The Hollywood recording icons eventually got rocked by the shockwaves. After 55 years of molding and shaping some of the greatest hits, The Record Plant announced in July of 2024 that it was closing up shop. The grim sentiment reeled in the calculus presented, as engineers and tech’s read the writing on the wall, as a standalone venture, “there is no money in the recording music business.” With modern production tools taking precedence on laptops and in-home vocal booths, “the need for a big room is pretty much minor thing now.”
The fall wasn’t just isolated to The Record Plant, but also to United Recording (the successor to Ocean Way), laying off staff and restructuring their business model into one of a rental facility, and one without an in-house staff, a move that signaled how marquee studios will have to rethink and be creative in reinventing their business models. Talking about reinventing your business model, how about Grandmaster Recorders, establishing a second life around its musical past by incorporating it into a themed restaurant, and not as an active studio, a striking metaphor for how Los Angeles now packages its musical heritage as an experience for guests rather than as a hub of creation. You don’t say?
But L.A. as the Next Detroit? The Parallel Is Uncomfortable, but Illuminating
The decline of ‘Motor City’, Detroit, Michigan, wasn’t just the folding of some of the biggest automobile factories, but a ripple of despair that unraveled a network that tethered the rhythm of the automobile industry to Detroit. From suppliers, diners, neighborhoods, and whole communities, that rhythm was devastated. That dynamic, in many ways, is mirrored in the Los Angeles recording scene.
Like a house of cards, the music economy began to fall in 2020 when the first casualty, live performances, collapsed. From there, the many layers underneath, studio bookings, session work, gear rentals, rehearsal spaces, and cartage followed the downward tumble. When the keystone crumbles, the arch caves in.
"Like a house of cards, the music economy began to fall in 2020 when the first casualty, live performances, collapsed."
Los Angeles, like many big American cities, is costly, and the economics of large-room recording studios are no longer in favor. Currently, listener behavior has been transformed by streaming platforms, discovery of music has been altered by TikTok, and the pandemic was the death nail that finalized a trend that software long ago began: the ultimate professionalization of the bedroom recording studio! Look at how the world has changed. By the end of 2020, artists were recording vocal tracks in closets, collaborating with other musicians and producers over a Zoom video call, and mainlining their distributions directly to streaming platforms that boasted over 443 million paid subscribers. Those $2,000-a-day recording facilities had become strapped-down versions of themselves where bookings were narrowed down to immersive formats, orchestral days, and prestigious projects.
The New Value Chain: Streams, Shorts, and Smaller Rooms
During the years 2020 and 2021, artists and labels adapted and began to rewire their production pipelines. In other words, high touch, i.e., live human performances, gave way to remote collaborations and iterative releases, favoring optimization for algorithmic rankings. With that, the money chased the ears, and streaming subscriptions jumped 18.5% over the year 2020. Sadly, revenues sagged for public performances and physical formats, like the vinyl records niche, due to the pandemic.
To illustrate, for the L.A. studios, the implications were very stark:
Reinvention or Relic?
Ok, can the music recording industry in Los Angeles dodge a Detroit-style future of funky cuisines, cocktails, craft beers, or that dreaded museum theme park thingy? Well, maybe, but it’s going to require a bit of reinventing in about three areas, for sure:
Given all of this dark and, well, not so good prognosis, can Los Angeles, a city that has engineered the modern hits, make a comeback? To do so, it must be creative and reengineer itself. Will the new guard stand up and prevail?
Image: MaurosArt
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