I’ve never crowd funded to raise money for a recording before. I’ve always preferred to pay for the production from my own funds – though my folks have certainly helped with some of my previous releases (thanks Mom and Dad!).
It used to be that when a recording was made, the cost of recording could be made back in CD sales. These days people are buying CD’s less and less, preferring to stream instead. And I can’t blame them – streaming is just so convenient. I don’t even have a working CD player anymore – not even in my car. I do have a record player though, and it’s still fun to play music that way. The problem with the way things have gone is that streaming only pays a fraction of a cent per play, yet the cost of recording and promoting an album (when done right) is still very high. Many independent artists will never recover the cost of making their recordings through streaming. I certainly don’t expect to.
So why do artists make recordings if they’ll lose money? For the artistic merit, as a promotional tool, and because you never know – one of the songs might make it big. Dealing with the cost of recording is just a cost of doing business as a musician.
The album I’m working on now will be the debut album for my new project, Nick La Riviere and the Best Laid Plans. I’ve been working on this album for a couple of years, and 4 tracks are already mixed and mastered. The remaining tracks are getting mixed in the next couple of weeks. We’re aiming for a release on July 15, with an official album release show at Hermann’s Upstairs in Victoria on July 16. Yes, we’re cutting it closer with the album production than I had hoped when I booked the release show. Covid has caused numerous delays, including everyone in the band (including myself), the producer – and even the owner of the secondary studio where we recorded some piano – getting covid all at different and inconvenient times. However, we’re still on track to do a streaming release when we planned to, and we’ll have CD’s available at the show. In the long run I plan on getting this album pressed to vinyl.
If you’d like to consider donating to this creative project, please check out this Go Fund Me campaign.