LANDR (Left & Right)
Landr is an online mastering service, that allows you to upload your un-mastered songs to their site and then have their advanced computer algorithms master your track in a matter of seconds and then send it back to you. So imagine that, almost instantaneous mastering. Now some of you might be saying, “we’ll how good is this mastering and surely its not a substitute for a real mastering engineer with real ears and years of experience?” We’ll you’re right.
Here’s the thing. I’d recommend LANDR for those new to producing who are looking for inexpensive mastering for their tracks. For many beginner producers, Mastering is just another skill to learn and takes years to get right if you don’t want to fork out some serious $$$ for paying for an engineer in a studio.
LANDRs masters will get your track up to a level loud enough to compete with the pros and it’ll even out the bass and high frequencies and this would be ideal for un-educated producers who just slam a limiter on the master thinking that’s how you master a track.
Later down the track once the producers has had some more experience and is looking to submit to big record labels or work with bigger artists, enter a remix comp etc etc. then I’d recommend looking into get an engineer to master their tracks.
SPLICE: RENT TO OWN PLUGINS
You no doubt must have heard of Splice’s insane sample library, but do you know about it’s rent to own plugins? Currently on thier website they have xFer Records SERUM VST, iZotopes Ozone 9 and Neutron & Circle2.
So why does this need a special announcement? Well, all these Plugins go for $7.99 to $9.99 each a month on Splice and you work towards paying them off while being able to use them.
It makes a ‘$149 Serum investment’ seem way more manageable if you’re just paying $10 a month. What’s best is if you can afford or don’t wan’t to use a plugin for a month, you can hold your payments and Splice holds your progress. So when or if you rejoin at a later date you can pick up where you left off, regain your access and continue your way towards paying it off.
PHONIC MINDS
This is website is still fairly new but ohhh my! I’ll cut strait to the point! What Phonic Minds have done is allow you to upload a track to their website and then the very advanced algorithms will dissect the vocal from the instrumental and give you both!
How crazy is that? Obviously it wont be 100% accurate and sound like the studio stems, there will still be sonic artefacts in the vocal and instrumental, but for what you’re asking, it does a damn good job at it!
Obviously some tracks work better than others when separating the vocals from the instrumental, so try it out with a few tracks to see what its capable of!
This opens up the door on Bootlegs and Remixes on tracks without an official accapella release. And it also opens a the door to major copyright crackdowns, and remixing tracks without proper permission is still frowned upon, so use at your own caution.
FLUENCE.IO
Fluence.io is so underrated and under-used! This goal of this website is to allow creative people (musicians and such) to able to get in front influential people in the industry with their art/music without building up years of contacts climbing laters and booking meetings. Whats more it’s really affordable and you get feedback from the pro’s. Influential figures on the website include A&Rs, bloggers, company managers, industry professional, label manager etc etc.
All you have to do is sign up for an account and select what influencers you want to send your music to (you’ll see how much each one costs (they charge per minute)) Then if the influencer decides to check out your track, they’ll give you solid feedback on what they like and where you could improve and who knows what opportunities could arise out of that if they love your track.
Fluence will only charge you if the Influcencer listens to the track and gives feedback (once they listen they have to give feedback) so if the influencer doesn’t end up listening to it, you don’t get charged.
BANDCAMP
Bandcamp is a must for selling your music! Sure, now days its easy to get your EP’s and albums onto the digital stores like iTunes and Spotify, but Bandcamp is something you should definitely look into as well.
The great thing about Bandcamp is it gives you complete creative control when it comes to selling your music on their site.
It’s free, you get your own artist page (www.’yourartistname.bandcamp.com) and you can set whatever price you want for your music, what bonus tracks you can feature, what the background colour of your page looks like, if you want to sell merch you can, you can do so much with this website!
Well if it’s Free how does Bandcamp make money?
Bandcamp takes 15% from your sales and then Paypal ends up taking a bit as well (or credit card charges), but even still thats a very large cut of your sales going to you. Then these $$$ that you make from sales head strait to your Paypal within 48 hours.
One of the reasons why Bandcamp is so great is that your fans when they purchase music get the choice to either stream it, download in standard MP3 quality or download it in high quality such as Wav or Flac. Bandcamp gives you the control!
HOOKPAD APP
Hookpad is an amazing online Music composition tool that helps you write music.
If you’re not that comfortable with music theory, this website app will help you to select the right notes and chords to go with the right scales.
Just by using it you’ll help train your ear and familiarise yourself with which chords to select and good placement for them. It’s also handy if you’re away from the studio and want to test out ideas or get something written down before you forget it.
PIXABAY
And Lastly to tie up this list is Pixabay. Although not audio related, Pixabay is a massive search engine for photos that can be used for commercial purposes. So for you that could be potential album art, video backgrounds, banners etc. And since the images on that site are clear to use for commercial purpose, you have a clear conscious knowing whatever you use is ok!
