reyshizz

I recently put out an independent album and it cost me money, time and more time. It doesn’t compare to the amount the industry spends, but it’s enough to talk about. The following is a list of everything* that went into releasing Making of a Man.

Lyrics – Music without lyrics is just music. I sequenced the track list in a way that makes sense and wrote the lyrics in the order they came to me. This part of the process is pretty easy in my opinion. It only takes time and the love you have for the music.

Beats – Lyrics without beats is like poetry… sort of. I was fortunate enough to find a friend who had a CD of finished beats laying around in his house and he gave it to me for free. If you don’t have a producer friend, you’ll have to buy instrumentals from producers, create your own or team up with producers via MySpace or Soundclick. When I got the instrumentals, I matched them to the lyrics. Some of the beats inspired me to write new lyrics, which is cool too. Finding the right beat may be frustrating but once you get it, you got it.

A Studio – Now that you have you lyrics and beats, you’ll need to record it. Last year I purchased the minimum of equipment a person would need to record quality souunding music in their home. The following configuration cost me around $700.

• Microphone
• Mbox Mini 2 audio interface
• Mic stand
• Portable Booth
• Studio Monitors
• Headphone

If you don’t want to buy all of that equipment you can go to a studio and pay an hourly rate for the time you spend there. I have a friend with a studio who charges around $25-$30 per hour. If you decide to go this route, I suggest practice your song to death so that you don’t waste a lot of money recording.

CD Art Work – At the minimum you’ll need an album cover of some sort. I decided to go the professional route and got a photographer and designer to help me create my album art. I paid $200 for a 3 hour session with a photographer. At the end of the session I selected a few of my favorite pictures and handed them to a designer to edit and style it. Luckily the designer was a friend of mine (I have a lot of friends), and we exchanged services, instead of money. If you don’t have the $$ for a designer or photographer, you can be creative and DIY (do it yourself). If you need access to a photographer or designer you can search on Craigslist or Elance for either.

CD Printing – If you do not want to create a physical CD you can skip this part. I used Ultra Entertainment to print and duplicate all my CDs. The way it works is the more you print the cheaper it is per CD. At the time it cost me $864 to print 1000 CDs and get 100 flyers made. The physical artifact is good to hand out or sell at shows.

Digital Music Distribution – There are plenty of services on the web that you can use to get your music on digital music platforms such as Amazon Mp3, Lala, or iTunes. The one I am familiar with is TuneCore. Right now they charge about $47 to distribute your album across all (or most) the online Digital Music Distribution sites.

And that about wraps it up. Hopefully this will help you in your music making endeavors. Good luck!

*I left out blood, sweat, and tears .. lol