Do you have a hard time admitting that you’re wrong?

Well, you might have a bright future as an A&R guy. Listen to this story of an A&R guy blindly picking Shane’s mix after a loudness battle and still choosing a lesser, more smashed together mix.

There was one record that I did a few years ago that, um,  the A&R guy hated it and the producer was like, “I don't understand. This is amazing!” The A&R guy went around the producer and sent it to another guy who's now not even mixing anymore, he got out of the game, and the producer got it back and is like, “dude, the A&R guy loves this, but it's it's it's so loud, like there's no mix... it's just loud.”  And so the producer got the idea to send it to Brad (Blackwood) who was going to be mastering the record.

He was like, “you know what i got an idea.” So he sent my mix to Brad and told Brad, “hey I can't pay you for this, but Shane's about to lose the gig. Can you help us convince the A&R guy that it's just not mastered?” And so it took Brad three tries to get it up the about 11 dB needed to match the other guy's thing.  So the kind of A&R assistant on the record somehow convinced the A&R guy to blindly hear the two and he picked my mix. But didn't hire me because he had to admit he was wrong.  So the record still went somewhere else even though he blindly picked my mix after it was mastered.