Hit Factory NYC to close end of Feb

[GilWave]

Edit - The Hit Factory, one of the legendary New York recording studios and home to more hits than I can recant, is closing. They are no longer taking any bookings and have put the employees on notice as of today. It will close the end of Feb and by the end of March everything will be cleared out of the building. The press release comes out tomorrow. They are keeping Criteria/Hit Factory open in Florida yet are closing the NY Hit Factory.

from Massenburg forum at ProSoundWeb

[Snatchman]

Wow..!.... .....Signs of the times..

[Lindell 2nd]

bummer...

[thethrillfactor]

This has been rumored for months.

Ever since the elder Germano died.

His wife has wanted to turn the buiding into condominums for months(great location in Manhattan).

I guess she won out.


One group that will be happy are the neighbors.


Its a quiet residential neighborhood and i am sure having people hang out there was never a pleasant experience.

Oh well, i guess Sony around the block will get the bulk of their business.

[Steffmo]

Well...this was inevitable. And not the last. Its been in the works for months.

Until the current climate changes, if it ever does, the need for such facilities will continue to decline. Although I totally believe there will always be some of these studios around to service projects that legitimately need this kind of space and service.

I'm sure there will be a firestorm of commentary...but the simple fact is that we have seen a paradigm shift in our industry, and it is up to us to find ways to maintain quality in both work environment and product that work within the economic realities of what we face.

[GilWave]

Originally posted by thethrillfactor
Oh well, i guess Sony around the block will get the bulk of their business.

Well, funny you should say that...

Don't know if Sony owns the building or not, but with the cost of doing business in NYC I can't imagine that Sony won't be far behind the Hit Factory.

[thethrillfactor]

Originally posted by GilWave
Well, funny you should say that...

Don't know if Sony owns the building or not, but with the cost of doing business in NYC I can't imagine that Sony won't be far behind the Hit Factory.

Well Gil,

You know since the label left the studio its been running on its own.

Kinda like what happened to A&M.

They've been on the cusp for a while now.

One good thing that happened because of it is that the guys that are running it are more open to different clients and working with their budgets(kinda what Hit Factory wasn't).

I've bought more business to Sony lately than before.

They also have been renting some of the rooms monthly to producers which all of the big studios have been doing(Chung King,Avatar,SoundTracks).

By the way, i have a mastering session at the Hit Factory towars the end of Feb. and i wonder what will happen now?

[Brad Blackwood]

Originally posted by thethrillfactor
By the way, i have a mastering session at the Hit Factory towars the end of Feb. and i wonder what will happen now?

If it's with Herb, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at what he has planned. Give him a call...

I dunno what Scott's going to do.

[thethrillfactor]

Originally posted by Brad Blackwood
If it's with Herb, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at what he has planned. Give him a call...

I dunno what Scott's going to do.

Hey Brad,

Its with Nathan James.

I haven't spoken to Herb or Scott in months.


If Scott wants to get rid of his Manley mastering console i'll take it off his hands.

[zboy2854]

And the Hit Factory/Criteria Miami is not far behind I'm sure. I drive by there all the time, and it's deader than a doornail over there. Local word is that they're desperately looking for a buyer to put them out of their misery, but they'll surely have to do so at a huuuuuge loss.

[Musiclab]

Originally posted by thethrillfactor
Hey Brad,

Its with Nathan James.

I haven't spoken to Herb or Scott in months.


If Scott wants to get rid of his Manley mastering console i'll take it off his hands.

I think Scott will come up with something soon.

[bunnerabb]

Originally posted by zboy2854
And the Hit Factory/Criteria Miami is not far behind I'm sure. I drive by there all the time, and it's deader than a doornail over there. Local word is that they're desperately looking for a buyer to put them out of their misery, but they'll surely have to do so at a huuuuuge loss.

Ow.

Some friends of mine were tracking in the B room, there, while they were doing Layla in the A room. He got to sit about in the lounge with Harrison and Duane and Eric, trading slide licks and shooting the shit.

That's always been my ideal " 'A' Facility" .

*sigh*

Deiu.... This is sad. :(

[nukmusic]

Why not just downsize? I know they just upgraded a few of their rooms with new SSL's.

Do you think they are jumping ship "early" just to sell off all the gear while its still hot?

[drew]

both of these closings seem to be more about real estate than failing studios. put them just outside a major metro area and I wonder if it'd be different.

[loudist]

How odd... Ron Albert (the engineer on Layla) called me this afternoon to tell me about the NY Hit Factory and here it is on GS.

