When Is Your Album Finished?

If you’ve come to this page for absolution because you’re not sure if your album is ready for prime time yet, you’ve come to the wrong place. During the process of dragging my album Arranged Accidents kicking and screaming across the finish line I agonized over the slightest flaws in performance and production. If I can’t thoroughly enjoy my finished product, I can’t promote it with 100% confidence. If I can’t promote with 100% confidence, I can’t sell nearly as many copies or licenses. Keep working on your project until you fall in love with it. People can smell your reservations from a mile away when you talk about your album. Do not try to save money by hiring less than the best. Your session musician might only charge you $100 but you’ll end up spending much more money later to have someone more talented rerecord his performance, or pay an engineer $300 to correct his performance in editing. I was also surprised to find out that many well known and celebrated people in the industry are capable of unforgivably shoddy work. Just because the person you hired was once regarded as an A-lister, doesn’t mean that he still is or that he’ll bring his A game to your project. Choose someone whose done something you love RECENTLY, or chances are you may be dealing with a has-been whose running your songs through the same aging analogue equipment he used to mix or master a sitcom from the 1970’s. You don’t always get what you pay for. Once you have your team together and they are really making you happy with their work, be good to those people, because it will likely be trial and many errors finding their replacements.