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Recording Studios

The Record Plant, the storied Los Angeles recording studio where Michael Jackson, Prince, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and dozens of other music superstars made classic albums for decades, is one step closer to a sale now that veteran producer Rafa Sardina has purchased its assets for $500,000 during a bankruptcy proceeding last week. Sardina, who has won four Grammys and 13 Latin Grammys and has worked with Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Sheryl Crow, among others, takes over ownership of dozens of speakers, sound boards, microphones, cassette decks, CD recorders and other valuable sound equipment that was the heart of the studio for decades.
Founded in 1968, the Record Plant has been the standard for music production due to its high-end equipment and an emphasis on service and luxury that made megastars feel like they were in their own homes. Thanks to perks like a hot tub room, stars such as John Lennon and Fleetwood Mac took over studio rooms in the Plant’s early days; after it moved to its current location on North Sycamore Avenue in Los Angeles, Beyoncé rented every room to make her album Lemonade and Kanye West and Pharrell rode motorized scooters through the hallways.

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Sardina, who interviewed successfully at Record Plant early in his career before deciding to work at a different studio, did not respond to requests for comment about why he made the purchase offer. A lower bid, according to court documents, came from Italian producer Patrizio Moi, who has occupied a Record Plant studio room known as Digi-Plant since 2014. He offered $50,000.

Moi and the studio’s latest owner, Philip Lawrence of Bruno Mars‘ songwriting team, the Smeezingtons, have been battling over possession of the Record Plant for several years. Moi has declared in U.S. district court that Lawrence and his associates first offered him a co-ownership deal, then, in 2020, sold him the entire studio for $1. The two sued each other until last year, when Lawrence’s company, Philmar, declared bankruptcy, forcing the court to sell the Record Plant’s assets in order to pay off his debts. Moi argued to the court that he should take over the equipment and other property, but the judge, Victoria Kaufman, ruled against him.

Moi has said he hopes to take over the studio and run it as if it never closed. That will be harder to do so now that the studio’s high-tech equipment is likely to be removed, but he remains optimistic. Per his earlier agreement with Lawrence, he owns the Record Plant trademark and website domain. It is possible that Moi makes a deal with the land owner, CIM Group, to take over the lease. 

“There’s a lot of moving pieces,” Moi says by phone. 

However, the bankruptcy court’s trustee, Amy Goldman, disputed the previous arrangements between Lawrence and Moi, because Lawrence “retained possession of the property” and never transferred it to Moi even after their 2020 agreement. The judge agreed with Goldman — effectively denying Moi’s claim to any of the equipment or other property inside the studio. “The property can be sold free and clear,” Kaufman wrote last week.

Sardina’s purchase of the equipment, which includes multiple valuable microphones, including what Moi calls “stuff you cannot find anymore,” has not fully closed. The court’s trustee Goldman must “deliver all relevant and related sale documents to effectuate and close the sale and related transactions,” according to the judge’s ruling. 

The $500,000 set to be paid by Sardina’s company, Firefly Music Row, will be used to pay off the debts of Lawrence’s company, Philmar, according to court documents.

The front door to the Record Plant — where Beyoncé once booked every room to record Lemonade, Kanye West and Pharrell rode motorized scooters through the hallways and Michael Jackson, Rihanna, Eminem, Lady Gaga and hundreds of others made classic albums — is locked. There are no cars in its parking lot across the street. And the 55-year-old studio, which moved to this location on North Sycamore Avenue in Los Angeles in 1985, is “set to close” forever, according to a July report in Los Angeles magazine that was widely repeated online.
But the truth is more complicated. The fate of the Record Plant is in the hands of a U.S. bankruptcy court in California, the result of a multimillion-dollar squabble between a fast-talking Italian music producer and a prolific hitmaker for Bruno Mars’ songwriting and production team, the Smeezingtons. Court trustees will sell the Record Plant’s assets to pay its creditors, then grant what’s left of the business to the highest bidder. The new owner could then decide to close it for good or keep it open.

“I think the brand means something,” says Rick Stevens, a former major-label executive who bought the studio in 1991. “The high-tech living room, the level of service and differentiating itself from most of the other recording studios on the planet — if somebody [buys it and] does that, the Record Plant brand could be revitalized and reborn.”

