Technology is a beautiful thing. I remember getting my first Portastudio about 30 years ago. It let you plug in four 1/4-inch phone plugs and record 50 Hz–15 kHz audio onto a cassette. The sound wasn’t the best, but at $500 it gave me the power to be my own recording studio. I couldn’t do much with the tapes, and mixing them down to another cassette gave you audio that would make you cringe by today’s standards—but it started something.

Fast-forward 30 years. I sit at home in my little studio, which has grown over the years. I’ve added new keyboards and effects units, and my little Portastudio has been replaced by a computer. Yes, a computer. Instead of the lo-fi Portastudio, I record digitally directly to hard disk, mix, master, and burn a CD right at home.

Only about 20 years earlier, you would have needed close to $500,000 and a large studio to do the same thing. My whole recording system cost less than $2,500, and I had 64 tracks of 24-bit digital audio at my fingertips while still being able to use the computer for other tasks. In the original version of this article, the cost was $5,000 and I had 24 tracks at 16-bit.

Technology can be beautiful.

The rapid advance of technology lowered the price of recording to a point where it became affordable to the masses. Someone could pick up a computer with simple RCA audio inputs, a four-track Portastudio-like program, and a CD burner and create a CD for less than $1,000. I’m talking about a Mac with GarageBand built in.

The audio wasn’t going to be the same as what you would get in a top-flight studio, but it was significantly better than the original Portastudio—and better than many albums recorded in the 1960s and 1970s. If you already had a computer, you could add professional multitrack digital capabilities, MIDI sequencing, and effects processing for under $1,000.

Empowerment

So what did throwing around all these numbers mean in the long run? Empowerment. When I was in a working band, we spent huge sums of money recording demos, putting together press kits, and sending them to record companies that consistently rejected them. In the end, we were out several thousand dollars with nothing to show for it.

If we had been picked up by a label, we could have looked forward to even more money being spent. If the album did really well, after all the royalties were figured out, we might have made five percent on each CD sold. Wow. Break out the champagne.

With my own studio, I was fully in control of the process. I was my own record label. I could decide when and where a CD was released, control the packaging, and choose which songs appeared on it. I didn’t have to deal with record-company management telling me the third track wasn’t commercially viable enough. On top of all that, I could keep 60 percent from the sale of each CD.

The thought of selling more than a million CDs sounded inviting, but the personal cost was too high. Record companies were aware of the changing landscape, and they were nervous. I had already seen a shift from bands being signed and recording albums for labels to bands producing their own albums and having labels distribute them for a percentage. Many independent labels began this way.

With the available technology, an artist could bypass the record labels completely and use what would have been the company’s share to cover marketing costs. Companies emerged that would manufacture CDs on demand or distribute music through iTunes and other online services. They could distribute recordings through Amazon and even place them in retail stores, leaving the artist responsible primarily for marketing.

None of this means that you have talent—or that anyone else will want to hear your music. It does mean that more and more varied kinds of music can become available, and record companies no longer have complete control over what the public can access. In the grand scheme of things, that is wonderful.