This article was written in 1996, just after the making of Confession. An updated version of this article written in 2006 based on the experience of making Parachute can be found here.

What’s it cost Bar to make a CD?

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I'm often asked how it is that I got into recording and how I learned to be an independent recording artist. I confess that at first, being an independent, or un-signed artist - which is to say, an artist without funding from a record company - was a fact, not a choice. I was independent because no one else was putting up the dough! And because of that independence, I've had to learn a fair amount about how recordings are made, how to pay for them, how recording studios work and how to produce my own music. I'm always surprised when people don't realize that a full-length CD recorded independently -that is, on a 'shoestring'- still costs upwards to $15,000.

So, because I love everything about recording and creating music, and because I love to tell people about how this industry works, I'm starting a dialogue - which I hope that you will join in on - about what we musicians do. I’ll be telling you my angle on things like why CDs cost so much, what some of the equipment looks like and how it works, how we're payed, finding and hiring musicians, lawyers and publishers and generally letting you know what I know about this corner of the universe. I'll be gearing the conversation to people who are not in the music business initially, but I hope that songwriters and non-songwriters alike will jump in with comments and questions whenever they're inspired. Over time I'll post interviews with other writers, music lawyers, publishers and related professionals so that you'll learn more about what they all do, too. I hope that you will return often and see how the conversation has evolved.

To set the stage, I'll answer a couple of questions that you might have asked me first:

Q: How did you get started making your own CDs?
A: I recorded my first CD, Silence is Broken, in 1992. For you Bar Scott historians out there, Different Shoes was recorded in 1987, but was never released because, well, it was pretty awful! Never discount these disasters! They are part of the process and need never see the light of day. Anyway, in the early '90s, artists were not recording their own CDs like they are today. The technology was not consumer friendly - which is to say that it was much too expensive for the normal Josephine to own. But I was determnined to record my songs for posterity anyway, and frankly, I was on a mission. My motto was: if no one else will put up the money, I will!

I was living in Manhattan at the time playing keyboards in the Lisa Marcus Band, and was impressed by how Lisa was able to attract excellent players to her band. I learned that she did this simply by paying them well! An important lesson: surround yourself with great musicians and PAY THEM.

I was doing performances of my own songs very sporadically around the city at that time, and soon realized that the only way that I could continue to pay my band was to have something to sell at my shows. I needed a CD. (aka “product” - a heart-wrenching way to describe my musical baby!)

I must interject here that most singer-songwriters earn very little - if any - when they perform. Often it costs money for us to play because we have to pay our supporting musicians regardless of whether the venue is paying us a fee. Too often they are not. More on that later......

Q: How did you pay for your recordings?
A: I have to be very honest when I answer this question. Everyone's situation is different when it comes to resources, and I had an advantage. I don't have a sweat-and-tears answer to this question because I was fortunate enough to have some money in the bank when I started my first CD, courtesy of my parents and grandparents. Together they had saved money for me over the course of my lifetime and I was given those savings when I turned 21. I used some of that money to start my producton company. And as much as I am forever grateful for their gifts, I have to tell you the down-side: I was neither hungry nor desperate for anyone else's help. If I had been, I may have been more driven to find some more traditional source of funding like from a record company. However, I was in no way independently wealthy. I had resources but they were not limitless, so I had to raise some money.

My strategy was to do what other businesses do: develop a business plan and sell it to potential investors. I figured out how much it would cost to record Silence is Broken (studio time, musician fees, printing, duplicating, etc etc), and after I did that I sent a copy of the business plan along with a demo cassette of 3 songs to EVERYONE I'd ever known (and I mean EVERYONE! You just can't be shy!!) I described the project, my dreams for it and my financial needs and asked each person to consider buying an hour of studio time for me at $60/hour. To my great joy, people responded enthusiastically and before a month was over I'd been given over $8000 - well on my way to the $10,000 I'd anticipated that the recording would cost. (It ended up costing around $14,000 - and before you lose any more oxygen over that fact, remember that later on I will explain in detail WHY recordings cost so much....)

I highly recommend that you artists and musicians who are reading this try a similar approach when you do your first major project. What I discovered was that my friends and acquaintances were and are excited by my wanting to follow my dreams. They were so in to it that they wrote a check to support me! This is important to comprehend. Be sure to be very explicit, careful and honest about your request and you too might be surprised by the response.

Confession, released in 1995, was different. I couldn't use the same fund-raising approach twice, and the savings my parents had given me were all but depleted, so I simply sold the CD in advance. When I was mid-way through recording, when I knew that in fact I would finish it, I contacted everyone again, and asked them to buy the CD and told them that they would receive it three months later. This time my mailing list was bigger and made up of more than family and friends, but because I was asking for a $15 purchase VS a $60 investment, my "take" was relatively lower - a bit more than $5000. Confession cost a little less than Silence Is Broken: about $13,999! OUCH!

Now, here we are today and Grapes and Seeds is just being released as I type this and a lot has changed. First of all, my savings are truly gone! Nothing like having a baby and stopping work to empty out a bank account! Best decision I ever made, but that's another subject.