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The latest era of Record Plant turmoil began in 2016, when Stevens realized producers were eschewing expensive studios to make music with ProTools and Ableton in their bedrooms. “I had been planning an exit for a couple of years,” he says. “It was time to move on.”

At the time, Stevens was also working as CEO of an entertainment company run by billionaire Ron Burkle; they built an investment firm that sought to buy holdings in electronic dance music. Stevens found himself regularly visiting the dance-party island of Ibiza, “in the heyday of the EDM world,” as Stevens recalls. There, he befriended Marcel Boekhoorn, an accountant-turned-entrepreneur who was a billionaire and owned a yacht. Boekhoorn said he was working with Mars and a colleague, Philip Lawrence, the songwriter and producer whose name appears on the credits of just about every Mars song, plus hits by Adele, Justin Bieber and others.

A self-taught pianist who had been a performer at Disney World, Lawrence first met Mars through a mutual friend. They rose together, and Lawrence soon became an eight-time Grammy Award winner, mega-rich in the music business. He was also troubled. In a 2020 interview, he acknowledged cheating on his wife, celebrity stylist and fashion designer Urbana Chappa, then going to rehab. “I did not understand the impact of my behavior. I did not understand how damaging cheating is,” he said. “I had to get sober. That was my initial assignment — what is this thing that’s blocking me from becoming a whole person? … How can I be well?”

Boekhoorn and Lawrence partnered in a new company, Philmar, which bought the Record Plant from Stevens in late 2016. Their idea, according to Amsterdam filmmaker Remko Peters, a friend of Boekhoorn who wound up as a managing partner at the studio, was that Lawrence would scout and develop music talent and bring them to the Record Plant to record. (Boekhoorn declined to answer questions for this story.) 

The plan worked — for a few years. Shawn Mendes, Chaka Khan, Mars himself and other top stars recorded at the Record Plant during this period. But soon, Lawrence and Patrizio Moi, the Italian producer who has worked with Bieber, Meghan Trainor, Pavarotti and others and had a long-standing deal to work in Record Plant’s upstairs studio, had a dispute over money. “Lawrence,” Moi says, “did not do what he was supposed to do.” 

‘I WANT TO LIVE HERE’

The first Record Plant first opened in 1968 in New York City, and the Los Angeles installation followed a year later, debuting with a party invitation that read, “L.A.’s First Hunchy Punchy Recording Studio,” as co-founder Chris Stone later wrote. One of its founders, engineer Gary Kellgren, supplemented its state-of-the-art technology, including multitrack tape machines, large consoles and monitor mixers, with an innovation — studios resembling living rooms. “When we started Record Plant, recording studios were like hospitals: fluorescent lights, white walls and concrete floors,” Stone wrote. “The best and greatest compliment that any artist who came to work with us could make was, ‘My God, this is beautiful — I want to live here.’”

Soon megastars from John Lennon to Fleetwood Mac to Stevie Wonder were recording at the studio on 3rd Street in West Hollywood, and the off-duty activities, for many, had become at least as attractive as making records. “This place was a rock ‘n’ roll mecca complete with a hot tub room and other creative spaces specifically designed for orgies and drug use,” wrote Jim Peterik, a member of the ’80s band Survivor, in his 2014 memoir Through the Eye of the Tiger. “Each recording console was equipped with razor blades for chopping cocaine and at least three boxes of Kleenex.” Buck Dharma, guitarist for Blue Öyster Cult, which recorded its 1979 album Mirrors at the LA Record Plant, recalls to Billboard, “We were half-jokingly cautioned about getting into the hot tub. It had a reputation for being funky.”

In 1991, Stevens, a former A&R executive at MGM and Polydor, read a Los Angeles Times article about the LA installment of the Record Plant, by now in its second location on North Sycamore Avenue, and assembled a group to buy it. His innovation was to pamper clients “at the highest level, the way they live,” he says. “My goal was to say, ‘I want these people treated like they’re at a five-star hotel.’” He also brought in a key employee: Rose Mann-Cherney, on-site manager, beloved by clients for decades. “Nobody knew better how to deal with the stars,” Stevens says. “She was able to help me execute my vision.” (Mann-Cherney did not respond to requests for comment.)

