

You can see the writing on the wall even in the late 90's...

The lo-fi sound of Seattle's Grunge movement engineered by folks like Jack Endino and Steve Albini started the shift away from overly produced and polished big studio recordings.

 

Starting back in the early 1990s,  any garage, basement, carport, barn or driveway could be a studio with a mixer, recording device and a few mics.🤣😎

[AROIOS]

22 minutes ago, ProfD said:

...any garage, basement, carport, barn or driveway could be a studio with a mixer, recording device and a few mics.🤣😎

To this day I'm still fetishizing Bob Clearmountain's clever use of the stairwell behind PowerStation as a "magical" drum verb unit. 😃

[skipeb3]

I was around the Record Plant a lot '73-74, when it was on W 3rd. 

Glory days, for sure...

[Geoff Grace]

I don’t think there’s much point to me enumerating the advantages of recording at home. We all have experience in this area. I also acknowledge that there are many more obstacles these days to staying in the black when operating a dedicated recording facility. That said, there are a number of reasons why they haven’t all gone under yet. Here are some, off the top of my head:

 

There’s still a need for orchestral recordings, including classical music, cinematic music, and the creation of sampled orchestral libraries; and the home environment isn’t a viable option for those needs.

 

Even for other types of recordings, a dedicated studio offers a number of advantages, including world class gear, a great acoustic environment, a staff that pampers and caters to the needs of recording artists, and a Do Not Disturb sanctuary. For those who want this very thing and can afford it, the high-end studio remains an invaluable resource. As long as this type of clientele exists, enough studios will remain to serve them.

 

In other words, the golden age may be over; but the option is still valid.

 

As for the future, your guess is as good as mine.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Ivan May]

The LA record Plant was an excellent studio, and it will be missed by the many who sat in to record an album at the place, or even drop by and drool at all the memorabilia. Hopefully all that stuff will be put in a museum, or more inevitably, be auctioned off.

[SteveNathan]

On 7/17/2024 at 11:46 PM, Geoff Grace said:

Even for other types of recordings, a dedicated studio offers a number of advantages, including world class gear, a great acoustic environment, a staff that pampers and caters to the needs of recording artists, and a Do Not Disturb sanctuary.

I agree. The Golden Age is over, but there are still records that can’t be made entirely in Home Studios. As much as I’ve been pleased with the evolution of sampled & modeled pianos, it’s not the same as sitting at a 9 footer with $30,000 mikes and $50,000 worth of outboard through a giant Neve or SSL. 
Same for real drums and world class drummers. 
I also agree with Lee Sklar who finds it ironic that he started as a kid, playing bass in his bedroom, and now, 60 years later, he’s finishing his career playing mostly in bedrooms. 🙄