Nowadays, you can record a song remotely online using the power of online collaboration with remote session musicians – while saving expensive studio time costs. Finally, you can finish that pile of demos you have accumulated but never had the time or money to complete.
The advantages of this method are that it allows producers/songwriters to choose from worldwide talents, usually at a lower cost than local studios. As long as you know your objective, you will have a professional radio-ready-sounding recording.
In this article, I want to discuss different methods on how to record a song remotely and also provide a guide on some platforms you can use.
Online marketplaces
Here you will find many alternatives and different levels of quality/price. I suggest online marketplaces as an alternative when you have at least a demo of your track and know exactly what you want to add to your song.
That will clear your search and allow you to find top online session players and engineers. Among the many online platforms, the ones I would suggest most are
- Fiverr – From low to high price/quality
- Airgigs – Medium – High Quality/Price
- Soundbetter – High Quality/Price
If you want more details on recording a song online on these platforms, you should open an account and scroll through the feed.
Just keep in mind that online musicians’ platforms are not like many freelance sites where you can find cheap alternatives for quality work, like web design. To get top quality in the remote session world, you have to hire top players – even the slightest details are noticeable in music, and only top session musicians can offer those!
Dedicated online recording studios
In my opinion, this is an adaptation of the old recording studio model and not new in itself. Recording studios nowadays have to adapt to the changes technology brought to the music industry and find news ways to serve artists.
There are typically two types of online recording studios.
· Local studios that offer their services remotely
This is your typical studio that has its network of producers (typically only 1) and its network of local session players. This is a great alternative, but it does come at a greater cost since physical studios have more expenses than your typical freelancer.
Check out the legendary Abbey Road Studios way of making remote collaboration a thing during the pandemic.
· Online studios that operate with remote musicians
This is the case of my co-founded remote studio, “one riff studio” – a remote music production studio.
Our work procedure is very similar to local studios but we do delegate more of the production and recording process online to assure a lower total cost of production.
Collaborative music apps/websites
This is an experimental field even for most seasoned online users.It mostly works for modern genres where few “real instruments” are used. This is not due to the lack of quality in the genres – but it’s way easier to get a good-sounding, already compressed drum sample for an EDM song than to record live drums for a rock single.
· Soundtrap
· Endlesss
· Soundstorming
· Trackd
· BandLab
· Kompoz
· Flat
· Avid Cloud Collaboration
If you are wondering how to record a song remotely and are into EDM or hip hop music – these alternatives are for you! You can find more details in This Article.
I think that you won’t have professional quality of recording and producing whatever platform you use if it’s free or at a very low cost. The artist you work with within this platform might be great, but no one will invest that much time and effort if not appropriately rewarded.
Being a digital marketer myself, I understand that these apps and platforms want to attract the highest possible number of users – but marketing and music-making go on different paths, unfortunately (or fortunately).
Check out my story to learn how a marketing student become an online session guitarist
To recap – how to record a song remotely.
Pick one of the alternatives between online marketplaces, online studios, and collaborations apps/websites – find the online session musicians that best fit your project and reach out to them.
Also, contact me here if you need online guitar tracks and guitar-centered songs from my band and me.