Criteria/Hit Factory doesn't have the sexy real estate location that the NY facility has.

bunnerabb, what was the bands name in studio B?

[bunnerabb]

They were snagged in a "signing sweep" in Cleveland. Nobody you've ever heard of. "December's Children", IIRC.

[jlotto]

wow

first Unique, now Hit factory. Sony gonna be more swamped now. Sony been hangin in there. Also Turning lounges and spaces into private studios for producers and a&r dudes they ensure some traffic and some "rent".

A sign of the times. shoestring recording budgets & affordable technology are having a trickle down effect big time.

[mixer]

Originally posted by zboy2854
And the Hit Factory/Criteria Miami is not far behind I'm sure. I drive by there all the time, and it's deader than a doornail over there. Local word is that they're desperately looking for a buyer to put them out of their misery, but they'll surely have to do so at a huuuuuge loss.

i work in the miami area and have seen no indication of the hit factory being in trouble..owned a studio accross the way from them for years..still keep in touch..these rumors have been around since the criteria days..rumors really hurt all of us..business is bad enough without making it worse..some of us book sessions in these places..

[studiojimi]

i have fond memories of working at the factory in the "roberta flack room" with bruce terguson the enginner who did cream disraeli gears.

we were cutting basic tracks for cher when the producer and cher decided not to do it and we used/salvaged our rhythm section composed tracks for diane scanlons first album.

the cat was whacked this terguson

he rigged a little trigger on my kick drum pedal with a couple of bare wires which opened up a gate which got him the kick sound he was after

the room had a nice vibe and the people were nice

this was like summer 1980

i hope they save it somehow

looks like slipperman's gonna be a rich man

[Lamebirdy]

It doesnt surprise me in the least, back when I was working over at the NY location a few years ago, they were struggling to fill the rooms up. It only got worse as time went on, they had a good month or 2 where only 2 or 3 rooms were booked at a time. It was very rare that you'd see it full. Then they upgraded a few rooms to new SSL's to lure in new clients but it didnt really do the trick, people would try the room out but in the end, they'd go for cheaper studios. Alot of good assistants left that place because they saw the top engineers in the business struggling to find consistant work, and it scared them off. Its sad really, but it is unfortunatly reality.

[zboy2854]

Originally posted by mixer
i work in the miami area and have seen no indication of the hit factory being in trouble..owned a studio accross the way from them for years..still keep in touch..these rumors have been around since the criteria days..rumors really hurt all of us..business is bad enough without making it worse..some of us book sessions in these places..

Sorry to say these aren't rumors, bro. A good friend who works there often has said as much. I work around there all the time, and at studios I freelance at, we constantly get clients who come to us after balking at the $275/hr. (not including engineer) they're still trying to charge there.

That is, of course, when they can actually get someone there to quote them a rate. I can't count how many bands, artists, and clients told me how they were given the bum's rush on the phone when simply trying to book time or get a rate. It seems if you're not Ricky Martin or Julio Iglesias or some other major label-booked artist they could care less about giving the smaller artists/clients the time of day. BIIIIIG mistake in this day and age. tutt

And the difference between the Criteria days and now is that the economics are completely different. Apples and oranges.

[zmix]

Originally posted by thethrillfactor
This has been rumored for months.

Ever since the elder Germano died.

His wife has wanted to turn the buiding into condominums for months(great location in Manhattan).

I guess she won out.


One group that will be happy are the neighbors.


Its a quiet residential neighborhood and i am sure having people hang out there was never a pleasant experience.

Oh well, i guess Sony around the block will get the bulk of their business.

Hell's Kitchen: Quiet Residential Neighborhood

You most certainly are a realtor.

Avatar is Right there, too... don't forget!

[robdarling]

This is actually a little cut and paste of what I wrote on Ross Hogarth's site at PSW. I feel like there's a lot of drama for something that isn't real.

I'm actually of the belief that, while the studio business is indeed not very great right now, for reasons we all know, the Cello and Hit Factory closings aren't really part of that.

Cello was never well-capitalized and had cash-flow issues. Being booked all day every day in a business where margins are thin can be a problem when those bookings stay a long time and people are slow to pay. If you don't have a big cash cushion, you have issues, and if one or two people stiff you or stretch into 180-240 days, well, you're out of business.