The reborn Record Plant returned to its former glory, drawing music’s biggest names for years: Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, Eminem, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Bieber and dozens of others. Prince built his own studio there in the late ‘90s, and signed the studio’s guest book with his symbol. “Record Plant is the best studio I’ve ever been in. It’s unexplainable. I don’t know if it’s the piece of property it sits on or the stories in the walls,” says Paul Blair, the producer known as DJ White Shadow, who worked on Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP and other hits at the studio. “It was just like the perfect storm of awesomeness. There was this little glass room that had all the records. I’d go back there and Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones would be drinking red wine. Before Fifth Harmony took off — the girls were probably 14 — they were laying on the floor playing board games while taking turns cutting their parts.”

Adds CJ deVillar, a Record Plant staff engineer from 1997 to 1999 who worked with Michael Jackson and many other stars: “It was a really great culture there for a while.”

LAWSUITS, DIVORCE AND BANKRUPTCY

In 2014, Moi visited the Record Plant and decided he loved everything about it — “I had goosebumps,” he says — and made a deal with Stevens to rent a two-room upstairs studio, Digi-Plant, as resident producer. Moi spent earnings from his London real-estate portfolio to invest in equipment and renovations. 

When Boekhoorn and Lawrence’s Philmar bought the studio two years later, Moi was disappointed. He and Stevens were close — Stevens calls Moi “my favorite Italian guy” — and Moi had suggested buying it himself, but they never advanced beyond the price-negotiation phase. Philmar won out with a better offer. “It’s business, right?” Moi says. “I was upset, but I was like, ‘That’s how it went.’”

In January 2017, Peters, the studio’s managing partner, proposed a deal to Moi: The Italian producer would relinquish Digi-Plant so BMG could rent it for a higher price. In exchange, Moi would receive equity in the Record Plant, making him a minority owner. Moi agreed. (Peters says the BMG story is “not correct.” He believes Lawrence and Moi initially liked each other but had their own ways of making and producing music, and their relationship eventually soured.) “It’s always about money,” Peters says. “What’s new?”

Moi declared himself an owner of Record Plant and insisted on receiving shares of its profits. But Lawrence and Philmar “began manufacturing excuses to string along Moi, and ultimately refused to share any profits,” Moi’s attorneys argued in court documents. A source close to Lawrence responds that Moi, “a difficult man,” took advantage of the proposed 2017 deal to “hijack” the Record Plant trademark, “somehow get control” of its email address and “started launching lawsuits.” The source adds: “He absolutely robbed the Record Plant.”

Record Plant Recording Studio

Remko Peters

Moi sued Philmar in 2018, arguing that he had a 20% stake in the Record Plant, according to court documents. (This later increased to 27%, when Moi bought out a minority partner, he says.) Two years later, Boekhoorn, the Dutch billionaire who was a partner in Philmar, left the business, selling his stake to Lawrence for nearly $2.8 million, according to court records. “It’s one of the most expensive studios in L.A.,” Peters says. “After Covid, people bought their own studios at houses.”

That left Lawrence as president and CEO of the Record Plant. And the litigation with Moi was taking a toll on Lawrence’s finances. According to Moi, Lawrence told him, “This thing is a money pit. This thing is not working financially. Take the Record Plant but dismiss the lawsuit.”

In October 2020, Lawrence and Moi began negotiating a legal settlement. Moi says he met with Lawrence in New York for several hours, four or five days in a row, hammering out a handshake deal. On Nov. 8, 2020, Moi visited Lawrence’s house in Los Angeles for a one-on-one meeting, with no attorneys present, and asked the Smeezingtons songwriter to sign a complicated, 89-page agreement that would make Moi and Lawrence co-owners of the Record Plant. As court records show, Lawrence signed a “Purchase and Sale Agreement” transferring ownership of the studio to Moi, as well as numerous other documents, such as a transfer of the Record Plant trademark and its website domain.

