I’m debating whether it makes sense to pay bigger artists in your niche (anywhere between $100 - $400) to remix one of your tunes for your EP. I see it like this at the moment…
You would have the support of the artist/impressive resumé
Have some credible names on your EP to hype it
The artist would likely make a few posts and have whatever % of their fanbase hear about you
Could make getting onto other labels easier
Potentially VERY expensive (minimum $200 for a 2-remix-EP)
Chance that the hype wont trickle down to your brand at all/waste of money
I’m not talking about getting Avicii or Skrillex to remix your tune of course.
purely talking out my ass as someone who doesn’t have any tracks worth remixing
If I wanted someone to remix my tracks and they agreed to, hell yes I would pay them for their work. But I would want to be talking to them in the first place because (a) I like what they would do with my track or (b) they like my track enough to want to do their thing with it. If the only reason I was talking to the person in the first place was because they were offering to remix tracks for a fee – I’d pass.
First of all, I think your price estimates are VERY optimistic…
Professionell mastering of you tracks will cost you about 50$/track, and that is just for the mastering engineer sitting down for anything between 15 and 60 minutes to lay the finishing touches on you track. I don’t think many artists will be willing to work on a remix for several hours/days for just 100$ - 400$…
Regarding your pros/cons:
I wouldn’t count on the remixer promoting your record… If he gets paid just his fee and doesn’t get a share of the sales revenue, he has no financial incentive to help you in generating sales.
If neither you nor the label the track gets released on are well known and thus can’t offer him any benefits for his own reputation, he doesn’t have any incentive at all.
In fact, chances are, if it’s just your self-released ep on bandcamp or your own newly founded net-label, it could be very hard to find any well known artist at all who is willing to remix your track and be associated with the project…
This is probably the most important reason to have a big name remix your tracks. Not only will it give credibility to your release, but also will the track appear in the “my beatport/traxsource/…” of everyone who’s following that artist.
But I guess that is a step which is usually taken by the label to promote the latest addition to their roster, not the artist. Many big(ger) name artists will probably prefer to deal with pros (i.e. experienced label owners) anyways to make sure everthing runs smoothely and he doesn’t face the risk of his reputation getting damaged due to bad/unprofessional promotion or other kinds of unprofessional behaviour..
If you have a solid label taking care of things, I guess the formular would be
(talented but unknown) new artist + reputable label + reputable remixer (maybe from the label’s existing roster) = win-win-situation
Whereas if you don’t I may look more like this:
(talented but unknown) new artist + unknown label + reputable remixer = ???
Depending on the success of the release…
As I said before, I think it could be even more expensive than you think..
The chances that the hype won’t trickle down are obviously higher, if you don’t know how to promote the release and the remix properly. Which is another good reason to leave it all to a professional label.
tl;dr
Having a reputable remixer on your record could really boost your sales and your career
If you don’t have anything to offer but money, finding a well known artist to remix your tracks could be pretty hard
The amount of money you have to offer may be higher than you think; the less else you have to offer, the higher the amount
Don’t count on the remixer to promote the release, especially if he’s just doing it for the remix fee
Having a professional label involved can drastically increase the chance of success
It really has to do with a few things. You need to obviously have a good track to start out with, no one who is respectable is going to remix something that they don’t think is good. Could depend on the genres at hand. If you approach a techno artist with an electro track to be remixed you are not going to get a remix. Some genres can crossover but most techno guys who are die hard techno are not going to step out of those lines. You can definitely get some good guys for under the $400 mark, but lots of times it depends on their work load. finally if you go to some people for remixes and hey don’t make their own music you are usually getting hit with a double fee. The said “producer” needs to go to his ghost writer to make their track, so they end up tacking that fee on as well.
Do I think that is is effective for you to pay for a remix? It definitely can be worth it for you. If you have a good track you will get some more exposure out of it. If your track sucks it doesn’t help in getting people to like your music, but your name will still get out there if the remix is good. If your track is good though then it could possibly help with the sales of your track…
It just a risk you need to take, unfortunately there is no set formula in this industry.
@LanceBlaise I agree on the genre crossing point you made. I’m a hard electro (‘trash electro’ as it’s called) producer so a lot of my favourite artists aren’t incredibly famous for example: Cyberpunkers, Toxic Avenger, F.O.O.L, La Musique D’Ordinateur, Gtronic, etc.
When I wrote the post I was thinking of hiring someone for a self-released project, exactly on bandcamp as @TCMuc mentioned (although I have worked with labels before). I came to the 300-400 figure from asking some of the above artists - one who mentioned they could do it for €300).
I guess any promotion or trickle-down exposure would have to be agreed on beforehand (ie. €300 to remix AND help promote for 1 week).
It isn’t an issue of tune quality, just breaking through in that particular niche.
Any respectable artist who is doing a remix will promote it for you… I don’t believe you would need to ask them or require them to promote their track.
I truly don’t believe that a artist would be more willing to let you on to their label because you paid them to remix one of your tracks, if anything it would be the other way around.
If an artist is wanting to remix one of your tracks it should be for the pure joy that the original brings them & the elements they feel they can add to your work.
I do not approve of this idea and would never put myself in a position where im putting my hard earned money into others hands for fame.
Although, I could see it working in the proper circumstances but there are superior ways of achieving your goals.
Put it this way there’s no reason I’d be more willing to buy your track if one of my more liked/respected producers did a remix on it, I might listen to it, but I wouldn’t buy the original just for the hell of it, unless its a whole a whole album, but then I’d have to dig most of the tracks anyway.
I say keep producing, pushing it on your own, obviously there’s no shortcuts
