Pacific Coast Enterprise/ A weekly Report on Small Business and Entrepreneurs

The recording industry is going through a revolution and Santa Barbara recording artist Jennifer Terran is on the front lines. The change in the industry is represented by Terran's next CD, "The Musician," recorded entirely at her new home studio.

"The affordability of great technology and the phenomenon of the Internet are going to change how people make music, " Terran sad. "Having my own record label, and being my own producer and engineer allows me to create on my own terms. So I'm not under the clock and the only rules I have to abide by are my own."

Terran's new release is a perfect example of where the revolution's line of skirmish is. She started the album by recording onto analog tape and finished it by recording directly into her computer.

The transition from using a commercial studio to doing it at home has many benefits. First of all there's the money aspect. She has produced two CDs, "Cruel" in 1997 and "Rabbit" in 1998, and compares the costs of those with her current project.

"When you make a CD it costs a lot of money," Terran said. "I've spent as much on my whole studio as I have on each CD that I've put out so far.

When you go into a studio, it's like paying rent. You're just throwing it away." Terran said. The great thing about the expense for her home studio is, "I'll do this once, and I won't do it again." In other words, her fixed costs for her next CD after 'The Musician' will be far less.

Another plus to using a home studio is the creative freedom of having everything ready when the music strikes.

"My agenda is about putting out real, raw, meaningful music, not about making money at the cost of compromising the art," Terran said. "See, I choose not to be homogenized, commercialized, victimized… and I believe that good business is selling something you really believe in, not just something you think will sell. Put the heart first and the rest will follow."

Like the film industry, the music industry is in a state of rapid change throughout the world.

The recent hubbub over Napster is only one of the mountain peaks of this rapidly emerging revolution. Big name recording artists have been slowly bypassing the record giants and going directly to the consumers with their new music.

What this means for the firmly entrenched hierarchy of the record companies is yet to be seen, but things are beginning to move. "I think things are going to start shifting," Terran said. "They already have with me… with this record."

With the expense of the studio equipment out to the way and her home recording methods down to an art form, Terran is expecting to produce her next CD in six months. She calls this ability her "new freedom." But fast as digital recording is, there's still the process of making the music and burning the CDs.

For the latter Terran uses a commercial house in Los Angeles, Groove House Records, which works with a printer on the jacket and coordinates the run in about three weeks from start to finish. She's expecting 'The Musician' to be delivered by Oct. 1.

Describing the process of producing music at her industry standard home recording studio, Terran said, "This all may sound simple, but none of this comes easy. There's always a ton of problems and eons of troubleshooting to undertake before the results start coming."

While music is not painting, according to Jennifer, art transcends and binds both disciplines. "If you're making a painting and you only have three colors available to you, what you can create with those three colors is unlimited," she said.

Terran added, "It's the artist who makes a picture sing, not the kind of brushes she's using. So all this talk of equipment is not where it's at ultimately. What makes a great recording are inspired performances."

Still the essence of the recording industry revolution is the quality and quantity of work that can be done from the home studio, and Jennifer Terran is part of that revolution.