My husband and I realized soon after my son was born that the only way to get this CD done was to be able to record at least some of it at home while he napped. We invested in enough equipment to make that possible and I was off and running. You would think that recording at home would have made the cost of Grapes and Seeds less than its predecessors, but NOOOOOOO! I digress. First I must tell you how it is that I did pay for it. (Or should I say, "am paying"?)

I did two things: I opened one of those credit card accounts that offers you a 2.9% interest rate on your loan for six months, AND, I sold chocolate Grapes and Seeds CDs in advance (at Christmas time to maximize my selling opportunity. Crass, I know, but this is a business, remember!). This time I told my ever-faithful mailing list that they would get the chocolate CDs immediately, that the audio CDs would come later, but that I needed their money NOW! I am still evaluating the success of this strategy. I think that it was creative and fun, and I did recoup the cost of the chocolate, but I think that most of the people who bought the chocolate would have bought the CD without the candy carrot, so perhaps I wasted a little time with the diversion. The chocolate generated about $3000 in sales. I did learn one very important lesson: it is easier to design and manufacture chocolate CDs than audio CDs, and they taste better too!

For those of you who are counting, Grapes and Seeds ended up costing nearly $15,000 even with the home studio. YOW!

And for the rest of you who are counting different numbers, you’ll see that my income from these selling strategies went down instead of up over the years. I've had to ask myself why, and try to be honest with myself about the reason for that trend. This is the trouble with being an independent artist: you have to evaluate for yourself why some things are working and some are not, and sometimes that can hurt. In fact, a lot of times that can hurt! Because I feel confidident that my work is getting better and that my shows are more successful than in previous years, my assessment is that people are waiting to see me live, or are waiting 'til the CD's done this time, or that they simply don't like chocolate!

Q: Why do CDs cost so much? I heard they only cost a dollar or so to duplicate??
A: The simple answer is that CDs cost so much because they are expensive to record. True, it doesn’t cost much to duplicate them, but there’s a lot more to it.

For instance, each of my three CDs cost about $15,000 to record and manufacture. Initially, I pressed 1000 copies of each. Easy math. Each individual CD cost me $15 to make. Needless to say, when you buy a copy of one of my records for $15, I do not make any money. I simply pay off some more of my debt. It’s only after I sell 1000 copies that I begin to earn anything. And believe me, it’s hard to sell 1000 copies without any support - and most independent musicians do not have support. By ‘support’ I mean a booking agent, a radio promoter and/or a distributor. By 'independent' I mean someone who uses their own money and muscle to get their music out to their listeners.

In the case of Silence is Broken which I released in 1992, I did not begin seeing a profit until the winter of 1998. The same is true of confession which I released in 1995. I am happy to say, though, that at this point, every time I sell a copy of either of those CDs, I average about $10 profit depending on where the CD is purchased. Grapes and Seeds, just released, is still very much in the red, although I expect it to turn a profit sooner than the two earlier CDs. But let's do a bit more math: let’s just say that I would like to earn $40,000 a year - a good and reasonable salary - I’d have to sell 4000 CDs per year over and above the intial 1000 CDs that I would have to sell to recover my costs; not an easy thing to do.......unless of course, someone like you buys another copy.........

But I digress......
    Recording Grapes & Seeds at Nevessa Studios.
From top: Bar, Forrest, and Peter; You know who; Bar and Chris mixing; What Chris does when he's not in the studio; Gary Burke at drums; Forrest and Bar exhausted.

Q: $15,000!!!How can it cost that much? Jeez. It’s only about 40 minutes of music!!! Where have all the dollars gone???
A: I could spend more if you like!

No. Really. This is expensive stuff we’re talkin’ about. Every musician/producer spends her money differently, but my budget for Grapes and Seeds will give you a general sense of how easily money can be spent when recording a full length CD.

Grand total: $15,450.

YOW! It is easy to spend money, isn’t it?

Q: I only see a mixing cost in your budget? How much did it cost to record? And by the way, what are mixing and mastering anyway?
A: Very observant of you!

The recording budget for Grapes and Seeds was sort of zero. That is, I did all of my vocals and some of my piano recordings at home. I invested in about $4200 worth of recording gear so that I could record while my baby slept. It was the only way that the record would get done, and it was really the only way that I could afford it financially as well. My 8-track was $2000, my mic (a Neuman T-103) was $900, the mic pre-amp was $1200, and the headphones I used for monitoring were $125. I already owned a small mixing board and the rest is history....

As to what mixing is, it’s the final phase of engineering in the recording studio. During mixing, the producer decides how much of each performance you are going to hear on the CD: more or less lead vocal, more or less piano or bass, etc etc. It’s during mixing that the EQ and effects for each performance are committed to tape. Details on all of that in a later article. Mastering is the absolute final engineering on a CD. The mastering engineer is generally a different person than the recording engineer. He or she puts the songs in order, and puts the overall EQ, volume and compression on the final master which is delivered to the pressing plant. This is a critical and often under-rated phase of production by independents trying to save a few bucks.

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