Mastering in All Directions: Cloud-Based LANDR Embeds in 15 Countries

Less than one percent of music recordings ever get mastered, a process that gives audio a higher-quality sound across diverse listening situations. Cloud-based mastering tool LANDR (www.landr.com) is changing this at an explosive rate. In their first six months since launch in May 2014, the technology has mastered over 500,000 tracks and, on a per month basis, is now mastering more tracks per month than all the traditional mastering studios in the United States combined.  That pace is set to explode this month as they announce partnerships of the LANDR Embeddable Platform with partners in over a dozen countries, from America to China.

The LANDR Embeddable Platform exemplifies the global and field-leveling nature of the LANDR community, which is about much more than sound engineering.

“There’s known to be 160 million musicians in the world concentrated in 20 countries,” explains CEO Pascal Pilon. “When you look at the statistics on where music equipment is being sold, after the U.S. and Japan, come the rising forces of China, Brazil, and India. The problem is that the know-how needed to do quality music production is concentrated in a small number of places. LANDR is a step towards a world where any composer with a phone and an Internet connection will be capable of making what they capture sound full and engaging. We are unlocking a market of tens of millions of recording artists.”

LANDR is rolling out the embeddable platform with over 20 distribution companies, allowing artists to master their tracks through their trusted gateways to online retailers and streaming services, including:

• Tunecore (U.S.)
• JTV Digital (France)
• Music Kickup (Sweden)
• Ditto Music (U.K.)
• Routenote (U.K.)
• La Cupula Music (Spain)
• Record Union (Sweden)
• Xiami (China)
• Onepeace Music (Japan)

 
“We are in the business of artificial intelligence for music production,” explains co-founder of VP of Product Justin Evans. “The same way Shazam breaks a song into component features and tells you what song it is, LANDR understands many variables about your uploaded song and applies the appropriate kinds of mastering instantly.”

But LANDR is not solely about lowering the cost and increasing the accessibility of mastering. Diverse musicians are uniting around LANDR as a community, since the most innovative composers are adopting this tech-savvy approach. New use cases are emerging, whether they are prolific songwriters revisiting archives of unmastered tracks and listening with new ears or musicians in the developing world that can hear their songs as a finished product for the first time. Some artists use the LANDR mastering process to “preview” a song while they are midway through mixing.

One part-time electronic beats maker quit his software job when he found he could sell four times as many beats once he started using LANDR before uploading his tracks to online marketplaces. Sound engineers are even getting in on the action, using LANDR to give themselves a sonic head start.

LANDR’s announcement of partnership distributors embedding their platform in 20 countries will only continue to grow this community of artists who rarely had access to making their music sound as good as possible through mastering.

“What PayPal did for managing payments, we’re doing for the world of sounds,” concludes Pilon about the LANDR Embeddable Platform. “We are not just freeing people with less money. We are giving more freedom to composers and producers to do what they do best.”