As part of the agreement, Moi paid Lawrence $1. Why such a low amount? Because Lawrence owed so much money to Moi, as a Record Plant partner who owned 27% of the company but had not received any equity payments, they executed the deal basically for free — and in exchange for wiping out Lawrence’s debt to him, Moi took ownership of the studio. “The dollar was whatever,” Moi says. “He had to put some price in there.”

Moi moved to take over ownership of the Record Plant, but Lawrence objected, claiming the November 2020 agreement he signed was made under false pretenses — “specious,” his attorneys later called the agreement in a lawsuit. Miles Cooley, an attorney for Lawrence, later declared in court that Moi had neglected a “proposed transaction,” a “closing” and several other requirements outlined in a letter of agreement in order for him to take over the Record Plant. “Without those items resolved, it was illogical, absurd and entirely without any factual basis for Moi to assert that he was ‘owner’ of Record Plant,” Cooley said.

The source close to Lawrence says the Smeezingtons songwriter was characteristically “trusting, probably over-generous, not contentious” and “was just trying to find an amicable solution with Moi.” The source adds that Lawrence “just took Moi’s word he was going to do the right thing,” but “Moi just went in and grabbed everything,” including Record Plant’s trademarks. In court documents, Lawrence and Philmar accused Moi of “international misrepresentation” and “fraudulent inducement.” In his statement, Cooley added, “No court in this state would ever believe that Lawrence transferred the Record Plant business to Moi for $1.”

Moi’s response in court was to declare the Nov. 8 agreement to be “binding and enforceable” and accused Lawrence and Philmar of acting with “malice, fraud and oppression.” The dueling lawsuits are elaborate and ugly. They became uglier still when Lawrence threw in an unexpected curveball — last August, he filed for bankruptcy.

Moi’s attorneys dug up Lawrence’s 2022 divorce proceeding with his wife, Chappa. In April, Robb Report described their Los Angeles mansion — which contained a Moroccan-inspired spa — as a “lavish Encino spread … loaded with every amenity imaginable and then some.” The cost of the house was $11.5 million. The article did not mention that Chappa had hired a forensic accountant to look into Lawrence’s financial affairs, in order to determine his obligations to her and the couple’s four young children. According to court records, Lawrence had nearly $22 million in property assets from three homes and $90 million from selling his song catalog to Tempo Music Investments, a music-investment company that partners with Warner Music Group. Lawrence also borrowed $15 million from Hipgnosis, the music-catalog company that has purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth of songs from top songwriters, using his own catalog as collateral.

But Lawrence also had massive debts, including more than $23 million due in back taxes, according to court records. And as part of their divorce proceeding, Chappa accused Lawrence of withholding key financial details about his assets. According to court records, Lawrence asked a business manager to hold $2.3 million of his money — an amount he had not disclosed in the divorce proceeding.

“Look, he knows he made mistakes,” the source close to Lawrence says. “He got himself in a bit of a mess.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE RECORD PLANT?

The type of bankruptcy Lawrence’s company Philmar filed in March was Chapter 11 — a reorganization of the company’s debts and assets under court supervision. But in June, Moi requested that the bankruptcy court change the designation to Chapter 7 — a more extreme form of bankruptcy that would require Philmar to liquidate all of its assets to pay off its many creditors. The court agreed.

“He couldn’t keep up the legal fees,” says the source close to Lawrence. “His only option, at that point, was bankruptcy.”

Where does that leave the Record Plant? It’s unclear. Moi is aggressive about wanting to be the studio’s owner, and has plans to renovate the studios, buy more equipment and work with the landlord, CIM Group, to resume the studio’s rent payments. (A CIM representative declined to comment.) He claims he owns the Record Plant trademarks, while bankruptcy-court trustees control the furniture, speakers, consoles and microphones contained in the building.

Due to Philmar’s Chapter 7 status, the trustees in the bankruptcy proceeding are required to sell the Record Plant assets to pay off the creditors (which include CIM for back rent payments, and Moi for equipment, as the Italian producer argues in court). But another buyer could come in and take over the assets. Amy L. Goldman,  a court trustee, said in a July filing she has had sale discussions with “Mr. Moi, the landlord, [Philmar’s] principals, and at least two others.” “When you sell in bankruptcy, you are required to get the highest and best price,” says Mary Whitmer, a bankruptcy attorney in Cleveland who is not involved in the case. “[The trustee] will tell all of them, ‘Whatever bid you make, I’m going to shop it around.’”

