Online Collaboration with Dropbox

So, if you’re a recording musician you probably already understand the beauty of collaboration. It’s pretty easy to hire some of your musician buddies to come into your home studio and lay down some tracks. However, the majority of us home studio owners don’t live in a major recording city like Nashville or LA. In fact, even musicians in the big cities understand the importance of ‘thinking outside of the box’ when it comes to creating great music.

When it comes to the new music industry, online collaboration is essential. Maybe you simply want your best friend or family member to listen to your latest song. Better yet, you decide you need a really nice sounding lead guitar solo or custom drum track on your latest masterpiece. Now more than ever, this is a reality and it’s super easy to make happen.

As a home studio owner myself, I offer custom drum and percussion tracks through online collaboration. I’ve tried everything from messy FTP uploads, snail mail DVD’s and even MP3′s via email.  All of it has been more of a headache than I originally thought it would be. After doing some trial and error on my own, I finally found what I was looking for.

Dropbox.com

First, there are plenty of different options out there these days to collaborate online. (Perhaps this will be a separate blog post at some point). For example, a couple of sites that I’ve set up accounts with are: Indaba Music and Soundcloud. Both are very cool and are great tools. However, when it comes to keeping things super simple and organized, it doesn’t get any better than dropbox. At least in my opinion. Here are some of the features that I personally like about this platform:

Organized Folders

First off, I love digital folders and organization. Especially when it comes to recording. If you’ve done any recording you know what I mean. Every single audio track that you record is stored in your audio files folder. To collaborate with other recording musicians over the web, an MP3 simply won’t cut it. Not only will it be a nightmare emailing numerous times back and forth, the original wav files are a must if you’re wanting to add it to your session. With dropbox, it’s as easy as dragging your necessary audio files out of your existing folder right into your dropbox folder! It’s all right there on your computer, easy as that.

Public Sharing

The cool thing about the public feature is: Let’s say you’re working on an acoustic guitar groove in your home studio. You’re favorite bass player is too lazy to come over (or he lives in another state). Simply drag your guitar riff into your dropbox public folder, copy the public link and email it to him! You could send the same email to anyone for that matter. All they have to do then is simply click on the link and download the original wav file on their computer.

Keep things Private

On the other hand, you may be working on a top secret project that you don’t want the public to accidentally get their hands on quite yet. No problem. Dropbox allows you to create a ‘shared folder’. The same thing applies to the shared folder. Once all of your audio files are imported into this folder, you share the folder to specific individuals that are collaborating with you. For example, if I’m working on some drum tracks for my own project, I could name the folder “Travis’ EP”. Each musician collaborating with me gets access to this folder as an invite only. The best part about the shared folder? Every time someone updates this folder from their own desktop, ALL folders update in real time! This is such a valuable feature when it comes to efficiency in your creative recording process.

There’s an app for that

You don’t have to be a recording musician to appreciate the power of dropbox. Not only is it available as a folder and web client, dropbox has beautiful iPad and iPhone apps available. Everything that you back up on your dropbox folder is accessible from anywhere! This can be extremely valuable for business documents, photo albums, important invoices, whatever!

Sign up for a free dropbox account right HERE. (Referral Link)

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Tagged as: collaboration, dropbox, recording