What does a producer actually do?

[Keishi]

so basically, an album can be produced by a lot of producer?

[Dustie]

Originally Posted by ChrisKay

so basically, an album can be produced by a lot of producer?

Well... A single song/track can have it's producer too (different than the album producer, becouse, let's say, it was produced earlier and only now was purchased for the album).

It's kinda complicated, becouse a producer's job is different depending on what a producer is producing.

One general thing is that a producer is usually the person who has the power to make a company (for example a label) give money for a specific project (for example releasing an album [and all the loads of things that go along with it])

A song producer -- I guess that would be hiring an arranger and a writer and paying them to do their jobs (or buying an arrangement or lyrics), organising the studio to record vocals (if needed), taking care of saving and securing the whole work and stuff...

An album producer -- buying already produced/arranged/written songs and/or organising producers/arrangers/writers to do the songs, organising recording sessions in the studio, taking care of the 'putting things together' process, arranging promotional compagin (not like he does it himself, but hires people to do specific things).

Also, a producer can also be the arranger of the song, or the writer... It simply depends on what skills the person has and how much experience.

so... producer is like a director of a film?

Not really... when it comes to movies, a director is the person who works on the set closely with the photography director to choose how should the camera show things (angles, pans, cuts, takes and such), and also with the actors, how should they show things off.

A movie producer is again, someone who talks to big bosses of movie companies to convince them to give money for a specific project and then takes care of using the money to 'buy' everything needed to make a movie -- filming crew, actors, organising locations, sets, studios... all the stuff.


While producing a record is less complex than producing a Hollywood movie, there isn't many kinds of producers involving in creating music, but for filming, there's just way too many things to do for one single person, that's why there's all kinds of producers [co-producers, executive producers, support producers...], and all kinds of people helping them. It's hard to say exactly what each of them is hired to do and what they finally end up doing - hence it's difficult to give a clear description of who exactly a producer is.