Despite his bankruptcies, Lawrence, who identifies himself as the Record Plant’s owner and CEO, plans to keep the studio open if he winds up as the permanent owner, sources close to him say. Boekhoorn, the Dutch investor, could potentially be involved. (“Perhaps,” says Peters, Boekhoorn’s filmmaker friend who worked at the Record Plant. “I cannot say yes, I cannot say no.”) But if Moi emerges as the studio’s owner through the bankruptcy proceeding, he will keep running it as a music studio. “I will double down and invest whatever it takes to relaunch it,” he says. “Three more studios upstairs, and renovate four studios downstairs. A major Italian renovation.”

Adds Moi: “We want the Record Plant to survive. I’m trying my best.”

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Corbyn Besson has entered his solo career with the release of his first single “Love Me Better,” which offers just a hint of what’s to come. Getting those crisp, quality sounds don’t require a professional studio though. According to the former Why Don’t We member, an at-home studio can capture professional-quality audio if you have the right equipment like studio headphones and tech similar to podcast equipment.

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“You can go jot [songs] down professionally and kind of get the hardest part of creating your idea out of the way very quickly, which is really nice and you have access to it 24 hours a day,” Besson tells Billboard.

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Plus, he adds if you have a spur-of-the-moment idea, then you can go straight to your in-house studio and put it down rather than have to wait until you can get into a professional studio.

To help you create your own quality at-home studio, the “What Am I” singer broke down how to set up your own home studio, tips on getting started and what to expect from this new chapter in his music career.

What Are the Best At-Home Studio Equipment?

Building your own at-home studio will most likely be different for everyone, Besson says.

“Music equipment is expensive,” he says. “It’s crazy, I’ve been discovering that a lot more lately after building our home studio and me and my boys have been just really trying to budget and make sure that we need these pieces.”

If you’re looking for the absolute necessities, the pop singer recommends six pieces of at-home recording equipment that he deems are absolutely essential below.

Amazon

Shure SM7B Dynamic Vocal Microphone

$399

$399.99

The Shure SM7B microphone has gained not only Besson’s stamp of approval, but pop singer LÉON as well for its quality, versatility and handheld design that allows you to take it basically anywhere. “People use it for podcasting, live streaming, but it’s also a really amazing demo microphone — and it’s handheld, so you can walk around with it,” he explains. “You can be super casual with it, so if you do need to record a finished vocal or even a guitar or really anything, the SM7B is very processable. I’ve gotten some really great recordings out of that microphone.”

Yamaha HS8 Studio Monitor

$398.99

$572.00

30% off

$398.99

The singer also believes a good pair of monitors to be “super important because you want to be able to hear what you’re doing.”He personally uses the Yamaha HS8 Studio Monitors, which is eight inches and comes with an eight inch cone woofer to help prevent sound distortion and has a power consumption of 60 watts. It’s also been labeled as an Amazon Choice for studio audio monitors by Yamaha.

Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 3rd Gen Audio Interface

An absolute non-negotiator is to include an audio interface. If you’re new, then the Scarlett interface is very entry level, according to Besson. “The interface is super important because you plug the microphone, the computer and the monitor speakers into it, and it becomes the hub for all of your audio controlling,” he explains. “Without it, you have nothing to plug the microphone into or the speakers into, so you can’t do anything.”

Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)

$199

$249

20% off

$199

$249

20% off

Not looking to splurge on speakers? Besson suggests investing in a pair of quality headphones as it’s important for listening to any audio your record. He personally uses AirPods, but also advises you should playback your audio on a variety of listening devices like computer speakers, headphones and monitor speakers to get a fell for how it sounds out of various music players. “When I finish a song, I listen on my AirPods, I listen on my [AirPod Max], I listen to my car, I listen on my regular phone speakers, I do a listen on just my computer speakers and then I listen on my monitor speakers,” he says. “It just gives you a lot of perspective on how your song is going to sound to a wide variety of listeners. And if it sounds good on all of those, then you’re in business.”

