“Did someone upload last night’s practice recording somewhere?”
“Which folder has the demo version with that acoustic bridge idea we tried a few weeks back?”
“Aren’t we putting demos in Google Drive now rather than just sharing links in WhatsApp?”
“Where should we add notes about the new mix? Emails, Google Docs, or Slack?”
Do any of these comments sound familiar? I couldn’t even hazard a guess at how many times I’ve experienced these communication holdups with bands I’ve played in, artists I’ve collaborated with, or groups I’ve produced or mixed for. People end up using different storage locations, demos get misplaced, and mix notes aren’t collected effectively, which causes confusion and wastes time. Without a cohesive system that’s easy to understand and use, the pattern repeats year after year, wasting countless hours we’d rather spend more productively.
The Creative vs. Administrative Grind
Writing, composing, and recording music can be a deeply satisfying experience. While there are always creative headaches along the way, completing and releasing work that holds meaning to you and your collaborators is an incredible feeling.
However, certain administrative and organisational aspects of the production process cause the wrong kinds of frustration; not the kind of struggle that leads to satisfaction, fulfilment, and growth on the other side, but frustration caused by inefficient systems that break our flow and pull us away from the creative work we want to be doing instead.
To solve these problems, I’ve designed a web application to help you spend your energy on creative challenges rather than unnecessary administrative ones. Meet The Music Factory Suite.
The Assembly Line: Visualise Your Progress
At the core of the suite is ‘The Assembly Line’, a workspace designed specifically for managing multi-song projects like albums, EPs, or any collection of musical works.
Users create track cards and upload audio that can be played back quickly in a desktop browser or on mobile, wherever you are. Tracks are arranged in columns representing different stages of the production process (such as ‘Demo Ideas’ | ‘Development’ | ‘Refinement’ | ‘Complete’). Multiple bounces or versions of a track are kept together within the same track card as the song develops. You can drag cards between the columns as the music progresses, making it easy to see exactly what stage each of your songs is at.
Centralised Collaboration & Playback
Being able to access all your tracks with a simple login makes it incredibly quick to reference and review your music on the go. Rather than digging through your emails to find Dropbox links or locating various works-in-progress scattered across different Google Drive folders, all your tracks are in one clean workspace. Tracks play back using the built-in media player, which displays a visual waveform so you can quickly identify and skip straight to any part of the song you want. All track versions are tidily stored within their parent track cards - no more losing updated recordings of your song as you go.
Multiple users can link up and share the same board, too. You can invite other registered users to your workspace or send invitations to non-users who can create an account for an extended free trial using your unique invite link.
Timestamped Mix Notes on the Waveform
A shared board quickly becomes the central production hub for a band or group of collaborators, with everyone knowing where to access the latest mixes.
Better yet, users can leave timestamped comments directly on the audio player waveform. This means mix notes and production comments are collected in one place and pinned to the exact location they refer to. It makes gathering feedback from everyone in the group a lot easier. Comments are unique to each version, so when a new mix revision is uploaded to the track card, the slate is clean and ready for new feedback.
Broadcasts: Protect Your Focus
No one likes being bombarded with notifications every time a minor change is made to a project. To respect the creative focus of you and your collaborators, I’ve built a manual ‘broadcast’ system that only notifies people when you decide it’s necessary.
If you make significant changes to the board - such as uploading a brand-new track or an updated mix - you can send a short broadcast message. This will email all collaborators assigned to that board with your message and a direct link, sending them straight to the shared board.
Musical Utility Tools
While ‘The Assembly Line’ is the core feature, I’ve added in a handful of quick-access musical utility tools that will make you want to leave The Music Factory Suite open on your computer during songwriting and production sessions to keep you in the creative flow. Some of these include:
Thesaurus and rhyme search
Quick sketchpad for lyrics & ideas
Tap-tempo tool
Metronome
Tuner
Quick idea recorder (uses your phone or computer mic)
Reference Synth with musical keyboard typing
Circle of fifths tool
Step sequencer
Try It Out in Your Own Workflow
To say thanks for reading and following my work, I want to offer you a discount to try The Music Factory Suite and see if it helps your workflow as much as it has helped mine.
The code below will give you a 20% discount for up to a year on either the Pro or the Studio subscription. Just create an account at The Music Factory Suite, and enter this code at checkout:
→ Discount code: MF-Reader20
There’s also a two-week free trial, so you can test it out on your own projects without entering any payment info. Just keep the above code handy for when you want the Pro or Studio features!
The Music Factory Suite is already speeding up how I work, proving to be an essential tool in my process, and I hope it does the same for you. Please keep in touch and send me feedback based on your experience with it - I’ll be actively focused on improving the platform and adding new features, and hearing from musicians using it in the real world is the best way to do that.
ICYMI: My Latest Release
Copycat EP 01 is a collection of covers dedicated to artists who have influenced my musical identity. It was a gratifying creative challenge to transform the songs into something new with the sonic fingerprint of n1ghtmar3cat while retaining what made them special to me in the first place.
