Anyone is willing to master my track for free PLEASE ?

[Cryptic UK]

H20nly will bum you. . . . . for free

[H20nly]

Bwaahaahaahahahahaha!!!

[3phase]

Seriously though, the best part of that turd you just dropped is you recommending your buddy's ''low cost'' mastering services.

hi,

This is not the first time he has asked. Tone and I helped him last time.

Cheers[/quote]

and its still the same track he needs to be propperly mastered?

[leedsquietman]

That was actually quite funny

[SubFunk]

*sigh*
alright. I give up. yes. the music industry is on it's knees and it's impossible to make a living from it

no one said that, it is not possible...

but it's harder, much harder, more people / companies are involved, yes, but the incomes and margins shrink.

that is what i am saying.

especially in the field of audio services, that is what we where talking about... not about being successful as an artist itself, but if you are a in the service field, the incomes and employments have shrink... to extends that are ridiculous.

even the worlds largest audio event company procon is backed up heavily by banks and does not develop margins to keep itself alive anymore just out of the actual work they do. they are the ones doing most of the 'giga' concert world tours, the last olympics, etc. (just one example, i am really not up for writing long lists here, sorry... )

in germany the prices paid for FOH engineers dropped by over half the last couple of years... etc.

man, i work in this environment since i am 14/15*** (started next to school in my free time, with a break of doing photography for 6 years after school, then back full time into audio) worked and lived across europe for 11 years and always worked in the audio environment, from events, concerts to studios, as an artist (DJ / Producer / Remixer), promoter and i am an ex - electronic music club owner, etc.
and i know a hell lot of people and company owners (many extremely famous ones that now have jobs aside, because of the low[erd] incomes, go figure... )

*** i know i am cocky, just live with that.

it is still possible to live from it, of course... but it is not as easy anymore, believe me.
and the quality went ape shit, the quantity raised like hell, though...

i still live from it, but i really, really assure you it's harder, at least in europe... prices are simply fooked.

and one of the reasons, that's why i am against to many freebees, is bedroom bedlams with no clue offering there mediocre work for free or next to nothing, it's destructive.

cheers

and believe me i am not bitter, and i don't have problems with the amount of people being involved, if the quality would be still up to par...

did you read my SAE guy story? well, it is unfortunately no fiction / lie, nor an rare exception...

and this is the future flooding the market wanting to earn money from it...

[distaudio]

more people / companies are involved, yes, but the incomes and margins shrink.

So true.

And based on that, you would think that any musician/producer could find someone with quality mixing/mastering skills for a price of their choosing?

There are plenty of people offering mastering services for as low as 20 odd dollars a track.
Here is a perfect place to start.
http://www.esession.com/home/index.php

Put your job up on the board, name your price and people in those fields will send you there offers/rates.

Also, with the fact that you are paying for a services. That means you have free licence to complain that it is not up to par. If someone is doing it for free you would probably feel less inclined to send something back (Well I would anyway).

I'm currently working with a guy who I originally wanted to mix my album. I found him through a local artist whose music he mixed and I dug his work. He only charges $50 a track. But he is worth far more than that small price. As a result of working with him for almost 6 months now, I have learnt so much from him.

He has expressed that he really digs my music (and that is really important) and our working relationship has matured enough that I trust him with my music. As a result, now he is also mastering and producing my album as well. He has never produced other peoples work before, but he has shown a natural skill for it. We haven't even finished the album, yet he has offered to do the next one.

So find someone who needs the cash and is just starting out but has shown he/she has a flair for what they do.
They will be eternally greatful not only for the cash but also the experience of working with clients and also the potential exposure.

[leedsquietman]

Paying ANYTHING to help was what was being ridiculed, like musicians/producers/engineers etc should give it all up and 'do the right thing for a fellow brother' once in a while. So your $20 mastering and $50 per track mixing are not considered any help in this equation, unfortunately.

Which is fine I suppose, but the problem therein is that if everyone took that attitude, it would immediately have a bigger knock on effect and devalue services as Axel put in his post - skilled rates in music have taken a hit. Will a junkie pay for a score if he can get it for free ?? Do these recipients of goodwill then pay it forward ? If it was more based on an EXCHANGE of skills, i.e. someone who is good at remixing but not mastering offers to remix some tracks for a dude/dudette if they can do mastering for him then this is a better scenario than take, take, take.

This is one reason why it's recommended to be very sparing even as someone just starting out to free help. You can easily build a client base from free but after a while when you start to ask for compensation for your time and skills, much of this base will disappear because they are looking for a sucker to do the work for free, or for cheap as chips.

Whatever, most of us live in at least a partial democracy, where it's in our right to ask the question 'Will you do ... for free' and if people bite then fine, the recipient has got a deal. I think the biggest problem lies in the delivery of the question and the REPEATED requests for help - if you show a junkie a warehouse of free blow, of course he's going to keep coming back time and again to help himself until it's depleted. It's also OK to question or debate this too.

Nick Mason and Ewan McGregor might well give back to charitable causes, but if they were told that now they're rich enough everything from hereon in is gratis, they might just be a bit peeved about it ...

