Recording a revolution

The arrival of inexpensive, technologically advanced musical and recording equipment has made it possible for almost any musician to set up a mini recording studio in his or her home. No longer forced to rely on engineers and producers to capture their songs for posterity, musicians can now achieve professional quality results themselves, using equipment that puts many previously out of reach capabilities at their fingertips.

Just as desktop publishing has fundamentally changed the publishing world by transferring typesetting and other functions to editors and art directors, the digital revolution has changed the creation and production of music.

Digital recording equipment-which yields a cleaner sounding finished product than its analog predecessor by eliminating tape hiss and other noise-was once affordable only to large professional studios. Amateurs and semi-professionals had to rely on the less expensive analog equipment. But affordable digital multi-track recorders for home studio use are now widely available.

Nowhere are the effects of this "digital revolution" more evident than in the publications that serve the music and recording industry. Existing magazines have added editorial content to meet changing reader information needs, and new publications have entered the market, bent on carving their own niche.

One such magazine is EQ, introduced in March by the GPI Group. (A division of Miller Freeman Publications, GPI also publishes music magazines such as Keyboard, Guitar Player, Drums & Drumming, and BassPlayer.) EQ-which takes its name from the abbreviation for "equalization," an important step in the recording process-is aimed at professional and serious amateur musicians, engineers, and producers.

Phil Hood, EQ's editorial director, says one of the premises behind the magazine is that technology is breaking down the wall between professional and home or amateur recording.

"The advent of digital musical equipment such as synthesizers, and the fact that all equipment-consoles, tape recorders, and so forth-is slowly going digital, is taking these tools out of the hands of engineers and producers and putting them in the hands of musicians.

"So we felt that the line between what was pro and what was home was not really valid anymore. We wanted to be the first magazine that would address the whole spectrum of recording from a standpoint of teaching people how to get more out of their equipment rather than addressing their professional standing," as other publications on the market do.

Identification of this niche, and strong reader response to a one-shot publication of reprints of recording-related articles from other GPI publications aimed at the same market made it clear that such a magazine could be viable.

In addition, Hood says, Japanese and German publishing companies that put out similar lines of music and recording related magazines had also introduced a recording title. "So we could see that it was a natural extension of what we were doing," he says.

Recording Arts survey

To learn more about the editorial needs of the target audience GPI conducted an extensive study using an eight-page "Recording Arts" survey that was sent to 1000 potential readers. Chosen from industry directories and the subscriber lists of GPI publications such as Keyboard and the Home Recording newsletter, the group encompassed EQ's target audience, from professional engineers and producers working in world-class studios in New York and Los Angeles to serious semiprofessional musicians who own home recording equipment.

The survey purpose was "to ascertain the editorial needs of a broad spectrum of professionals and semiprofessionals involved in all types of audio recording, including commercials, popular music, and audio for film and video applications," a GPI report states.

To meet that end, the survey- which was divided into six sections-asked respondents about:

  • their involvement with the recording, audio production, and music industries,
  • the publications they read,
  • their involvement with live performance,
  • their recording/studio equipment,
  • their future equipment purchasing plans and current purchasing habits, and,
  • some basic demographic information.

The cover letter gave no indication of the survey's sponsor. Rather, it stated that the survey was intended to "provide an up-to-the-minute look at the needs and concerns of people in the recording field."

The survey included a dollar bill as an incentive. The response rate was 48.1%, which Hood says was not really too surprising.

"Obviously we were very happy to get that response because (the respondents) had to devote at least a couple of hours to get through the questionnaire. But we sort of anticipated a good response because for most of these people music is a passion as well as a vocation."

Focus on creativity

Hood says that the survey told GPI a great deal about the interests shared by the professional engineers and producers and the home recording musicians. This helped them define the magazine's editorial focus: creativity. Hence, EQ's tagline, "the creative recording magazine."

The magazines that currently serve the music production industry, such as Mix, and Recording Engineer & Producer, are trade publications that emphasize the news, business and professional aspects of the industry. GPI felt there was a need for a magazine aimed at this audience that emphasized creativity.

"The other magazines are very much oriented towards the equipment and personality side of the business, but not as oriented towards the hands-on creative use of the equipment. I think a lot of them are providing news to a very narrow segment of the industry. We felt that potential readers at every level of the recording industry shared a strong interest in the creative side of the business.

"We wanted to focus on the creative application of recording gear, because rather than just wanting to know about specifications and how a particular filter works, the reader wants to know how to (use the equipment to) come up with good sounds when they're in the midst of rearranging their material."

The survey found that sixty-nine percent of the respondents have full or part-time positions in music and recording. Sample job titles include musician, producer, studio owner, recording engineer, songwriter, educator, broadcast engineer, video director, technician, and programmer.

One subject area that interested all of the segments surveyed was song writing/ arranging.