Hit Factory was, well, the Hit Factory. By the time the Germanos built 421, they were in the real-estate business, not the studio business. Anyone who ever worked there knows that IT NEVER MADE MONEY. You do the math. The shop is as large as Electric Lady's whole live room. Add the lobby and you have all of Electric Lady studio A. In the basement there is room for a Lincoln, a Jeep, a Ferrari, and a Porsche, and ALL of Bruce Swedien's TubeTraps, Microphones, Tape Machines, and anything else he wanted to leave there. Oh yeah- an elevator shaft that can move it all, too. That's the rest of Electric Lady plus some. Imagine that- a whole Electric Lady worth of empty space. Empty space doesn't make money.

But if that space doesn't make money and has cash-flow, it is very useful to a real-estate holding company. Now that the real-estate market in that neighborhood is maturing (that is just north of where the new Stadium for the Jets will be, just south of the new AOL/Time Warner building), it is time to sell the building unless they want to get into the development business (holding is very different from development.) That is why they are closing the Hit Factory. With the lease expired down the street at the 237 building and the market peaking, it is a perfect time to get out of New York.

I would wager that as much as BMG knew to the day when they would close the studios after buying RCA, the Germano's had a number that would make the building worth selling. That it came as such a shock to the employees should confirm this. The family will spend the winters in Miami and the summers in Quogue, but still have another struggling but cash-flow driven business (Criteria) as a nice way to move money around. They've known what they were doing for quite some time, regardless of the ups and downs of the studio business. If this is any indicator, I'd say Sony was next. Once an accountant's computer somewhere in a South-Asian office tower sniffs out the proper increase in the value of the property portfolio, it will be gone in a month.

[robdarling]

ps- what neighbors are you talking about? Sony? The Deli? The giant empty spaces to either side of the main doors? Security at Hit Factory wouldn't let you park within a hundred feet of the front door- noise was never, ever, an issue in the neighborhood there.

[betsy]

Maybe the huge parking lot on the corner or the quiet folk who use to hang out at Studio 54 down the street.

[Steffmo]

Some interesting dirt on the HF closing recently brought to my attention by some in the know folks.

First of is the report that in Ed Srs. will....there was no mention of Troy Germano. I'm told the whole shooting match was left to Mom.

Separately....in a recent interview with Troy Germano posted on the Velvet Rope, Troy attributes they fall of the HF not to a lack of business, but by Mom's failure to service the clientel correctly.

He states that he is building studios in both the US, and in Prague.

"There has to be a place where Eminem can bump into Mick Jagger in the hallway" is his parting shot.

[Larrchild]

In the mid-90's, the local Miami SPARS chapter invited Tom Dowd to speak to the SPARS group on the future of the recording industry. Back during a time where MIX was publishing articles like "Diversify to survive" and "ABC's of Audio Post Production", lol. We gathered at the Bee Gee's studio and sat at the feet of Father Time, and listened with great intent. He said:

"I can remember a time when there were no Commercial Recording Studios....*long pause*...And I can envision a time when there are no commercial recording studios."

Mouths were hanging agape. Stunned silence filled the room.
This is not what we studio owners wanted to hear at all.

But it was dead-on accurate.
Tom knew his s**t, i guess.

[robdarling]

Of course dividing by seven on all hearsay, it would make sense and isn't very scandalous for Janice to take over the business, given what the business is truly about. The accounting office was as large as any of the studios, was the accounting for their entire business, and she had the big office. Not all the nice wood of the other offices, but the real power seat. In real terms, keeping in mind where the money truly lay, she and Eddie were ultimately the boss, not Troy (who could make Michael Gubbins {building manager} jump higher? - there's the answer.) It was common knowledge that when Eddie died what we all knew would be a young death, the days of the studio would be numbered.

I would read a little into the idea that "lack of service to the clientele" killed the studio. Troy was not very popular among clients and I don't really think that firing him and hiring Zoey Thrall, one of the most honest and upstanding people in the business was "not serving clientele."

[robmix]

Interesting, as a former employee and then a client I have nothing but good things to say about Troy. In my years there I can count the number of times I ran into Janice on one hand. I always got the impression that Troy and Danielle handled the day to day stuff and Eddie handled the bigger stuff - real estate, personal interventions in cases of technical problems, schmoozing, etc. We were all scared to death of Eddie and usually went to Troy with any problems. Of course Danielle got all the late night emergencies to which she usually replied "I don't care, don't ever call here again, f**k you". I only had a few dealings with Zoey and she was always cool too.

[robdarling]

Robmix,

I've edited my post. On second reading, it was obviously too strong.

But I will say that while there are many reasons to work at Hit Factory, doing business with them, not just Troy, isn't one of them.

Question- did you work there under Barry? I've often found that people who worked under Barry have the best relationship with the studio.

best,

r.