You need a streaming subscription
Over the past three days, we’ve been talking about how to standardize your monitoring loudness. And there was a foundational assumption built into step 1. Did you notice it?
Open up Spotify, or Apple Music, or whatever other streaming service you subscribe to.
I can imagine that some people might have read that and thought: “But, Jamie! I don’t have a streaming subscription. Spotify and Apple are evil, and I refuse to participate in screwing artists that way. I listen strictly on Bandcamp and on vinyl that I’ve bought directly from the artist.”
And, you know what? You’re not wrong. One of the streaming services’ main contributions to music has been to devalue it, and to transfer billions of dollars of music income from independent artists to themselves. I’m not disputing this, and I’m as horrified about it as you.
But: if you’re working on music production, even diy music production, I think you need to have a streaming subscription. Probably Spotify — it’s far and away what most people use.
Here’s why: it’s super important to be able to hear how music works out in the world, and to be able to compare our work to that. We’re not working in a vacuum; we’re working in context of what everyone else is doing. And not listening comparatively to music in the medium in which more people are listening than any other — well, that feels like something akin to malpractice. And I can’t recommend it. No matter what I may personally feel about the services.
Taking the broad view — jamie