Dimensión Social

Should you decide as a producer that a PIM is good, but you’re losing track of your word processed invoices and your spreadsheets, perhaps it is time to look into the smaller CRM solution.

This is not to go the high-tech end, which we’ll discuss shortly, but if you just want some sensible software to manage your own version of CRM and some billings. A really neat solution we’ve come across is Daylite (available for down- load at www.marketcircle.com). Daylite integrates well with Apple Mail with the additional Daylite Mail Integrator. It is also scaleable up to multiple users as your company grows.

Daylite is a solid CRM that can run locally and improve the way in which you interface with your clients especially with Mail Integration. Another aspect to CRM work is how it manages your billing and invoicing. Marketcircle’s Billings software is also very good and integrates to Daylite, making a relatively low-cost, yet effective, Mac-based system.

Daylite from Marketcircle is a good general CRM system for the individual or small firm. With some iPhone integration and with some additional bolt-ons, it becomes fantastic for Mail integration and for billing.

Big Boy crms

CRMs are by their nature scaleable systems. Some large corporations will wish to keep a file per customer and all their correspondence. You’ll recall the telephone con- versation with customer services where they say “please hold while I bring up your records.” They’re entering in your customer number, or last name, in a hope that there are plentiful details of the complaint you made last week. This is the CRM at its best, working to serve the whole customer service team, and to ensure that the com- pany gives a parity of response to the same customer from many different angles. That’s at the top end, although you might, if you escalate to having a number of people working for you, wish to have the same shared knowledge. Even as a one-man band, you may still wish to employ the services of a small CRM system locally on your Mac, especially if it offers you some semblance of order among the myriad projects you’re engaged in.

There are those CRMs that are truly meant for the professional markets, such as ACT by Sage and Dynamics CRM by Microsoft. These both are server-based intensive systems for larger corporations. There are web-based systems such as SalesForce, which is highly thought of.

music sPecific crms

None of these systems really pander to the music production community. For CRM work, you could design and operate your own system. Many geekier pro- ducers and engineers we know have used Filemaker to design and develop their own CRM style database. The geeks among us will know what this is like! However, there are those who have taken this to a whole new level.

Using Filemaker as a platform on which to write a database, companies like Apogee during the 1990s, with the help and idea of the famous engineer, Bob Clearmountain, created a system called Session Tools. This was one of the first CRMs specifically for the studio. It would allow you to keep all your contacts in one place, alongside both billing and also total recall notes (notes of all the settings on your favorite kit for each session for recalling at a later date). This was in those days a fantastic introduction to what would be developed later by other companies such as AlterMedia and Farmers WIFE.

Next up is AlterMedia’s Studio Suite, which has championed the studio database on the Filemaker platform. As you can see below, this is a comprehensive suite for the studio and perhaps producer also.

Studio Suite, unlike a common CRM, has the ability to not just simplify your office but also manage your studio and organize your tech. This is a powerful database that manages billing, bookings, and patchbay labeling.

There are other systems you could come into contact with when booking, or indeed choose for your family. Studios such as Strongroom and AIR in London choose a system called Farmers WIFE which can also integrate with staff members’ iPhones, meaning that the studio schedule can be with you at all times, if they’ll let you access it!

concluSIon

We hope that this chapter gives some insight into the being of a producer. It takes social skills, musical creativity, and personal integrity. Add to that mix some organizational skills, which we’ll look into in a little bit more detail in Chapter B-3, Being a Business and later in Chapter C-3, Project Management. Studio Suite is one of the major studio management tools around and should you get your own facility, this could be a sensible CRM. For many of the studios you may work within this could also be their choice.

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What is Music Production. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-240-81126-0.00004-4

© 2011 Russell Hepworth-Sawyer and Craig Golding. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

IntroduCtIon

The music industry is not only built on a strong foundation—music—but also its greatest commodity—people. As a producer, it is the people you’ll meet, collaborate with, write with, engineer for, and do business with that make up what Napoleon Hill called a person’s “mastermind alliance.” Hill, one of the first gurus of personal achievement, in 1937 asserted the benefits of a group of like-minded people “working in perfect harmony toward a common definitive objective.” Many among you reading this will think we’ve gone mad, but there’s some synergy between Hill’s thoughts back in the 1930s and the music produc- ers of the 2010s.

The team you use, amassed from years of collaboration, fun and business, will become the group that mastermind you to success. No producer chooses to work with a less able drummer or engineer than he or she has to, unless there is some loyalty that keeps connecting them.

Of many industries it is said “It’s who you know, not what you know” and never more aptly could it be applied to an industry than to ours. Making the best of your team to deliver on a project is part of the day-to-day work of the producer. It is important to select the right kind of team to work with that share the bal- ance of solid working ethics with a sense of open innovation, making you open to possible experimentation.

There’s an excitement we all feel when we’re in the studio capturing a “moment” or writing music that moves us. This excitement is often where the options to choose different outcomes present themselves. Inspiration comes at certain unplanned times and we require the flexibility to embrace these serendipitous opportunities as they emerge.

This chapter focuses on the people the average producer will come into contact with and how they fit into the music production jigsaw. Starting with the artist, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

moving through to any personal assistants you may hire, we discuss how the mastermind alliance for the producer connects and thrives.

Sir George Martin at a recent charity event we attended responded to a question from the audience about the importance of the record producer and suggested that the order might look something like the following, finishing his response with “to hell with the producer” to an audience of laughter.

1. Composer 2. Performer 3. Producer 4. Engineer 5. The rest!

Martin identified that without the music creation, there’s not much for the performer (artist) to go at and that the producer is much farther down the list of important people. We’ll begin by adopting this order.

Composer(s)

The composers are of primary importance to the process. Their music generation is the germ of the success through which the interpretation of the band and the production team provide vital assistance. Without the song, whether internally (by the artist) or externally written (by another writer), the production is not going to get very far.

Working with songwriters, whether internal or external, can prove difficult. Often conflict within the band or the production team can occur as differing opinions come to the fore. As the producer you will try to smooth over disagree- ments where possible and bring the music to the best fruition possible.

This can be difficult in situations where the songwriter is resistant to external influence, stifling the production of the song. Imagine a situation such as this where you, as the producer, can see clearly that improvements can be made to a song to make it a hit, while the songwriter is remaining resistant.

Other conflicts can occur between the songwriter and the band along the same lines inasmuch as the band wish to develop, or get in on the writing process, and are given the cold shoulder by the writer. As producer, it is perhaps likely that your inclination will be to accept and try out, wherever possible, every idea that comes your way.

Many producers do not see themselves as the be all and end all in such situa- tions. Of course, many producers have to be decisive and lead the way, but most we have spoken to agree that they are rarely dogmatic enough to suggest their ideas are the only way forward. In many of our conversations, the words facilita-

tor and decision maker are commonplace.

However decisive they are, they will have to deal with conflict inside and out- side the studio as we’ll discuss in Chapter D-1, The Session. Needless to say, the producer’s management of these situations is paramount.

Being a producer is a lot like being part of a larger company or corporation as this diagram shows. These people make up your mastermind alliance.

Nevertheless, a shared view from all the producers we have spoken to in prepara- tion for this book is that the song is the most important thing in production. As such, the composition and the composer should be developed and understood to assist the production.