[Discuss] The MB RECORDS members album releases thread
 

In lieu of our recent MB members' music compilation success and additional ideas contributed by James1 and other members, I'm proposing that we make an unofficial "official" MB record label in which our established members collectively release their own music in the form of albums, LPs, and EPs to share with our community.

The basic idea is that members create and submit their own music and these submissions are made into a compilation album of about 12 or 13 songs, regularly instead of one a once-in-a-while basis as demonstrated in the MB comps.
Album artwork could also be supplied for each album by members, and mastering for the albums could be provided in-house, as we have several people here who have the means to do so. (since I can't volunteer anyone else, I'm just throwing my willingness into the hat at this point)

Overflow submissions could be counted towards the following album, or made into an LP or EP.

Another idea is that we vote on themes for the upcoming album so that there would be a general cohesiveness to the albums/LPs/EPs.

In any regard, I wanted to create this thread as a forum of discussion about the idea so that all the people who are interested in being involved can have a say and come to a general consensus of how this will work.

Please reply with your ideas. This will be a temporary thread, so once we come to an agreement, this one will be closed and the official thread will be launched and we can get to work. :)

I think we may be onto something fantastic, though I must confess due to horridly selfish reasons I might be afraid to get my track mastered by someone else. Not that I have the means to, I don't.

I know this is a rather odd question but in what stage are songs usually handed to producers?

Well, in this particular scenario, you're all of it.
The idea behind mastering in an album sense, in our scenario anyway, is getting all the songs to a cohesive tonal balance and volume, and arranging the songs in a fashion that's not random and creates a progression throughout the album.

Just saying "Ok here's 12 songs, I'm going to randomly put numbers on them and make sure all their peaks hit around the same DB level" isn't going to give you good results.
Some songs may need a little bit of compression to even out the dynamics a bit, others may need a little bass removed (like mine), while others may be just right.
The idea is to make the album cohesive and make it flow, possibly fix some glaring frequency errors, and add a little sparkle and sheen.

Obviously, if any major work needs to be done, the person mastering the album would provide the artist with the edited work for approval, or ask the artist to bring something up or down in the mix, but judging from the submissions we had in the members comp, most of everyone's sound was good and maybe just called for some light compression and limiting across the board. And above all, some arrangement.

Ah, I see. A different concept than the one I was thinking about.

Well, it's still a great idea and I thank you for going forth with it.

Regarding the mastering of tracks, I have no problem with it so long as the artists get a chance to sign off on any changes before comps are submitted, especially since we have some talented folks capable of doing so.

The first come, first serve idea makes sense to me but perhaps we could restrict artists to a certain a amount of tracks per month. Maybe there could be some leeway pertaining to different projects by the same person.

Maybe even more than compilations, people can work together to put out whole pieces of work, ex. musician, producer, visual artist combining their efforts to make an EP or full length.

Just some thoughts, sounds like a great idea to me and I'd be happy to contribute.

Good ideas!

As far as first come, first serve thing... My personal opinion is that it would be better if we looked at things not as a time-frame thing, but more as an album-frame thing if you will. Instead of releasing per month, we simply release when we've met the album quota in terms of submissions and agreement, and release when that point is reached regardless of time-frame.

I especially like the idea that certain artists may want to team up together for releases, and maybe incorporate releases consisting of collaborations as well.

And of course, if one person wanted to work alone on a release, that would be welcomed as well. I would just hope that wouldn't detract from people wanting to be a part of compilations and collaborations.

Overall, I think this would be a good opportunity for the musicians here to have a dedicated output and rally point for their music in a community aspect.

Keep the ideas coming!

Can I work on Artworks ?
Well with a handful of others members, maybe suggest some squared artworks for the albums/EPs to come ?

Ah yes, I should have said 'a limit on contributor's track per-release'.

Perhaps eventually we could do some sort of remix comp or should remixes just fit in amongst a regular comp? Maybe I'm thinking a little too far ahead here but there should be some sort of consensus about the place of things such as mashups and remixes.

I love this idea.

I recommend having submission deadlines...perhaps 4 per year to start...and actual planned release dates for the "albums."

Reasons: I think planned release dates will help stop this idea from dying a slow death during implementation, and I am probably not alone in being motivated by deadlines. Like you wrote in the shoutbox, if there is more interest in contributing to albums during the year, then the number of "albums" could be increased.

Having set release dates will also put a cap on the amount of time the "producer" (you, FD?) will have to dedicate to getting the compilation up.

You could also set up release special "Theme" albums (songs of same genre or songs about some topic) in addition to the four "albums" on which people just contribute the songs they want. For example, over the last year there were already 2 such "albums," kind of: the MB song contest (songs about MB), and Conan's mini MB Festivus song contest.

A more general comment: I always see newcomers getting rebuffed here for "self-promotion," which is supposedly against the rules until you have "proven" you are planning to stick around. Won't this album idea be creating the very blatant self-promotion that MB ostensibly rejects?

Since I know that sometimes musicians are motivated to make and share music with others simply because sharing their creativity is fun, I don't mind people sharing their music at all. Still, if others are worried about self-promotion, then you'd best set up some more MB "Country Club" rules for who can contribute to the albums (probably based on post counts).

Since I dislike country clubs very, very much, I wouldn't myself recommend rules about *who* can submit songs...I'd just put the cap on the number of songs per member per compilation, as others suggested. However, if a newcomer submitted some songs (not knowing about the supposed "no self-promotion" rule) and was told s/he he wasn't "acceptable enough" yet to do so, then that would be unfortunate and depressing to me. Making the rules about who may submit songs to the "albums" clear and consistent from the start would be best.