Important Mixtape Facts

Why Mixtapes are an Important Marketing Tool

For many years now record labels have looked at mixtape popularity, sales, and now downloads to determine the potential success an up and coming hip hop artist. A great example is 50 Cent, he made a very big name for himself in the hip hop world just by putting out a series of back to back mixtapes. 50 Cent had built such a name for himself by the time his first official album “Get Ready or Die Tryin” dropped that he nearly sold 1 million albums copies in his first week. That is just an example of how mixtapes have been secretly been on the frontline of hip hop record sales.

The mixtape game has evolved so much throughout the years. DJ’s have gone from recording mixes on cassette tapes in the 80’s, thus getting the name “Mixtape”. Then the mixtape game caught up to the CD era in the late 2000’s and DJ’s were able to put their mixes on CD’s, but still it still retained the “Mixtape” name. Now the mixtape game has evolved full scale into the digital generation and now DJ’s and MC’s can now market mixtapes online through the internet and reach a greater amount people on a vast scale.

There is a psychology to the “Mixtape” game. The biggest misconception new DJ’s or artist make is thinking that they are going to make a lot of money off it. There is a potential to make some money but a DJ or artist would have to build their way to that. Do the benefits outweigh the cost? The answer: Absolutely. A well put together mixtape may not make you rich or even close, but the positive exposure can come back more than 5x. What I mean is that for every 1 person that has a copy of your mixtape, he/she will let at least let 5 of their friends listen to it. Now even if the person that is listening to the mixtape is not into your music, they have now heard of you now. My main point to all this is that exposure is the main benefit of a mixtape to any DJ or artist. Many artists invest money into mixtapes just to give away. After all would you pay money to listen to an artist you have never heard before? Most likely not, but they will listen to it for free and if they like it they will opt to by it next time. All artist give out samplers for one reason. It’s the laws of attraction. People want to know that you can give them quality music on a constant basis.

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The Importance of Song Mastering

This is my professional view as an audio engineer:

First of all, I have been a DJ for 20 years and a producer for the past 7 years. I have been producing and engineering remixes since 1991. Through out the years of remixing I have developed and perfected my own technique to for mastering songs. I use a unique combination of EQ's, Filters, Dynamics, and Enhancers to improve sound quality and level a song. I will get more in depth in this process later on.

The main reason to get your song mastered by a professional is to get a perfect balance between instruments and vocals in a song. Another reason is to maintain an equal sounding balance between all of your songs on a particular album. Professional opinions state it is always good to have a fresh set of ears to master your song. Most professional recording artist use one studio to record and another studio to master song and album, just check their credits and you will see what I mean.

What mastering does

Mastering accomplishes four principal tasks:

1. Format conversion. For CD release, an audio file must be converted to 16 bit resolution and a 44.1kHz sampling rate. Many mixes come to the mastering engineer at a higher resolution, such as 24 bits at 96kHz, or even on analog tape.

2. Assembly. This process takes a collection of individual tracks and turns them into a single, cohesive "album" or listening experience. This means no awkward volume or tonal changes between tracks, as well as a "flow" that provides the optimal artistic impact.

3. EQ. This has two main functions in mastering. One is to ensure consistent tonal qualities from track to track, while the other is to fix specific tonal problems within individual tracks (like reducing resonances—buildups in certain frequency ranges).

4. Dynamics. Vinyl had a limited dynamic range, so the wide dynamic range of music had to be reduced in order to fit. This meant bringing down the peaks so that the needle wouldn't jump out of the grooves, while bringing up softer passages to raise them above the surface noise. Even though CDs don't have these limitations, dynamic control is still used (unfortunately, often to excess) because it can create a CD that sounds "louder" and "jumps out" at the listener. Although a CD that's cut really loud has a dramatic initial impact, it eventually becomes fatiguing. A well-mastered piece of audio should retain as much dynamics as possible, as dynamics are a huge part of the emotional impact of music. Paradoxically, a lot of older vinyl records have more dynamics that today's CDs; many feel those old records provided a more satisfying listening experience.

If you have any questions please feel free to comment this post and I will be glad to help.

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