What is mastering in music business? How and why music tracks are mastered?

Mastering is a process that involves modifying the tracks to suit the tastes of the audience. The track is sent through a series of equipments that help in equalization, compression, limiting, noise reduction and other processes. Mastering makes the sound track smooth and crystal clear. The tracks also undergo editing, pre-gapping, leveling, fading in and out, noise reduction and other signal restoration and enhancement processes.

Mastering process is at times frowned upon as an unnecessary procedure. As per the musicians, the process may not yield much if the musical piece is already well written and composed. However, this thinking is getting changed. More musicians and audiences are getting to know the advantage of mastered tracks and thereby ask for the same. Mastering engineers are desired for their expertise and experience.

The mastering can be of two types analog and digital mastering. Which type of mastering is needed depends on specific needs of the audio that is to be processed.

Mastering services are now easily available online as well. This would ensure that the musicians need not move around searching for a good mastering studio. The mastering studios have their website which accepts the audio tracks that need to be mastered. The audio files to be mastered are uploaded on the mastering sites and sent back once the mastering is done. The online mastering service is high on value and low in price. So it makes it highly affordable and convenient. The quality of the mastered tracks online is no way lesser than the tracks mastered through attended mastering.