Spain - Warner Music Spain and Warner Chappell Music are behind a creative hub in Madrid called The Music Station, an artist-friendly complex combined with a new, non-traditional working environment for the company's employees.
Designed and built within Madrid’s former Príncipe Pio North Station, the facility houses several music production spaces, all outfitted with equipment from Solid State Logic, including an Origin 32-channel analogue mixing console in the flagship tracking and mixing room, and U Series controllers and SSL 2+ interfaces in breakout production spaces.
“We have five studios; one is equipped for Dolby Atmos where the Origin is installed, then we have two production suites and then two additional rooms with vocal booths for songwriting and small recording sessions,” says Álvaro Marin, lead audio engineer, one of three in-house engineers at the facility.
Each of the four breakout production suites features two SSL UF8 advanced DAW controllers, a UC1 plug-in controller, and an SSL 2+ audio interface. Two SSL 12 audio interfaces are alternatively available when more I/O is required in the writing rooms. The facilities are available to any artists signed to the record label or Warner Music Group’s publishing arm, who book studio time via an app. “Some of these studios have up to three or four sessions a day,” he reports.
The Music Station spans 10,000sq.m across three floors at the old train station, which was built in 1861 and lay abandoned for about 40 years until a renovation project began in 2018. The station’s central hall is now a concert venue that holds 2,000 people (1,000 seated), and there is also a small showcase stage with an 11.1.6 immersive speaker system, a green screen stage, rehearsal spaces, educational amenities and staff co-working spaces.
The Origin is positioned in Studio One, overlooking the current train station, a room that is equipped for immersive 9.1.6 Dolby Atmos listening and mixing. “We've turned out almost 150 Atmos mixes for Warner Music since we started doing them a couple of years ago,” Marin says. “Dolby Labs were heavily involved with this project.”
The Origin is typically used for tracking sessions in the adjacent live space, which measures around 35sq.m and to mix live shows in the venue for streaming release. Live performance projects have included Demarco Flamenco and Fangoria. “We have a Dante network in the live space, which comes into the Origin so we can spread everything out to the console’s input channels or insert points if required.”
The Music Station is the brainchild of Guillermo González, president, Warner Music Iberia and Santiago Menéndez-Pidal, president, Southern Europe, Warner Chappell Music. At the grand opening of the facility, senior WMG executive Max Lousada, CEO, Recorded Music, commented, “It puts the artist at the very centre of everything, from the rehearsal rooms to the recording studio, the content creation hub to the live music venue. It’s been a lot of hard work to pull together, but they’ve created a space that brings to life our vision of what a modern record company should be.”