[Z3NO]

Well, I'm glad civilised debate is back and order in class is restored! (temporarily at least)

Subfunk. You don't have to convince me that engineers (most of them) are getting paid less for the same work they did a while back. That's not really the point I was trying to make. And everything I've said about musicians also applies to the rest of the service industry.
The only things I was trying to point out, were that contrary to what leeds stated, the Music Industry itself is NOT shrinking, and neither the amount of money generated by it. It is the amount of people sharing the initial wealth that is growing disproportionately, so naturally we each take a smaller cut. Also, the view that people offering free services are somewhat responsible for other peoples loss of revenue, may seem apparent at first, but just like other similar simplistic views (ie like blaming immigration for unemployment) is largely inaccurate. It isn't the few people who offer free labour who undermine any particular economy, quite the contrary, they are a by-product of an increasing economy and growing competition, and looking at it from the Industry's perspective, is a good thing. That's all.

To give an example: when I started taking part in raves in '94, drawing crowds was easy as sunday morning. All you had to do was put the word out something was taking place, and your only worry was to keep it from getting out of hand and that police be involved. Times were lush. By 2000, dance music we used to call Underground had hit the mainstream and superclubs became tourist meccas the world over. People queuing outside Fabric in London would wait 4 hours to get in while places like Ibiza, which enjoyed a long running as an exclusive destination for such cultures started losing momentum.
We're now in 2010, and Fabric's promoters would toast to success if the club was half full on a saturday night. Hosting independent parties and hoping to make a profit has become pretty much impossible. (with few exceptions of course).
Is dance music dying a rapid death? According to many people, yes it is. Numbers and data on the other hand, suggest otherwise. A website like Beatport arguably generates more revenue in a single day, than all of London's street record shops combined in a whole year! I hear Ricardo Villalobos on my way home in a cab. The number of people taking part in the dance music industry have reached unprecedented proportions (or is everyone in this forum an old-timer?) and many, many of those people succeed in a way or another.
So while we can be certain that the good ole sunny days of outdoor raving will never return, we can also see that our wish that 'everyone should experience this awesome feeling... dude' has definitely come true.

[SubFunk]

^^^ ah, now we understand each other.

but i personally don't see the high accessibility as positive, not at all.

at least not in terms of the people then trying to provide a service... and that was our initial point of discussion, not the accessibility of music or events.

as to your example that beatport generates more revenue then the record stores in london in a day, well that is no surprise, how many record stores are left to be able to generate revenue first of all...?

i really get what you say... i just find it very negative people offering average services for low money. that type of accessibility is to me is a bad thing, i tell you why... the guy that can't afford that kind of service (sticking to the topic of the OP and assuming it would be all reasonable priced as it used to be) is then forced to LEARN it properly himself... making the product in the long run a real good product... and himself a great & highly skilled producer, now he gets average shit for free or low... quickly! hmmm i don't know.*** (to me a major key problem anyway, today everything has to be fast and now... no passion anymore to take time to develop something real good and deep... but whatever, there i am really oldskool and probably lost)

***no offence to UKRuss (i know he doesn't have a bad skill set), i just use that as an example of what is going on in general and how it does affect negatively, the amount of badly produced tracks i get sent a month prove that, or go to beatport and listen, most of it is unplayable production wise, not talking musical taste, just the plain production quality is bad, and i know that it is even for beatport for example a problem, they are also torn between the beauty of so many people being able to make music and on the other hand the rapid loss of quality.

but this is how it is and the development is going more and more and faster and faster into that direction (cheap shit i mean)... and i know for certain i want stop it, no matter what my opinion is.

still i like to express my thoughts on it.

peace.

[dum]

still i like to empty my bowels on it.

[SubFunk]

runs to mommy falls into her lap and cries.

[distaudio]

If it was more based on an EXCHANGE of skills, i.e. someone who is good at remixing but not mastering offers to remix some tracks for a dude/dudette if they can do mastering for him then this is a better scenario than take, take, take.

Whatever, most of us live in at least a partial democracy, where it's in our right to ask the question 'Will you do ... for free' and if people bite then fine, the recipient has got a deal. I think the biggest problem lies in the delivery of the question and the REPEATED requests for help - if you show a junkie a warehouse of free blow, of course he's going to keep coming back time and again to help himself until it's depleted. It's also OK to question or debate this too.

Sure an exchange of skills is fine. But it seems that in this case this is not what will happen.

If you have nothing to negotiate with, you pay, simple as that.

I also understand that most of us do live in a democracy and that people can say as you said 'Will you do ... for free'.
Also with that democracy, people are given the freedom to criticize that request.

So your $20 mastering and $50 per track mixing are not considered any help in this equation, unfortunately.

I wasn't trying to say that everyone should do what I have done. I was merely pointing out the advantages I have found by taking the cause of action I have.

[leedsquietman]

Hey, I'm not arguing against either of these points, I'm with you on both scores.

I'm just surprised that you weren't jumped on for making these suggestions by the forum communists and goodwill ambassadors who argue that we should give some (or all) of our services for free.

[SubFunk]

forum communists and goodwill ambassadors

ROFL

btw, be happy you don't live in berlin, here you have plenty of those running around in real.

[3dot...]

those damn commies...