Fender Squier Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar Sunburst Bundle

Aspiring singers, according to the “Let Me Down Easy” singer should also consider picking up an instrument. Besson has been playing the acoustic guitar as well as dabbling in a nylon string guitar to test out sounds and melodies. Beginners can take advantage of this guitar bundle by Fender that includes a guitar, carrying strap, guitar picks and a tuner to kickstart their instrument learning. “I start most of my tracks on the guitar, I like playing acoustic, but I’ve just started experimenting a little bit more with nylon string guitars because they have a little bit of a different flavor, and they’re pretty cool.”

Apple 2023 MacBook Pro

$1,399

$1,599

13% off

Investing in a computer is also a must-have for Besson as that’s where song files and mixing lives. In his opinion, a MacBook is easier for iPhone users to send and transfer files with ease. “I think the MacBooks are just super powerful and super easy, especially if you have an iPhone,” he says. “My favorite thing about working on a Mac with the iPhone is how easy it is to sync files and final bounces and final masters of stuff. I save all of my songs in my files app, and it’s all synced to my iCloud, so if I save something on my computer I can leave, go get in my car, and it’s already on my phone. I can go listen to my car, and I don’t have to do anything else. I think with PCs sometimes it gets dicey because you got to email yourself links.”

What At-Home Recording Equipment Is Worth the Splurge?

If you’re looking to really spend money on one piece of equipment, the “Fallin’” singer has two tech essentials he would recommend picking from.

“Having a powerful computer really makes it easy to create without having to worry about your computer exploding,” says Besson. “The second, for singers, is investing in a great microphone. A great microphone can make all the difference in the world for a singer, because recording is all about confidence, and if your microphone sounds great, and if you think you sound great coming through that microphone, it makes your performance so much easier.”

Where Is the Best Place to Set Up An At-Home Studio?

Besson emphasizes that anyone can set up their own studio even if you live in a small space. The

“I’ve set up studio equipment on kitchen tables, I’ve set up studio equipment on the kitchen island, I’ve set up on an outdoor pool table,” he explains. “Really anywhere that your laptop can fit because nowadays, what’s really cool about just music creation software and just technology in general is companies are doing their best to make creating music easy. We live in a time where, as musicians, we’re very lucky to have the technology that we do because a long time ago, it was not possible and it was very expensive. Nowadays, you can make really great music for pretty cheap, which is really cool.”

Any Tips for Beginners Just Starting Out?

The biggest piece of advice the singer has for both aspiring and more experienced artists is to not take your in-studio moments too seriously.

“I think the more that I create, and especially now as I create from a much more personal place than I had in [Why Don’t We], is it can be very easy to get lost in the moment,” he says. “And if lyrics aren’t coming to your mind or if you’re singing a bunch of melodies, but none of them really feel good, it can be really easy to kind of fall into this, like, ‘oh my gosh, am I even good at music? Should I keep doing this? Do I suck?’ I’ve had this kind of philosophy for a long time, and it’s that no idea is a bad idea. In my experience, some of the objectively worst ideas have turned into some of the best ideas, because you just never know what you might say or think or sing into the room.”

Who Are Your Biggest Music Inspirations Right Now?

As a pop singer, Besson has a mix of current and classic artists that continue to influence and inspire his music.

“I’ve always listened to Justin Bieber. He was, like, my biggest inspiration growing up,” he says. It’s like, how do I be that guy? I listen to a lot of Post Malone — huge influence, he’s amazing. Then I’ve been listening to some more R&B music to kind of find what’s popping these days and what people are making that’s new. The new Justin Timberlake records are really cool. Been listening to some Ne-Yo classics, even some Troye Sivon — and then SZA is one of my favorites forever. She’s just so incredibly good, it’s ridiculous.”

How Does It Feel to Have Your First Solo Single Out & What Can Fans Expect Next?

