Gerade einen spannenden Beitrag von Andrew Bayer gelesen, der über G+ reinkam.
How do you see vocalists? To some EDM fans, vocalists are the lifeblood of every track they feature on. We breathe life in to instrumentals, we write the words you sing back when you’re at a gig. We articulate how you’re feeling and with the help of a producer, put it against a sea of strings and a thudding kick. To many producers we express in words the emotions they were feeling whilst holed up in a studio writing their track. But sadly, to some producers we are just a way to broaden the appeal of their music, simply a voice for hire. We are a “featuring”, never a “&” and sometimes, we aren’t even mentioned at all.You won’t know this but for once vocalists have begun to share experiences online in the same way producers have been doing for years. Think of your favourite trance vocalist, chances are they’re a member of a new private Facebook group where everything from microphones, recording contracts, production and industry experiences are discussed. In the short time since the group started, vocalists have shared stories that would make any singer considering a foray into EDM turn on their heels and run for the hills.
The recurring experience is of producers sending off tracks to labels without even letting the vocalist hear the finished product. It’s not unusual for a vocalist to have to Google the song name to see what stage the release is at and most times, who’s remixing and even which label has signed the track! There are times when vocals are sent off and nothing is ever heard from the producer again. So can we use that vocal on another project? Well technically we can send it to another producer but it gets very messy if the first producer suddenly gets in touch again! Very often the vocal goes to waste. This is before we even get in to the subject of recording contracts. I personally have had two projects where the labels have proposed contracts without my name even included on them, never mind having a share of royalties or a writing credit! I’ve even had a project where a contract never came. Most other vocalists have had similar experiences.
It is as if EDM hasn’t caught up with other genres of music. If Katy Perry wrote and sang a vocal on a track with Timbaland, you would expect her to be credited and she would be. You’d expect her “people” to be kept up to speed on the progress of the release. It’s a very strange situation where EDM is concerned though and I think it has a lot to do with the evolution of the genre itself. Let’s take trance as our example. Ten to fifteen years ago when trance was in its heyday, many of the vocalists who collaborated on projects were session singers. These singers really are a voice for hire, they are called in to a studio and paid a one-time fee in exchange for singing and sometimes writing a vocal. However, in many cases the lyrics and vocal melody will have been written by the producer and all the vocalist had to do was show up and sing. The producer is credited as the writer and is the only party (aside from the label) mentioned in the contract. The singer would have played her part, got her fee and that was the end of the project as far as she was concerned. It was all pretty simple back then.
It’s a similar situation when producers use sample vocals nowadays. The vocalist has signed off that vocal as royalty free, in exchange for a one-time payment or perhaps a royalty of sales of the sample pack itself (but not royalties to any release which uses the vocals). This sucks for whoever wrote ‘Right Back’ for Yuri Kane, as that vocal was taken from a sample pack and then went on to become 20102s Tune Of The Year on ASOT!
These days, session singers are rarely used and as a whole, the quality and credibility of vocals has increased. Most vocal trance singles now feature singer songwriters, turned EDM vocalists. For instance I started as an acoustic singer songwriter and then fell in to EDM quite by accident, as did most of the other vocalists in the Facebook group I mentioned. So, essentially, vocal collaborations now consist of the partnership of a singer songwriter and producer(s). And we’re a sensitive lot, we vocalists! Our songs are our babies, so we feel a much stronger sense of ownership over the vocal than perhaps a session vocalist would have done in the early trance days. When we have sent off a vocal and hear nothing for months, receive poor percentages on contracts and often receive no writing credit, well maybe you can see why many of us feel disheartened.
With illegal downloads there isn’t really a lot of money to be made from EDM in general, though producers can subsidise their income with gigs. Slowly but surely, more clubnights are starting to include vocal performances but on the whole, many promoters feel that due to the technicalities of setting up the soundsystem for vocals, it’s not really cost effective to hire a vocalist for a short time, when they could get a DJ to do a set for the same price.
However, despite working within a sector of the industry that has not yet evolved to properly credit and respect vocalists, we’re all still here and the reason is that we love the music just as much as fans and producers. Who wouldn’t want to create music and share it so easily with people all across the world? Trance in particular is almost a religion to some people, so to be in a position to create music that potentially means so much to people, moves them physically and emotionally, well that makes it all worth it.
