Living in the heart of a music mecca like New York, Nashville, Austin, LA, Seattle etc., no doubt has its advantages when you’re trying to get your music career moving. You’re in the thick of it, and there’s no shortage of talent, resources or inspiration to draw from. Up until about 2010, if you wanted a career in music, you basically had no choice but to move to a big city. But so much has changed over the last several years, and that’s not necessarily the case anymore. In fact, more and more musicians, artists and creatives are leaving the high rent of the big city behind to find a better quality of life in more rural locations. Here are a few unique resources to help kickstart your music career when you’re not living in the heart of a buzzing music scene.
Online Music Collaboration/Creation Via SkyTracks.io
One of the biggest challenges when working remotely with others on a music project is establishing an easy way to share audio files, preview new tracks and perform initial editing and mixing as part of the collaborative process. While there are a number of file sharing apps out there, when you’re collaborating with others on a music project, downloading the latest files via a general file sharing utility, and then importing them into your DAW can be time consuming and inefficient. SkyTracks is an innovative, high quality audio file sharing and multitrack online music mixer all in one, that makes the process of online music collaboration fun and easy. You can easily setup a SkyTracks project and then invite others to participate by listening to your tracks and uploading their own - directly into a shared SkyTracks online music mixer. The mixer offers essential editing as well as direct-to-cloud recording capability, in addition to integration (in the near future) with leading professional DAWs.
Online Music Production Via AirGigs
If you’re a songwriter, one of the biggest challenges can be finding talented musicians to bring your songs to life. Even if you live in a big city, it can be tough to connect with serious session musicians for hire, if you don’t run in certain circles. In addition to finding good session players, you also have to find a good studio and engineer, and then put all the pieces together. So, if you don’t live near a thriving music scene, it can be all the more challenging to cut a great track. Online production offers a unique solution to some of these issues. When you hire an online session musician, they will be tracking parts from their own recording studios, and sending files back and forth online. So in essence, you’re getting the musician, the recording studio and the engineer all in one. Using a platform like AirGigs gives you access to an extensive global talent pool where you can read reviews from past clients, preview audio samples and contact multiple artists to discuss your project. AirGigs also acts as an intermediary to protect your payment, if the session musician fails to deliver. Working with online session musicians and engineers can be an appealing option if you’re comfortable producing your own tracks. If you’re not, then a new and interesting option to consider is multitrack licensing.
Multitrack Music Licensing Via RocketSongs
Top artists regularly have publishers pitch them great original songs to record and make their own. But up until recently, the same access to quality original material just wasn’t there for indie artists. When using a service like RocketSongs, indie artists can easily license great hand-picked original tracks in popular genres. This is an exciting feature because until Rocket Songs, there was no easy way for an artist without a major deal to even hear original songs written for some of the best publishing houses in the U.S. One of the advantages to working with a service like RocketSongs is that you can receive the mixed instrumental tracks as part of their Expanded License, or with a Master License, you get the complete original multitrack audio stems and files to use however you want. So if you’re a vocalist (minus a band), you can add your vocals to the pre-existing tracks, have it mastered, and voila - you’ve got a song from publishing houses responsible for some of the hits that have helped shape popular music.
The article was written by David Blacker. David is a guitarist, producer, songwriter, instructor and co-founder of AirGigs