The Keys To A Six Figure Mastering Studio | With Chris Graham And Mike Indovina

Brian Hood (0:00)

This is the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast, episode 133

Mike Indovina (0:03)

You're listening to the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast.

Brian Hood (0:19)

Welcome back to another episode of the Six Figure Home Studio Podcast. I am your host, Brian Hood, and I'm coming here with my deep and sensual voice, recording in the early morning hours. And so this is what I sound like in the morning.

I am not here with my bald, beautiful, purple-shirted co-host today, Chris Graham, and he hasn't been here lately. And so if you are new to this podcast and you've only listened to like the last handful of episodes, you may not even realize that we have a co-host, a co-host who is awesome at what he does and very smart, and sometimes has a lot better insight than I can give you. So today I wanted to change things up a little bit, or a lot of bit actually. This is the first time we've ever done this. And give you a little taste of Chris Graham, even though he's taking a little time off the podcast. And how am I doing this? Well, a friend of ours, Mike Indovina, runs a website and a podcast called Master Your Mix. And he actually had Chris on his podcast months and months ago.

And I listened to the episode recently, and I was like, this is something we need to actually have on our podcast. Because it's basically a Chris Graham story in a nutshell, except it's a little bit more updated since the last time that we interviewed Chris on this podcast, which was literally episode two.

We're on episode 133 now. So I figured why not have Chris back on the podcast again to tell his story. And the best way to do that is to just take an episode he did with our friend, Mike Indovina, and publish it here again. So this is a replay episode from the Master Your Mix podcast. And again, thank you so much, Mike, for allowing us to take this episode and republish it on our podcast. But this is a lengthy one. And if you're missing Chris right now, this is a great episode for you. If you've never heard Chris talk before, or really don't know Chris's story as a mastering engineer, this episode is for you. And the reason is he has a completely different business model than what I practice. He is high volume, low margin mastering business, where he's having to master 100 plus songs a month, where in my business, a 20 song month is a huge month. So in this episode, Chris talks about how he got his start. He talks about how he's differentiated himself. He even gets a little bit into gear talk, because it's not Chris Graham if he doesn't get the gear sled alert. Although we withhold the gear sled alert on this episode, just to respect Mike's podcast.

And I think one of the most beneficial parts of this episode is when they get into how to set yourself apart from everyone else.

And there's a part in there, and I want you to listen to it and really think about it, is sometimes different is better than good. And that sounds a little weird, but you'll understand what I'm saying here once they get to that section. So without further ado, with my deep and sensual morning voice, here is Mike's interview with Chris Graham.

Mike Indovina (2:51)

Chris Graham, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Chris Graham (2:53)

Oh, it's my pleasure to be here, man. I'm excited to hang out with you today.

Mike Indovina (2:56)

Awesome, man. So for people who might not know your story and how you got into mastering, can you give us a little bit of that background?

Chris Graham (3:01)

Yeah, so my story, when I was in college, I found out that you could major in audio production, which meant that you could record yourself for free.

And I was like, wait, I'm a musician.

If I major in this, I won't have to pay anyone to record my music anymore. And that was really it. That was the entire reason I got into audio. I've always loved audio. I've always been fascinated by speakers and EQ and recording and the whole nine yards. Anything that made noise as a kid, I was just fascinated by. And so a big part of that was my uncle was a musician.

And when I turned 13 or 14, he showed up on my birthday.

He loaned me something for my birthday. And he loaned me a giant PV console slash amplifier. It was like this ridiculous 1980s. It seriously weighed like maybe 300 pounds.