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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
CD Baby offers automated track mastering
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 23 May 2019
DIY distributor CD Baby has announced a new partnership with automated mastering service CloudBounce, which will allow artists and labels that use its platform to (as you may have guessed already) automatically master their tracks.
“A large segment of the indie artist community is drastically changing how they release music”, says Kevin Breuner, VP of Marketing at CD Baby. “There is definitely a shift to releasing songs as soon as they are finished instead of the traditional album release. As artists release more and more singles, this [new partnership] gives them mastering options that fit within their budget and workflow. CloudBounce ensures these artists’ master recordings have the final touches needed to sound totally pro”.
Mastering will cost $4.90 per track and is generally complete a few minutes after a recording has been uploaded to CloudBounce’s system – with the option for musicians to tinker further with the final file before signing it off.
The very idea of mastering without any human interaction possibly still sends shudders down many of your spines, even though systems like this have been around for a while. But if you are one of the spine shudderers, well, that’s because services like this just aren’t aimed at you. Or so reckons CloudBounce.
“Mastering engineers can do amazing work, but aren’t always accessible to all artists or right for all projects”, says CloudBounce CEO Anssi Uimonen. “Automated mastering is a perfect solution for self-managed and emerging artists. A mastered recording simply sounds more professional, giving it that polish that makes it far more likely to get onto a high-trafficked playlist. It should be the standard for all artists”.
Elsewhere in CD Baby news, the DIY distributor this week mocked the improvements Sony Music has made to its royalty reporting platform, noting that it has offered the same (actually slightly better) reporting and payment options since 1998. They made a cake and everything.
