Sound Off Blog

The cover of Derek Siver's (CdBaby) new book, "Anything You Want"

it was written by the founder of CDBaby. If you’re a musician and aren’t aware of CDBaby, then you are truly missing out. It has and continues to revolutionize the selling of music for independent artists for years, and it’s digital and physical distribution programs are awesome! The founder of CDBaby is Derek Sivers, who in his book “Anything You Want”, discusses his path to entrepreneurial success and the failures that he has “accomplished” on his path.

If you are an artist in any form, a business owner, an entrepreneur, a creative, or just a person looking to build their personal brand – I highly recommend his book.

If you’re a musician, I more than want to encourage you to sign your music up with CDBaby.com. It’s just as fun working with them as it is getting royalty check from them every week. Truly one of the best in the independent music scene.

Let me know if you sign up with Cdbaby, or read the book. I’m curious what you think.

Until then, keep rockin’, writin’, and recordin’!

Steve

There is nothing better than building things with passionate people. My client (and now good friend) Raine Wilder is as passionate an artist as I’ve seen come through my studio, and it shows. He came to me with huge expectations, and every intent of exceeding them, and I think we can both agree he has. I can’t put into words how impressed and proud of him I am. I truly believe he is destined to do great things through his art…and some big names (Jaywan, Yelawolf, Kuniva of D 12, and many others) have already recognized his talent.

His new record is entitled “Birthplace of Aviation” just released yesterday (for free) and people are already eating it up and curating it into mixtapes. As far as the recording process went, we wanted to make sure everything remained raw, powerful, and emotive. Songs like “I’ll take Everything”, “Famous”, and “The Countdown” are a great example of real emotion living through production. Most producers will tell you how hard it is to maintain feel, artistry, and emotion throughout the tracking of an album. Raine came to every session with all three.

I also want to give Raine a nod for being every producer and engineer’s dream. A dude who comes so prepared he can knock out a tune in less than an hour. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t give a shit about efficiency – I give a shit about effectiveness. Raine Wilder was effective in the studio. Instead of having to stop in the middle of takes to remember words, we spent more time on production i.e. phrasing, technique, velocity, and delivery. Ask any producer and they’ll tell you that’s what it’s all about. Our time in the studio wasn’t spent trying to learn lyrics, fix issues, and compromise on quality. It was tweaking, perfecting, re-purposing, and mastering his art. It’s all about building the perfect structure, and the foundation needs to be there before you move on to the roof. His was.

Raine Wilder built something amazing with “Birthplace of Aviation”, not only in his genre, but in the landscape of art, and more importantly in his life. I’m just glad I was able to be a part of it. I can only imagine where he’ll be and what his next album will be like.

By the way, you can download his entire album for FREE…and I recommend doing so.

Also follow him on Twitter, and like him on Facebook. He’s a cool guy.