Los Angeles, CA (December 15, 2021)—The Village Studios went live at the start of October with Studio Manager from Studium 33. an integrated scheduling, invoicing and studio management platform, aiming to enhance the customer experience for its clients while improving the complex’s administrative efficiency and resource management.
“Studio management is deceptively difficult,” says Jeff Greenberg, CEO of The Village. “The studio business is another world; outsiders just don’t understand it. Our clients range from large publicly traded companies with rigid administration requirements, to new artists making their first record. Without purpose-built tools, the studio business has been stuck in a 1990s paper workflow. It’s hard on the staff and hard on the clients. I was searching for a software system that could automate our administrative operation, but not at the expense of our culture and our personalized style of doing business. My lens for every decision at The Village has always been, ‘How does it affect our clients? Does it make their lives easier so they can focus on being creative?’ With Studio Manager, our clients can now administer session tasks from their phone – review and accept an estimate, confirm the session, issue a PO, and even pay their invoice. That’s ‘state of the art.’”
“Most successful line-of-business applications are built by people with deep experience in the target industry,” says Murat Aktar, co-founder of Studium 33. “Our experience came from building systems for Sterling Sound, one of world’s busiest mastering studio operations. Although mastering is a different workflow than recording and mixing, the administrative challenges are very similar.” Throughout the three-year development process of Studium 33’s Studio Manager, Aktar shared the design progress and validated ideas with studio managers including Tina Morris, long time general manager of The Village. In June, 2021, Aktar and his team began a close collaboration with Morris to customize the application for The Village’s specific requirements – a part of Studium 33’s service available to all Studio Manager subscribers.
Studium 33 Studio Manager Software Launched
“Fun isn’t a word you would typically associate with software migrations, but this one was,” says Morris. “Murat and Brian Lambert (co-founder of Studium 33 and Software Architect) are so experienced in both business issues and process. I would describe some ‘bane of my existence’ repetitive task and they would apply a relentless focus to ‘How do we streamline this? How can we eliminate keystrokes?’ Often, I would see a new build the next day with a solution. I’ve never experienced that type of iterative process with a complex software application. At the same time, they are respectful of our culture and open to adapting the software to our requirements, not the other way around. After using Studio Manager for two months, I can say that I’m spending 50% less time on administration and I have session details at my fingertips, so my response time is quicker for everything.”
“The next challenge we are tackling together is project archiving,” says Greenberg. “The Studium 33 team make a compelling case that project archives should be tightly integrated with administration,” stated Greenberg. “Once an audio file is created, its metadata becomes incredibly important, something I have been advocating for 15 years through my involvement with the Grammy organization. When audio files are associated with a project in the administration system, you get all of the rich metadata for free. That’s a big deal because metadata is expensive to capture and without it, archives are of questionable value because you can’t find what you are looking for.”
“To answer my own question,” Greenburg concludes, “Studium 33’s Studio Manager does indeed help our clients focus on being creative by simplifying distracting and mundane admin tasks. It helps The Village staff be more efficient and organized, which leads to higher-level customer service. Additionally, our business forecasting is greatly enhanced by the consolidation of information in a unified platform with reporting designed by individuals who understand our business. Studio Manager is the tool we needed.”