“I’ve had [‘Love Me Better’] in my vault for almost two years, so it’s just been sitting there and I’ve been waiting for the people to hear it,” Besson says. “It’s been a little nerve wracking because the project I’m building now is much more personal to me than really any of the Why Don’t We stuff was. When you’re in a group, you’re storytelling from a different perspective. It’s very tailored to be like, you’re the boy band and you’re writing love songs for your girlfriends. Although we did write from personal experience a lot, it’s just a different perspective. Now being solo and writing from a place that’s 100% just me, my opinion, my stories, my words, there’s a vulnerability to it that I hadn’t experienced in music before.”

And in terms of new music, the “Just Friends” singer teases fans can expect his songs to express his maturity as an artist and person as he shares his real-life experiences.

“There will be some love stories, there will be some stuff about feeling the pressure of the world,” he says. “I really want people to feel good when they listen to my music. A lot of this stuff is pretty positive and happy and just fun. It’s going to feel a little more mature than some of the stuff that the group had done in the past. I’m working on a couple of moments to tug on the heartstrings and also just tell the truth about growing up and feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders and trying to figure it out. I think a lot of my fans, and even the group’s fans, have gone through a lot in the last seven, eight years.”

For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best portable recording booths, best speakers and the best over-ear headphones.

Universal Music Group (UMG) is proposing a $250 million music and educational complex in Nashville‘s Berry Hill area at a site covering 4.15 acres, including several buildings on Columbine Place and E. Iris Place. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news A rendering of the mixed-use development shows […]

Three years ago, the pandemic temporarily turned Nashville recording studios into miniature ghost towns.

The business looks a whole lot different in 2023.

“Every engineer out of work in 2020 is so slammed now that they can’t take a vacation,” says producer Trent Willmon (Cody Johnson, Granger Smith). “I was talking to somebody — I can’t remember who said it — but booking a session, he said he called seven steel players before he found someone available. That means country music is badass, baby. Four years ago, all the steel players were just like, ‘Hey, man, you got any work?’ And now they’re just all overwhelmed.”

A year or two ago, the bulk of that workload would have been a result of artists bringing new material created during COVID-19 isolation to the studio. But the volume of recording work in Nashville hasn’t subsided since that first postcrisis wave, and it appears that another development from the pandemic era is behind the ongoing studio traffic.

Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album rode 30 tracks to a record-setting run atop Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart, which reflects streaming and sales data compiled by Luminate. Following its success, now albums — which were typically 10 to 12 tracks in the past — have become much more robust. A dozen have hit No. 1 since the beginning of 2021, and only two have fit the historic range: Carrie Underwood’s 11-track holiday album, My Gift, and Luke Combs’ 12-track Growin’ Up, which was later revealed as the lead-in to the 18-track companion Gettin’ Old.

The rest of the No. 1 albums have spanned from Underwood’s 13-track gospel album, My Savior, to Wallen’s 36-track One Thing at a Time. Those larger albums obviously utilize more songs, but that also means they require more hours from the artist, producers, engineers, musicians and other crew members. Thus, the country studio business is booming.

“I’m busier than I’ve ever been in my life in terms of workload, and at the same time, it’s fewer artists,” says guitarist Derek Wells, one of country’s first-call studio players. “The reality is your big, premiere artists kind of gobble up weeks and weeks and weeks of your year. And there’s just no room left for some of the newer stuff. It’s not an unwillingness to do it, or lack of a desire to go be amongst some of those things. It’s just kind of first come, first serve.”

While supersized albums are an aggressive way to compete for chart superiority, they also serve as a digital-era method of satisfying artists’ superfans. The maturation of streaming has given consumers quicker access to music by their favorite artists for a set monthly price, rather than compelling them to buy albums. Artists’ biggest fans have always wanted more music. And with home studios and digital recording techniques providing more flexibility, it’s easier than ever to satisfy that hunger.

While the leading acts are supersizing albums, artists with smaller fan bases are releasing EPs with greater frequency, putting out more music than their predecessors often did at a similar career stage to satisfy their own strongest supporters’ demands. The combination of supersized albums and more frequent EPs is stretching the resources in Nashville.

“Work is definitely surging,” Nashville Musicians Union president Dave Pomeroy says. “We’ve more than gotten back to where we were before the pandemic, in terms of [recording contracts] we see coming through the building,”

That makes booking a recording session something of a Rubik’s cube. A producer’s top musician choices will likely not all be available at the same time for a session that wasn’t booked far in advance. That encourages even more overdubbing, with producers doing bare bones tracking dates and hiring musicians to layer on parts at home.

