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Author Topic: Mastering Engineers: State of our industry  (Read 4757 times)

Thomas W. Bethel

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Re: Mastering Engineers: State of our industry
« Reply #15 on: April 25, 2008, 08:42:52 AM »

Jerry Tubb wrote on Wed, 23 April 2008 13:20

All Good Here.

Things rockin' along quite nicely for us.

JT


Cleveland, and the whole Nothern Ohio area, is a strange placewhen it comes to music and the business of music. There are more bands and performers than there are good places for them to perform in. Many clubs and bars either have a "pay to play" policy or you have to sell 50 + tickets in order to get paid. Cleveland has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum but we don't have any world class recording studios and at present there are no national rock and roll acts that call Cleveland home. The ceremony that inducts people into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not even done in Cleveland.

The musicians who I get to work with in my mastering studio are very talented and very good at their craft but a vast majority of them are doing music part time and are not making a living off their music. They perform for fun or for beer money. They don't have a lot of money and with the overall slowdown are not making the overtime that was providing them with additional monies for things like recording and mastering.

Cleveland is a rust belt city and a vast majority of high paying blue collar jobs have been lost either to overseas or a slow down in the economy. Workers at the Ford and Chevy plants that use to be making 80K a year or more are now working in Home Depot for $9.00 per hour. They don't have any extra money to work with and everything they get goes into paying their rent or buying food. Even skilled tradespeople like tool and die makers or millwrights are having a hard go of it as more and more plants close.

We do have a GREAT symphony orchestra and our Art Museum is second to none. The arts too are having a hard go right now because of the economy and because a lot of people have stopped their support of the arts because they are overwhelmed with groups looking for funding and only have so much to give. Much of the funding for the arts came from large corporations with their national headquarters here which are now having to downsize or have been bought out by someone somewhere else and they are closing down their Cleveland operations.

All in all it is a bleak outlook for the economy around here. The only place that seems to be doing really well is the Cleveland Clinic which in the not too distant future will own all the real estate from East 55 street to University Circle and from the lake to the industrial flats. I guess health care is profitable for some.

Northern Ohio is a GREAT place to live and I have lived here for my whole life. It is too bad that an area with really good resources and a diverse ethnic population is having such a hard go. Part of the problem is the politics of this geographical area with many mayors, city councils and city administrators worrying about minutia instead of worrying about the bigger picture. The city I live in spends more time worrying about the number of garbage bags you can put out for the trash collection than worrying about attracting new businesses so they can reduce the ever increasing tax burden on the average home owner.

JT I am glad things are going well for you. Austin is a really great city and one that seems to be growing by leaps and bounds on a yearly basis. Hope it all keeps going and growing. Best of luck......


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-TOM-

Thomas W. Bethel
Managing Director
Acoustik Musik, Ltd.
Room With a View Productions
http://www.acoustikmusik.com/

Doing what you love is freedom.
Loving what you do is happiness.

Jerry Tubb

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Re: Mastering Engineers: State of our industry
« Reply #16 on: April 25, 2008, 01:49:41 PM »

Thomas W. Bethel wrote on Fri, 25 April 2008 07:42

JT I am glad things are going well for you. Austin is a really great city and one that seems to be growing by leeps and bounds on a yearly basis. Hope it all keep going and growing.


Thanks for your kind words Thomas.

Many of the ups and downs you describe are ubiquitous.

We have our share here too (believe me). After all it ~ is ~ the music business.

No matter ones' situation, the positives seem to get counter balanced with negatives.

Consider Bob Ludwig for instance , he may charge over $5,000 to master a record, but his overhead has got to be astronomical, and the pressure to get it right on a 10 million unit release, and trying to maintain quality with Bruce RockStar asking him to push the volume level into distortion. Imagine what would happen if he let the negative aspects get to him.

Dwelling on those negatives too much could become an endless enigma & eat one alive... kinda like that black goo in the recent Spiderman movie.

So I try to stay focused on the positive side & as they say, make hay when the sun is shines.

Best Wishes

JT

p.s. I'm watching "Creature Comforts" on the Animal Planet channel right now to make me laff out loud and help burn off the stress of the week.
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Terra Nova Mastering
Celebrating 20 years of Mastering!

Thomas W. Bethel

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Re: Mastering Engineers: State of our industry
« Reply #17 on: October 22, 2008, 03:08:27 PM »

There still is lots of work around the BIGGEST problem is finding it. We are still getting lots of live concert recording work, lots of video work and our mastering has picked up. We hired a part time promotions director and he has been doing lots to help us spread the word. He was able to get our site to come up in the top ten spots when you search for Mastering in Northern Ohio which was something that never happened before. We also had an intern working this summer that did our new web site http://www.acoustikmusik.com/ and redesigned all of our graphics. Now if the economy picks up or at least stays level we will be going GREAT!
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Thomas W. Bethel
Managing Director
Acoustik Musik, Ltd.
Room With a View Productions
http://www.acoustikmusik.com/

Doing what you love is freedom.
Loving what you do is happiness.
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