"That was a little surprising to us. Approximately two-thirds of the respondents ranked that as one subject area that they wanted to know more about and were interested in doing more of in the future. What that said to us was that the musicians as well as the engineers see themselves as musicians no matter what their job title."

Hood says this can be attributed in part to the fact that an increasing number of the people running the recording console are ex- or current musicians who lack the formal training and broadcast background common to many engineers and producers.

"We felt that this group of people could best be reached through a creative approach that would extend not only to the way we handle topics but through the graphic approach and story selection."

The feature stories in the charter issue of EQ cover topics of interest to those with all levels of studio experience. Examples include a piece on the controversy surrounding regulation of home studios in Los Angeles, a comprehensive listening test of studio monitors, and a how-to guide to vocal sampling. In addition, numerous columns and departments offer advice and insight on a variety of recording related situations, such as transposing chord progressions, recording basic tracks, and working with drum machines.

Advertising inventory

In conjunction with the reader survey, an inventory of advertising in industry publications was performed to estimate EQ's potential market share. The research focused on the magazines that would be the main competitors for advertising dollars, and also looked at publications in related fields such as film and video production, and general interest music magazines.

"What we saw was that there were plenty of ad dollars in the market to get the magazine off the ground. The market was not in a cycle where it was so poor that it couldn't conceivably support any additional publications, and we felt there were some weak sisters out there," Hood says.

"If you introduce a good magazine in a healthy market the usual impact is to increase the total ad dollars, so you can't just look at your competitors' advertising and make any strong predictions about where the ad dollars might go in the future. Usually, people don't abandon the market leader for a new title, they may abandon secondary publications."

The magazine's focus on creativity sets it apart from others on the market. "We felt the market was changing. And that we were going to be the only magazine to address the entire spectrum of people from the pros to the serious musicians. So in that sense we felt that ultimately we would not be competing for exactly the same reader and therefore we wouldn't be competing for the exactly the same dollar and in fact could carve out a niche as the number one consumer newsstand recording magazine."

Industry contacts

The magazine's staff also talked to industry contacts to get a feel from inside the industry about the magazine's potential.

"A lot of that information gathering was personal and anecdotal, just calling up PR people and advertising people at various companies or sitting down with them at trade shows and being very frank, 'We're thinking of bringing out this magazine, we feel that there's a hole in the market, what do you think?' We used a tremendous amount of feedback. We found engineers and ad people who had a real interest in telling us one-to-one what they perceived would fill the need for their customers.

"Overall, the research on both sides of the ledger caused us to change the original positioning of the magazine. The original positioning was as a recording musician magazine. But we realized we were aiming too low. We felt that a recording magazine would probably have to reach a higher percentage of people who would identify themselves as professionals on a survey because you need to be fairly deeply involved in music before you start laying money out for recording gear on top of your existing gear."

(The survey audience appears to have the necessary resources: 30% said their income was between $40,000-$70,000, 29% were from $70,000 and up-with 13.8% of that segment earning over $100,000.)

The EQ staff felt that another way to set the magazine apart from the rest of the market would be to use a different approach to the product reviews found in many industry magazines. So the survey asked respondents about their perceptions of the accuracy, technical insight and overall quality of the product reviews featured in various magazines.

"We felt strongly that there was a fairly cozy relationship between advertisers and magazines when it came to product reviews, and that we could exploit that by having more in-depth, unbiased product reviews."

Hood says that this approach was deemed worthy even if it might mean alienating some advertisers by running a less-than-flattering review of a new product.

"Our experience at GPI is that if the reviews are well done, if the author is qualified to investigate the product, and you stand by what you say, you usually get the advertiser back. If you lay down the ground rules and do it in a fair way, 99 % of the advertisers will understand."

Research also played a role in naming the magazine. Part of the process involved sending of dummy covers to regional and national distributors, who were asked to explain what they liked and disliked about various titles.

"Every name that had 'studio' or 'recording' in it had already been taken. The research told us we didn't want to call it Recording Musician, because musicians were not the only audience we were aiming at. We really searched long and hard through a lot of names to find one that would be instantly recognizable to the recording industry but that wouldn't alienate any particular group within the recording industry."

Hood says that with each issue the magazine's cover will be designed to set it apart from the other titles on the market, which usually feature an interior shot of a recording studio mixing board, a new product, or musical celebrities on their covers.

"We found those approaches unacceptable. The equipment approach was too cold and unexciting for the newsstand and the artist-on-the-cover approach tends to move you downscale in the marketplace. So we settled on using illustrations or photography to illustrate controversial stories in each issue."

Hood cites computer magazines such as MacUser as an inspiration for EQ because of a shared status in relation to their respective markets.

"I really felt that there was a kinship there, because they are magazines that reach a market that didn't exist a few years ago. EQ is also a magazine that will reach a market that didn't exist in its present shape a few years ago. We're very excited about it."