Record producer

A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure. The record producer, or simply the producer, is likened to film director and art director. The executive producer, on the other hand, enables the recording project through entrepreneurship, and an audio engineer operates the technology.

Varying by project, the producer may or may not choose all of the artists. If employing only synthesized or sampled instrumentation, the producer may be the sole artist. Conversely, some artists do their own production. Some producers are their own engineers, operating the technology across the project: preproduction, recording, mixing, and mastering. Record producers' precursors were "A&R men", who likewise could blend entrepreneurial, creative, and technical roles, but often exercised scant creative influence, as record production still focused, into the 1950s, on simply improving the record's sonic match to the artists' own live performance.