The Art of High Quality Audio, is a blog about how we use high quality audio as a part of marketing strategies with your products and services.
The goal is to inspire you to think about music in a new way. It’s not just something that occurs in between the commercials on the radio or something you put on when you’re making dinner or want to get romantic with your partner. It’s an integral part of the product and a critical aspect of branding.
The post below, “5 Reasons Why Music Makes You Buy” talks about why including music in your advertising can be so effective and gives some real world examples of how we’ve used music to create successful campaigns for various clients. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at hank@soundideas.com
The music industry is a multi-billion dollar business, and although it has evolved to compete with the internet and other new media formats, it continues to generate record profits. Artists are more likely to be found on stage than in the recording studio, yet many music fans prefer to download their music. In this article we will explore the reasons for this, what strategies can be used to combat illegal downloads, and how artists can use high quality audio as a part of marketing strategies with your products and services.
TOURING AND SALES
One of the biggest payoffs for bands that tour is money earned through sales of their merchandise. Bands that tour usually make a lot of money in sales of CDs, t-shirts, and posters. The money earned from these sales helps them finance their next tour, but most importantly it pays for the tour itself.
This money could also be generated through online sales of MP3s or CDs. For example, a band could sell its songs online at iTunes or Amazon. This strategy works best for bands that have a strong fan base across the world. However, bands that have only local fans often find themselves wasting time and energy promoting their products to people who do not know them.
The music industry has been one of the hardest
I’ve spent the last few years getting my head around how to produce high quality audio, and how to use it in the context of a marketing strategy. In that time I’ve worked with a lot of business owners and marketers, many of whom struggle with the same questions you may be struggling with right now. How do we take advantage of this emerging medium? What is it? What do we need to do to make sure we’re using it effectively?
How do I know what good quality audio is? Who is making good high quality audio content for me to listen to? Where do I start?
I’m going to try and answer these questions by writing a series of articles about how you can use high quality audio as a part of your marketing strategy. I’ll be exploring the practicalities of what it takes to get started in high quality audio, and sharing some insights into the production techniques that can be used to create great sounding podcasts, audiobooks, bedtime stories, radio plays, radio ads and other forms of highly-engaging content. The focus will be on how to make great sounding stuff without spending too much money or having specialized technical knowledge.
The Internet is in a constant state of flux. What was once hot is not anymore and what is hot right now may not be tomorrow. With the art of high quality audio, we are focusing on one thing and that one thing alone: providing audio content at its best. That’s all we do. And that’s why you should trust us to provide you with the services you need.
Tone is how something is said or done and it can sometimes determine whether or not something will work. If someone has a bad tone, they may have a good idea but it probably won’t work as well as if they had a good tone with the same idea. Depending on the situation, tone can mean different things. For example, when talking to clients, business owners might be more serious than when talking to friends or family members because they want to show the client that they are trustworthy and reliable people in order to gain their trust and get their business. Tone can also change depending on what is being talked about or who is saying it. A business owner might talk differently about their products than they would about themselves because they want their clients to see them as knowledgeable and trustworthy people but if they were speaking about themselves, they might want to show off their personality so that people can relate
Your audio should be as high-quality as you can manage, before you begin to adjust the sound to target a particular frequency range.
It’s true that you can get better results by making adjustments on your final mix, but if your mix is really terrible in the first place, you are working with a flawed model.
In other words, if you start out with a model that is not great, trying to apply EQ to fix it only makes the problem worse.
Here’s how we approach it:
1. Make sure your recording environment is great. That means good equipment and good placement of microphones.
2. If you have a choice between an expensive mic or an inexpensive one (or one that’s free), choose the more expensive one every time. We spend $500 on mics that produce $50 of sales, so don’t skimp here.
3. Listen to your first recording and decide what sounds good: is it the vocals? A guitar? The kick drum? Is it something else entirely? And once you figure this out, master around it!
What exactly is marketing?
Marketing is a four-step process. You must first identify what you want to sell, who your prospective customers are and how much they are willing to pay for it. Then you work out how you will produce and deliver what they want. Finally, you must decide how much to charge for your product or service.
Tart your marketing strategy with the end in mind. The most important aspect of any business, whether online or offline, is the product or service being sold. Without something of value to offer, there is no business. Marketing activities are simply tools that can be used to make a sale—not ends in themselves.
If you haven’t identified a market for your product or service, there’s little point in spending money on marketing, so start by asking yourself who might buy what you’re selling and why?
What problem does your product solve? What job does it do? How will it benefit its users? This could be a problem that affects you personally or one which you have noticed others have (or claim to have).
Don’t get distracted by competitors – just because someone else has marketed their offering in a certain way does not mean that this is the best way for you to market yours. Your potential customers may
The Music
The first thing that strikes you about the music is how very different it is from most other music you’ve listened to. It is usually difficult to pin down just exactly what makes the difference, but there’s no doubt it is something. It may be the selection of instruments, the choice of harmonies and melodies, or something else. But one way or another, it just sounds different. The better quality music has a “quality” to it that is definitely recognizable. It could be described as “euphoric,” but that would give you a false impression of what it really is like.
The sound can have a very strong emotional impact on people who are open to this kind of experience. There have been reports of people crying after listening to certain pieces of this type of music. Others have reported having powerful spiritual experiences while listening to this music. The reactions seem to depend largely on the person’s own level of consciousness – the higher their level, the greater the effects seem to be. And some people report feeling both at once, with great intensity; tears running down their cheeks while at the same time they’re in an ecstatic state of mind and body.
Interestingly enough, these reported reactions are very similar to those caused by other types of art forms like
