[sudo-discuss] Sudo kids hit pop record with the writers group

Mon Jun 17 07:17:55 PDT 2013

The makers of Pachas Pajamas are from Oakland I think. They had a
kickstarter to fund a music video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwoWkFQqXs0

Alcides Gutierrez
http://e64.us
On Jun 17, 2013 7:05 AM, "Romy Ilano" <romy at snowyla.com> wrote:

> Wouldn't it be cute if the writers group could write a hit album with Sudo
> kids radio like all the top 40 pop factories do with their manufactured
> stars? It's Sudo room additive music engineering !!!
>
> ---
>
> Romy Ilano
> Founder of Snowyla
> http://www.snowyla.com
> romy at snowyla.com
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> *From:* Romy Ilano <romy.ilano at gmail.com>
> *Date:* June 16, 2013, 3:00:32 PDT
> *To:* Romy Ilano <romy at snowyla.com>
> *Subject:* *How Much Does It Cost To Make A Hit Song? : Planet Money : NPR
> *
>
>
> http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/05/137530847/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-hit-song
>
> How Much Does It Cost To Make A Hit Song?
>  [image: Rihanna]
>
>  Courtesy Universal
>
> Getting a song on the pop charts takes big money.
>
> Def Jam started paying for Rihanna<http://www.npr.org/artists/15757248/rihanna>'s
> recent single, "Man Down," more than a year ago. In March of 2010, the
> label held a writing camp in L.A. to create the songs for Rihanna's album,
> *Loud*.
>
> At a writing camp, a record label hires the best music writers in the
> country and drops them into the nicest recording studios in town for about
> two weeks. It's a temporary version of the old music-industry hit
> factories, where writers and producers cranked out pop songs.
>
> "It's like an all-star game," says Ray Daniels, who was at the writing
> camp for Rihanna.
>
> Daniels manages a songwriting team of two brothers, Timothy and Theron
> Thomas, who work under the name Rock City. "You got all the best people,
> you're gonna make the best records," he says.
>   [image: The Cost of Rihanna's Man Down]
>
> Notes These are rough estimates based on interviews with industry
> insiders. The figures have not been confirmed by Rihanna’s label, Def Jam.
>
>  Here's who shows up at a writing camp: songwriters with no music, and
> producers toting music tracks with no words.
>
> The Thomas brothers knew producer Shama "Sham" Joseph, but they had never
> heard his Caribbean-flavored track that became "Man Down."
>
> According to Daniels, the brothers listened to the track and said, "Let's
> give Rihanna a one-drop! Like, a response to 'I shot the sheriff!"
>
> They wrote the lyrics to "Man Down" in about 12 minutes, Daniels says.
>
> To get that twelve minutes of inspiration from a top songwriting team is
> expensive — even before you take into account the fee for the songwriters.
>
> At a typical writing camp, the label might rent out 10 studios, at a total
> cost of about $25,000 a day, Daniels says.
>
> The writing camp for Rihanna's album "had to cost at least 200 grand,"
> Daniels says. "It was at least forty guys out there. I was shocked at how
> much money they were spending! But, guess what? They got the whole album
> out of that one camp."
>
> A writing camp is like a reality show, where top chefs who have never met
> are forced to cook together. At the end, Rihanna shows up like the
> celebrity judge and picks her favorites.
>
> Her new album has 11 songs on it. So figure that the writing camp cost
> about $18,000 per song.
>
> The songwriter and the producer each got a fee for their services. Rock
> City got $15,000 for Man Down, and the producer got around $20,000,
> according to Daniels.
>
> That's about $53,000.00 spent on the song so far— before Rihanna even
> steps into the studio with her vocal producer.
>
> The vocal producer's job is to make sure Rihanna sings the song right.
>
> Makeba Riddick didn't produce Rihanna's vocals on "Man Down," but she's
> one of the industry's top producers, and has worked with the singer on many
> songs, including the two number one hits in 2010: "Rude Boy" and "Love the
> Way You Lie."
>
> When Riddick works with a singer, she'll say, "I need you to belt this
> out, I need you to scream this, as if you're on one end of the block and
> you're trying to talk to somebody three blocks away."
>
> Or maybe: "Sing with your lips a little more closed, a little more pursed
> together, so we can get that low, melancholy sound."
>
> Not only that, the vocal producer has to deal with the artist's rider. The
> rider is whatever the artist needs to get them in the mood to get into the
> booth and sing.
>
> "They'll have strobe lights, incense burning, doves flying around the
> studio," she says. (Yes, Riddick has had doves circling her head while
> she's working.)
>
> Rihanna is "very focused" Riddick says. So no doves.
>
> Riddick's fee starts at $10,000 to $15,000 per song, she says.
>
> The last step is mixing and mastering the song, which costs another
> $10,000 to $15,000, according to Daniels.
>
> *So, our rough tally to create one pop song comes to:*
>
> The cost of the writing camp, plus fees for the songwriter, producer,
> vocal producer and the mix comes to $78,000.
>
> *But it's not a hit until everybody hears it.* How much does that cost?
>
> About $1 million, according to Daniels, Riddick and other industry
> insiders.
>
> "The reason it costs so much," Daniels says, "is because I need everything
> to click at once. You want them to turn on the radio and hear Rihanna, turn
> on BET and see Rihanna, walk down the street and see a poster of Rihanna,
> look on Billboard, the iTunes chart, I want you to see Rihanna first. All
> of that costs."
>
> That's what a hit song is: It's everywhere you look. To get it there, the
> label pays.
>
> Every song is different. Some songs have a momentum all their own, some
> songs just break out out of the blue. But the record industry depends on
> hits for sales. Having hits is the business plan. The majority of songs
> that are hits — that chart high, that sell big, that blast out of cars in
> the summertime— cost a million bucks to get them heard and played and
> bought.
>
> Daniels breaks down the expenses roughly into thirds: a third for
> marketing, a third to fly the artist everywhere, and a third for radio.
>
> "Marketing and radio are totally different," he says. "Marketing is street
> teams, commercials and ads."
>
> Radio is?
>
> "Radio you're talking about . . ." he pauses. "Treating the radio guys
> nice."
>
> 'Treating the radio guys nice' is a very fuzzy cost. It can mean taking
> the program directors of major market stations to nice dinners. It can mean
> flying your artist in to do a free show at a station in order to generate
> more spots on a radio playlist.
>
> Former program director Paul Porter, who co-founded the media watchdog
> group Industry Ears, says it's not that record labels pay outright for a
> song. They pay to establish relationships so that when they are pushing a
> record, they will come first.
>
> Porter says shortly after he started working as a programmer for BET about
> 10 years ago, he received $40,000.00 in hundred-dollar bills in a Fed-Ex
> envelope.
>
> Current program directors told me this isn't happening anymore. They say
> their playlists are made through market research on what their listeners
> want to hear.
>
> In any case, to return to our approximate tally: After $78,000 to make the
> song, and another $1 million to roll it out, Rihanna's "Man Down" gets
> added to radio playlists across the country, gets a banner ad on iTunes ...
> and may still not be a hit.
>
> As it happens, "Man Down" has not sold that well, and radio play has been
> minimal.
>
> But Def Jam makes up the shortfall by releasing other singles. And only
> then— if the label recoups what it spent on the album — will Rihanna
> herself get paid.
>
>
> ---
>
> Romy Ilano
> Founder of Snowyla
> http://www.snowyla.com
> romy at snowyla.com
>
>
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