Blog
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Turmoil: Guaranteed Fresh Daily!
Craig Anderton looks around at the industry and sensibly ponders a question on a lot of minds recently: "What the hell is happening?"
Craig Anderton
Blog
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Has Music Technology Made Us…Lazy?
Is AI making your production work effortless, less effort or no effort?
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Getting the Band Back Together
Craig investigates a growing subculture that favors live band performances, creative music and arrangements by band members instead of outside producers, and musical styles...
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: MI Lessons From the Land of Morning Calm
Industry cornerstone Craig Anderton dives into the business and production model of K-pop and shares why adapting it might be a smart move forward.
Back Page
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Talkin’ ‘Bout My Ed-ed-ed-Education
In which our intrepid Mix columnist takes a look at how we learn about audio today, and suggests that what’s missing is a healthy...
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: AI and the Fingerprint Factor
Craig shares how to verbally smack down anyone who suggests that AI scraping the web for examples is the same as musicians drawing on...
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Here Today, Gone…Tomorrow?
As technology marches on, obsolescence is inevitable—but it's also a nuisance and often a financial hardship. Craig has some thoughts about this.
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: If Cheating You Is Wrong, I Don’t Wanna Be Right
Craig asks, "What is 'cheating' in music?" The answer might depend on who you are, and your role.
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Are We Having Fun Yet?
Some AI evangelists think musicians feel it's "not really enjoyable to make music." Craig sets 'em straight.
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: The Dopamine-Laced World of Gear Lust
Is “gear lust” just a clever phrase that caught on…or is there more to the story?
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Did Someone Say “Workflow?”
As you navigate the maze of dizzying changes in studio technology, step back and ask yourself whether something encourages good workflow.
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: The New Gig Economy—Studio Edition
These days, artists have to do it all themselves and be their own manager, producer, mastering engineer, merch maven and more. How do we...
Business
Craig Anderton Sets Asheville Masterclasses
Mix columnist Craig Anderton will present a pair of masterclasses for Asheville, NC-based The Bob Mogg Foundation in March.
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Strip-Mining the Emotion From Music
With the advent of digital audio, sound quality started to be confused with musical quality. Craig has some ideas on how to change that.
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: The AI Cesspool Has Arrived
Not only is the AI genie out of the bottle, the genie has acquired tactical nuclear weapons. Welcome to 2025.
Blogs
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Navigating the Survival of Sound
After recovering what’s left of our past, what will we do in the present to preserve our heritage for the future?
Blogs
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: The Race Against Time: In Search of the Lost Chords
Preserving vintage recordings that were created on analog tape has become a challenging race against time.
Blogs
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Vanishing Voices
In this first part of a three-part series, we’ll cover what we’ve lost when it comes to recent-era audio, and why we lost it....
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Turning the Industry Around
It’s been said before, but Mix columnist Craig Anderton decides it's time to add his own twist to ‘Live music is where the money...
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Do We Have the Ick from Ek?
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek recently drove the internet into a frenzy with a single tweet, here, pro audio industry guru Craig Anderton responds.
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: A Perspective on Perspectives
Maybe people just have a hard time reconciling that two opposing viewpoints can both be correct....
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: I’m Just Asking Questions…
No, this isn’t a thinly disguised attempt to ask leading questions and get away with it, like some people in the media do. These...
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Can You Negotiate With AI?
The music industry desperately needs revisions to the copyright laws to take AI changes into account—but it can’t just stop there.
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Good Morning, Your Hardware Is Worthless
There’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room: e-waste. The audio industry is a tiny part of the problem, but we are part of it....
Blog
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: The Atmos Trilogy, Book Three
Let's peek into the future—where’s Atmos going? Will it take over the world, or will it fizzle like previous efforts to market surround?
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: An Open Letter to Santa Audio…
I’m convinced Santa Audio exists, so I’m writing a “Dear Santa Audio” letter about what I would like to see in 2024.
Blog
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Speed Bumps in the Immersion Transition?
The problem becomes how to transition from stereo to immersive. Creating immersive content isn’t enough.
Blogs
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: So…Who Needs “New” Mixes?
Lots of cherished music is being remixed and remastered for immersive music formats, but are those mixes more about the sound than the music...
Blogs
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Dear Screenwriters and SAG-AFTRA
Columnist Craig Anderton pens an open letter from the music industry to the Hollywood unions on strike.
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Hitting the Ceiling
The past few years have seen multiple MI company acquisitions, but can the industry maintain the kind of growth that private equity often demands?
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Music Technology? Or, the Technology of Music?
Craig Anderton explores whether our fascination with the technology of music distracts us from the art of music technology.
Blogs
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Living With Uncertainty
There's a lot of uncertainty facing the pro audio industry, coming at it from many angles at once -- but is that a bad...
Blogs
Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Does AI Stand for “Attorneys Incoming”?
Last September, I wrote an Open Channel about AI. Is it too soon to revisit the topic? Well, AI is reshaping the world at...
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel – Mastering the Art of Mastering
Is Mastering having a Kodak Moment? And is that a good thing...or a bad thing?
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Craig Anderton’s Open Channel: Profiles in Gear Lust
Gear. We love gear! But there are many different ways of loving gear—so let us count the ways.
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Open Channel: You Matter. Yes, You.
Don’t believe anyone who tells you that musicians don’t matter, engineers don’t have any skills that can’t be acquired by choosing the right plug-in,...
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Open Channel: Is the Race to the Bottom Over?
Is audio quality finally not just for sound professionals and audiophiles? Craig Anderton weighs in.
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Open Channel: The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta…Write About It
Craig Anderton feels music, and the general population, are reaching a tipping point—find out what it is.
Blog
Open Channel: The Vast Wasteland of Artist Development
What if streaming services were to develop new, exciting artists who took advantage of immersive music's power?
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Open Channel: Why We Need to Re-Invent Documentation
Documentation can be the Achilles heel of any software—or its saving grace. But is there a better way to teach users?
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Open Channel: Can Artificial Stupidity Save Us From AI?
Will AI will ruin music production? Craig Anderton suggests that the only way to beat artificial intelligence is with artificial stupidity.