UD prof gets 4th Grammy nomination

3:34 p.m., Jan. 5, 2004--Making your mark in the music industry has never been easy. It’s a fact of life that Andreas Meyer, an adjunct faculty member in UD’s Department of Music, knows all too well.

Recently nominated for his fourth Grammy in five years for his mastering work on the four-CD set of the Count Basie Project for Legacy Records, the 34-year-old recording engineer with Sony Music Studios in New York City learned early that while hard work and inspiration are assets in the control room, they don’t always receive the recognition they deserve.

To make it into the pool of Grammy nominees, a candidate must first pass through a series of peer elections and reviews. To win a Grammy, a nominee must pass stiffer muster still.

“It’s very difficult to distinguish yourself, because there are so many people out there doing this work,” Meyer said. “But, there are also a lot of very talented people in the industry who deserve to be recognized and who can’t get recognized because there isn’t enough work going around anymore.”

Meyer, who won a Grammy in 2000 for his mastering work on the four-CD set of Louis Armstrong classics, cites the glutted marketplace as just one reason for the decline, however. A bigger, more worrisome reason for the shrinking opportunities, he said, is illegal music downloading.

“My concern with the music industry in general is the amount of piracy that occurs through the Internet with illegal downloading,” he said. “It’s intriguing to me how the general public is so used to thinking that music should be free.”

Because of the growing problem, music piracy is one of the topics Meyer covers in his “Introduction to Recording” course each fall at the University.

“Even in my classes, where 90 percent of students are aspiring musicians, when I pose the question of downloading, nearly 100 percent say they haven’t purchased a CD in the past year,” he said. “When I see that, I think of it as being counter-productive behavior, because they’re taking away from their own future. If people continue to think that music should be free, then the general public is not going to want to pay to even hear musicians play.”

Hired by Sony Music Studios in 1994, Myer has survived downsizings and budget cuts and continues to draw attention for his quality mixing and mastering work on jazz and historical reissues.

“It’s a brave new world, and it’s hard to make your mark because the music industry is shrinking,” he said. “You have to create your sound.”

Article by Becca Hutchinson

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