How we created a 10x disruption in music recording efficiency 🚀

Finding great musicians isn't easy ❌

Once you've found one, juggling schedules between the musicians, the studio and yourself to book a recording session is even more complicated... 😖

It can take you weeks to finally lock in that date and time. 📆

And repeating that process with multiple musicians becomes an absolute nightmare. It's like running your own logistics company 🥵

It's fair to say that the current ways of working offline, in the real world, are inefficient. More than that, it's painful.

But what about getting your music recorded online? 🧑‍💻

There are indeed some great companies that have started solving this problem. Some have done an amazing job at bringing musicians together into a single platform - solving that first part of the puzzle: making it easier to find musicians. For example, SoundBetter have more than 10,000 musicians to choose from and Fiverr have more than 800,000 freelancers - many of whom are also musicians.

Having lots of musicians in one place makes it easier to find, compare and choose one to work with. And since they'll be recording your music locally on their side, you don't have to worry about juggling schedules & studio time any more. 😍

As a result, getting your music recorded online with one of these providers is probably around 3x more efficient than the offline alternative; since our research has shown that the average time to go from payment to receiving your files is around 5 days.

But is this really as efficient as it gets? 🧐

Before we answer that question (spoiler alert: it's not!) let's ask ourselves why does it still take 5 or more days to go from paying for a session to receiving your files online?

The problem is 3️⃣-fold:

❌ On platforms like Fiverr, musicians are operating in the gig economy, which means there's really little structure to their workflow and they'll get the job done whenever they can. If they have lots of work on or other commitments, your project will simply be added to the queue. Back of the line please, sir.

❌ The communication flows through text messaging systems. This makes it really quite difficult for you to explain your artistic vision and for the musician to really "get it". Furthermore, your music is recorded asynchronously and offline - so there's no way for you to request changes on-the-fly (is this really how music is supposed to be made?). Chances are, you'll receive your files back and need to request changes & revisions. I bet The Beatles never wondered how many emails it'd take to write a song...

❌ Finally, the barrier to entry for becoming a music provider on such websites is really quite low, almost zero. One thing we hear quite often is that using them is "hit and miss". It's a risk. Which usually means that 50% of the time you'll find a great musician who delivers exactly what you want. The other 50% of the time you won't. And you'll have to start again. Not fun.

So let's revisit the question, is this really as efficient as it gets? 🧐

Being musicians and having gone through this painful experience many times ourselves, we thought there must be a better way. This couldn't be it. And when we asked ourselves this question, we wondered if there really could be a way to go from booking to receiving music files in a day, maybe in a few hours, dare we imagine even less than an hour?

When we ran the thought experiment, we quickly realized that the current ways of working would need to be torn apart and rebuilt from scratch. Starting from the same place and try to incrementally improve things wouldn't work. There are simply limits to how far that would take you. No, this would require something new, something radical.

So what would be required to push recording efficiency to the limit?

Here's what we came up with:

✅ Musicians would need to have a dedicated time and space to record your music, one that's organized, reliable and predictable
✅ Your music would need to be recorded in realtime, with you being present in that session, so you can direct, collaborate and offer feedback on the spot - so there'd be no need for revisions later on
✅ Musicians would need to come to the recording session prepared. They'd have to already know your material well enough to record a solid first take and then use the live interaction to go from there
✅ There would need to be a system, a platform, some technology to seamlessly and quickly transfer files both before and after the session
✅ There would need to be a standardization for all musicians to abide by the same rules: they must be on time, sessions must be set up before the session start time, files must be delivered on time immediately after the session
✅ The sessions themselves would need to be long enough to record enough takes and edits of your music, whilst being short enough to be as efficient as possible
✅ The musicians would need to be the best of the best. No more hit and miss - you'd need to work with the top 1% who'll deliver every single time, without fail
✅ Finally, there would need to be a structure where you can book a session happening very soon, submit your materials right after booking for the musician to prepare and set up, then there would need to be time for the livestream recording session itself, and finally allotted time for your files to be exported and delivered. And all of that would need to happen in the most compact and efficient way possible, without lowering the quality of the recording and overall experience.

If all of these things could happen simultaneously, then just maybe we could really disrupt things. Just maybe you could go from booking a session with a superstar musician through to receiving your files in less than 1 hour...

And yes, we're relieved (and happy) to say that now, finally, that very thing is possible!

At Musiversal, you can now go from booking to livestream recording session to receiving files - in less than 1 hour 🤯

It's been about a few weeks since we made this possible, so we thought we'd share the early results:

A 24-hour turnaround was made possible for 172 music creators 🌟
A 12-hour turnaround was made possible for 104 music creators 🌟🌟
A 6-hour turnaround was made possible for 68 music creators 🌟🌟🌟
A 2-hour turnaround was made possible for 30 music creators 🌟🌟🌟🌟
An under 1-hour turnaround was made possible for 15 music creators 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 (for violin, bass, percussion, woodwinds, cello and saxophone)

So, what does this now mean for music creators and the music industry?

Well, every time you watch a tv series, a film, an advert, or really anything on screen - the music soundtrack you're listening to was likely produced by a composer working on a tight deadline. They had to realise their full musical vision in a very short timeframe - meaning at some point they will have faced the decision to record either with virtual instruments, or real musicians. Under such pressure, usually the latter takes the hit and the quality of the music you hear suffers as a result. There's simply no practical way to record (and pay for) real strings, woodwinds, percussion, taikos, etc, in time. By giving composers an incredibly efficient way to record with real musicians (and orchestras) they finally have a reliable way to maximize the human element on those very soundtracks - ultimately fulfilling not only their artistic vision but also levelling up the quality of the music you hear all around you.

For all the songwriters and music producers pumping 60,000+ tracks onto Spotify every day, feeding your playlists and your daily listening, it's a similar story. By creating an affordable, accessible and efficient way to record with real musicians, the quality of music being produced will level up - music will be better, and hopefully, humanity will be more fulfilled and happier as a result.

So whilst this post was about recording efficiency, it's really about so much more than that. Whilst we all hope music continues to be made in the way it's designed to be made (with real musicians, with real experience and nuance, through collaboration, by creating magic in the moment), the only way to preserve that way of making music is by making it more accessible, more efficient and more affordable than any other alternative (including virtual instruments).

If the digital alternatives are exponentially cheaper/easier/faster, then this way of making music will die out, and it'll do so faster than we'd like to imagine.

We believe we're on our way to winning the battle, having created what we believe to be the most efficient way to record with real musicians on the planet. But there's a long way to go yet.

Our sincere hope is that we can continue to make the process of making music authentic, genuine and fun, so that the music that surrounds our lives and brings us joy, can that be that bit better. Let's keep building that future of music, together.