Abbey Road Studios Launches Online Mixing Service

Clash Music pointed out yesterday that Abbey Road studios—the same studio responsible for classic Beatles, Pink Floyd and Radiohead recordings, and probably the most famous recording studio in the world—will be launching an online mixing service this year.

Abbey Road says the idea is to make the London studio more accessible to musicians worldwide. The process to get your recording mixed is easy enough: You upload your files, select the service you want from the studio and then pay online with a credit card. In about 10 business days, your Abbey Road mix will be complete.

This comes just a few years after speculation that the studio would close, or was going to be sold to ease debts on EMI, which owns the studio. The BBC later reported that EMI said the studio was not for sale, and the company was looking for an investor to revitalize the location. It seems that the move toward the online service could be the studio’s proactive way of adjusting to changing times, with more musicians than ever recording at home on programs like Logic, Pro Tools and Garageband.

The studio only accepts audio files—WAV or AIFF—which means you can’t just send them your Pro Tools or Garageband sessions. And before you get too excited about shipping your song out to Abbey Road, the service still has prices you’d expect from the studio. For a song that has between one and 24 audio tracks, it costs £550, which comes out to about $870—that’s about $10,000 to mix a full-length album.

The remote style of the service also means that a lot of musician-to-recording engineer communication will be cut out. Abbey Road’s website says they’re trying to fix this by talking with musicians about what the desired mix is beforehand. You get one “mix revision,” so if you’re not happy with the mix, you’re allowed one go-back with a “reasonable number of minor tweaks to levels or sonic elements.”

You can see Abbey Road’s website for the service here.

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