Music mastering is not necessary but it will give your music a much more professional sound to it which can be the difference in obtaining a new fan and label interest or not getting any of that. In this article I will give you three reasons for why you should have your music mastered right now.
First, plain and simple music mastering makes your music sound better. Mastering engineers who know what they are doing use EQ and compression albeit sparingly to bring out sounds of your record which you didn’t think possible. It’s like unlocking the true potential of your mix. If you’re skeptical at all at the merits of having your audio mastered to improve the overall tonal quality and give it a much more glossy and professional sound, you should upload one of your songs and receive a free test master from Music Guy Mastering to be blown away at how much better it sounds.
Secondly, the mastering engineer takes the various songs which make up your record and ensures that they are all at a volume which is unified with every other track on the record. This is a major problem when artists don’t have their music master because each track comes out at a different volume and when simply burned to a CD back to back in the track order they want, the levels of that CD will rise and drop suddenly and awkwardly between tracks. As the saying goes, a producer creates tracks, the mastering engineer creates albums.
While it’s more of a byproduct of a good mastering job rather than the ultimate goal which is a common misnomer amongst those unfamiliar with mastering, the process of mastering tracks raises the volume overall. Once the engineer has assured that each track is sounding as good as it can and is in parity volume wise with every other track on the record, if necessary the engineer can further boost the volume of that record to be analogous to other contemporary records of the day.
This goes back to the idea of your music sounding professional, if someone is listening to your music in a mix with other artists back to back, it’s awkward when they have to adjust their volume up and down because your music is likely that much quieter without mastering than virtually any other artist they’ll have on that mix who has been mastered. It’s a sign of professionalism and legitimacy ultimately which is why you cannot afford to not pay for music mastering.
You don’t even need to break the bank to get music mastering. Whereas some engineers charge $30, $40, or even $50 per track or more, Music Guy Mastering is offering a five dollar per track special through the end of the year. If you think the quality will be compromised for that price, I insist that you upload one of your tracks and receive a free test master from Music Guy Mastering to experience how good your music can be sounding. You won’t come near the same level of quality regardless of how much are paying to another engineer.