A couple of months ago, I wrote about the challenges musicians face trying to recoup their recording costs. Specifically, I asked how bands and musicians that do not tour frequently recover these expenses when the general public wants their music for free? Jimmy Ether, a musician, engineer and studio owner responded with such thoughtful and detailed comments that I thought his reply would be better suited as its own post, so here it is:

"Hey man, just taking a peak at your blog and thought I'd offer my perspective on all this. First, a little correction on the recording side of thing. There is a big difference in major label and indie rates in the recording business. There are literally dozens of good recording studios in every major city who provide great quality recording at around $500 a day, and a lot of those are having to cut deals to entice the home recordists to step up in quality. $1500/day studios are strictly for major label acts and there isn't a single sane independent artist that would use them.

That said, it would be quite impossible in this day and age to track and record an album in less than a week and you'd need another week to mix (unless you are, like Frank Black, going completely live to 2-track. Most records take about 3 to 4 weeks. But, you're price is pretty close. Most quality indie "studio" records are made in between $4000-$10,000.

I agree that there is no way the industry can function on a entirely free model, but I also firmly believe that most bands and labels are far too short-sighted with their tight-hold on their music. Free music goes both ways. If you can entice (essentially link-bait) press, bloggers, fanatical music lovers, etc. to write, talk, review, distribute and promote your music by giving them music for free, then your gain far outweighs your cost (in fact, in digital, the cost is essentially nil provided that the person otherwise would never have purchased it). There just have to be terms and limits. You have to figure out the value of a digital asset verses the potential value of an action resulting from allowing that asset to be given to someone free. The more direct control you have over that, the better return on investment.

There is also a pricing:convenience ratio. If the price is reasonable enough and the payment/download process is significantly easier than dealing with P2P, a large enough percentage of people will buy the download to make it profitable. $1 a song... is *not* that price.

I'd love to see a number on the budget being spent to subvert P2P file-sharing. If that amount were instead spent on making the experience easier for the consumer and *especially* on artist development (which is basically non-existent these days), then the industry as a whole would be in a much better position.

People who trade on P2P are a label and band's best friend when you get the model right. They are DJs sans-payola. P2P is the new radio. It is practically impossible for an indie-band to get attention without them. Just look at the correlation between the artists who are traded on these networks with the playlists on top college radio, 'zine coverage, indie store sales rankings, paid digital downloads, and blog coverage. Is it that the media is feeding the P2P? Nope, because the records are getting leaked (by, *cough* smart label promoters) to P2P *way* before even press copies get mailed. They'll never admit that in public, but the smart ones know it works.

I'm not saying the Radiohead model works. It doesn't, *unless* you are already a famous artist on the level of Radiohead. They only rose to that level because millions of dollars were spent in the promotion of their previous albums. Promotion costs a lot of money and far eclipses production and manufacturing costs. That's a budget that has to come from somewhere. And where to find that money is the major problem we face with new industry models.

Good blog BTW!"

Great feedback Jimmy, and I agree with you that P2P can certainly be a musician/band's best friend "when you get the model right." This philosophy also seems to be the direction Larry Lessig is suggesting, as seen in this video - as it becomes a middle ground where P2P becomes the distribution vehicle for music, but artists are still compensated.

Again, thanks for your detailed reply, and best wishes in 2008!

Btw readers, the picture in this post is of Jimmy Ether's  studio.

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As I finished this post, I was listening to: Melpo Mene - Hello Benjamin via FoxyTunes