“A lot of the times I’m not doing a full session on my songs,” says Alana Springsteen, who co-produces her music. “We’ll start [recording] things in the room sometimes the day we write the song, I’ll lay down an acoustic, lay down a vocal, one of my co-writers might play the electric, and we’ll lay down a path. Sometimes it looks a little different than a traditional session.”

While it’s possible to record musicians one at a time, many artists still want to use a larger room with the players all working in unison. Many of the established studios have shuttered since 2000 as home recording increased, so now that recording is in a boom cycle, it’s increasingly difficult to find an available large studio. As a result, many individual tracks are recorded in three or four different locations, and a full album may be pieced together at six or more sites.

“It used to be when we’d do a record, if we did three or four different tracking days, it was all going to be in the same room,” says producer Frank Rogers (Scotty McCreery, Frank Ray). “At the end of the day, I put the players first, because if you have the right players, you can go and set up in a living room and still make a really good record. If you got the greatest studio in the world and C [grade] players, then it’s just not going to be what it needs to be.”

Chris Young found a previously untapped studio when he booked Sony Music Publishing’s upgraded facility for the master tracking session on his new single, “Young Love & Saturday Nights.” At the same time, he also has a home studio, and his output there is using engineer hours beyond the traditional venue. Multiply that phenomenon by dozens of artists, and the ramifications become much more apparent.

“It’s sort of insane,” Young says, hinting that his next album may be larger than a traditional project. “I have seven songs for my next record already. And part of it is, I try and write all the time when I’m home [from touring]. I usually write, every single year, 100 songs on top of what I find outside… I’m [taxing the system] a little bit.”

The engineering sector may be stretched thinner than every other area of production.

“With the ease of recording, everybody — half the songwriters in town, and every musician, every producer — is an engineer,” Rogers says. “But the ones who know how to track really, really well or know how to mix really, really well, there’s not a whole lot of them that are great. There’s a lot of good, there’s not much great, and so those guys are as busy as they’ve ever been.”

At the other end of the music chain, the increase in the number of tracks is stretching the infrastructure with radio and digital service providers (DSPs), too.

“There’s always too much music — it’s not manageable on any of the platforms,” says artist consultant John Marks, a former programmer for broadcast radio, satellite radio and Spotify. “Wherever you are today, you cannot manage that traffic, the amount of releases, regardless if you have an album of 12 tracks, or 36 tracks, or 50 tracks. Whatever it is, you are treading water in the ocean.”

The DSPs get thousands of new tracks every week, and while they can make educated guesses about what to playlist from new albums and -individual -singles, fans’ choices will ultimately require programming adjustments. Similarly, traditional country radio stations — which have drawn their playlists primarily from major labels — are increasingly auditioning songs from sources they would not have considered in the past, thanks to digital consumption.

“If Zach Bryan’s new song gets streamed 20 million times, why would I think that radio listeners wouldn’t feel the same way about the song if they were exposed to it?” Cumulus vp of country formats Charlie Cook says. “So then it’s incumbent on me to expose it. When you get 20 million streams on Oliver Anthony or 13 million on Tyler Childers, why am I smarter than them? I’m not.”

Traditional radio still plays one song at a time, no skips, so instead of trying to satisfy every artist’s superfans, its business still requires identifying the songs that fit the widest number of individual tastes. Even if it means sifting through more music to play the same number of songs.

“It’s radio’s opportunity to find the strongest songs and play the heck out of them,” Cook says. “We had a liner for a while that said, ‘We’ll cut through everything that’s out there and find the best music for you.’ And I think that has now become radio’s position.”

The new, longer albums are likely to continue as the artists, and the media that exposes their music, attempt to superserve their most ardent fan base.

“I think it will last, and it will permeate the lower rungs of artistry,” Marks says. “Really, the only way to get to your fans these days is a continual release pattern, keeping in front of your audience and not letting them rest. Listeners and fans want more of whatever they’re finding, and they want it now.” 

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