You’re greeted by a well-developed website with overwhelmingly positive product reviews as you search for www.Landr.com. In a day and age where everyone with a mobile device and an internet connection has the ability to upload their songs to Soundcloud, Canadian based company Landr allows users to increase production quality by distributing and master music in a whole new way. Using artificial intelligence, Landr scans its database of over ten million tracks to assist in providing a sound it deems appropriate. With big-name investors like Nas and Richie Hawtin, it’s no wonder this once measly start-up company with loads of potential has blossomed into the service it is today.
One of the most interesting features Landr offers are the ability to master albums with a consistent sound throughout. Pricing for a single mastered song goes anywhere from a lower quality free mp3 to an HD WAV file for $19.99. All things considered, $19.99 seems like a pretty good price for any sort of mastering, let alone of high quality.
With a simple and easy to use site, Landr’s distribution service allows the user to get their songs onto an extreme plethora of music streaming services, including Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, Tidal, Deezer, Pandora, among others. When your track is uploaded and ready to go, you can simply drag and drop into Landr’s service, apply a master, cover art, and select the streaming services you’d like your song/album to be playable on and within days, Landr takes care of all the rest and processes your track(s) whichever streaming services you please. The best part? YOU keep 100% of the earnings you make through the streaming services Landr provides access to.
Other additional services Landr provides access to include an abundant free library of tutorials and plugins under blog.landr.com, in addition, to sample options for track production. A great place for even more tutorials from Landr is the official Landr YouTube channel where they host multiple editorial video series such as their “#AskAnEngineer” and “Mix Tips Series”. As a member, you can also access their massive library of high quality and diverse samples, guaranteed to inspire any producer!
While an extremely impressive service, the cultural impact a program like Landr has is both exciting and concerning. On one hand, it allows newbies the ability to create professional sounding tracks without the use of a studio or engineer. This theoretically means higher quality music. On the other hand, Landr advertises an accurate replication of processes human engineers make when mastering a track. Can and will a program like Landr eventually replace studio engineers and executives? Probably not, as the technology and customizable options still have a long ways to go when stacked up against a real professional studio engineer. Regardless, the service is really cool and certainly worth a look – especially for those new to the game attempting to reach for a professionally mastered track on a budget.
Does AI mastering have a place in the music industry? Have you tried Landr’s services? If so, let us know what you think!
1 Comment
Landr sounds very promising, I haven’t tried it as of yet, but if SWAY is backing it; enough said. I definitely believe that exposing AI mastering can present amazing opportunities to artists wanting to leave a mark in the culture, myself being included. Will it outweigh going to a professional studio where a human with a gift in production & engineering works on the product being your music? I don’t think so for now. Nothing beats the real time process of seeing your work built from raw to mastered with your input to help the process. Both avenues work in favor of artists so to each his own, but i’d use both.