Tuning Up Music Catalog

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Los Angeles has plenty of singer-songwriter types who work behind the counter at coffee shops and record stores. But Casey Kalmenson sits behind the controls at her own recording studio.

Kalmenson, the 25-year-old daughter of L.A. radio station owner Howard Kalmenson, is in tune with how to make money in the music business – owning master recordings. So she opened a recording studio near Universal City where she works as a producer. Meanwhile, she writes, records and performs her own ambient, jazzy songs under the stage name Casey K.

“It’s a matter of having to be a jack-of-all-trades to have a constant revenue stream in the music industry,” she said.

She was able to open the space with an investment of about $30,000 in early 2011. She financed it with dividend payments from shares she owns in her family’s radio and TV station group, Lotus Communications of Los Angeles. The company owns a few TV stations and a couple of dozen radio stations across the country, many of them foreign-language broadcasters, including KWKW-AM (1330) in Los Angeles, which airs the Spanish-language ESPN Deportes.

Her soundproofed single-booth studio is in a converted office space next to a law firm and a production company. She learned sound engineering with about nine months of online classes.

She charges other artists $30 to $50 an hour for studio time. However, she prefers to take ownership stakes in the recordings she works on rather than receive upfront payments. Her long-term plan is to own a catalog of material that can be licensed to film, TV and advertisements.

“You want to own master rights,” she said. “That’s your opportunity – to have a big catalog and license it out. That revenue model will not go away.”

– Jonathan Polakoff

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