Producers Are Doing Much More Than Just Producing

AudioMentor

The economic principal I am researching is that people generally respond to incentives in predictable ways, and how producers have responded to changes in technology.

My research question to help me study the economic principal is how technology has changed the role of a producer in the music industry over the years.  

First, producers obviously have much more technology available to them today which has caused their role in the music making process to change.  In the past, the main role of a producer was to almost have a managerial role in the studio.  The recording audio engineers, mix engineers, session musicians, and many other roles were filled by different people that the producer was in charge of.  They were to make sure that all of these people didn't go over their budget and also got everything done by the deadline.  Nowadays, the role of a producer includes many of these jobs such as mixing the music that artists make, creating beats/background music for artists and in general have a much bigger role in the music business.  

Second, with laptops and small midi keyboards and a few other small instruments, producers are able to make and mix music much more easily on the go.  Because of this, producers have much more time to spend either creating songs or mixing/editing songs made by other artists or even themselves.  This is very important because producers can put out music for listeners to appreciate much more frequently.

Third, with producers making more and more beats for artists to make music on top of, many rap artists in particular will write lyrics over a beat that was made by a producer, not themselves.  This also helps make new music much more readily available to listeners because the producer and the artist are sort of splitting the work of making a song.  Additionally, it helps some producers such as Metro Boomin and many more make a name for themselves because they would probably not be very well known otherwise.  

In my next blog post, I will research how the styles of music that people prefer has changed over time and what effect technology has had on this change.