Studio Security – What I should have done, and what you should do now

Retrospect is a wonderful thing; it shows you everything you should have done and would have done if you’d known that you should have done it.

Having my studio broken into and emptied has, as you can imagine, given me lots of insight into what I should have done, both to protect myself, and my insurance claim. Some stuff I did do, but other bits it didn’t occur to me at all to do, and I’ve a feeling I’m going to seriously regret it in the very near future.

So, for the sake of all those of you with music studios still intact, and in the hope that it might throw a bit of badly-needed good karma in this direction, here’s the full list of things I really should have done, and that you should do right now.

1. Take photos of all your studio gear, both individually, and in place in your studio. This will help the police with identification (your local PC won’t know the difference between an 808 and and 303, believe me), as well as prove to your insurance company that you had the gear. This latter reason is very important; the insurance company will need either a box, receipt, or photo as part of your setup to prove you had the gear – so if like me you bought a lot of stuff secondhand, you’re unlikely to have a box or receipt. Which brings me to my next point:
2. Keep all the receipts for the items you’re insuring. We’re having to go through 10 years of work accounts to dig out the specific receipts for my studio, and it’s a long and laborious task, especially considering the fact that as I mentioned before, I don’t have receipts for a lot of stuff. So when you buy second hand kit from ebay or whatever, it would be a real help if you were to get a receipt for it too, even if it’s a hand-scrawled-and-signed receipt.
3. Get the serial numbers of all hardware. For the same reason as above; and so that you provide the Police with a solid way of knowing that they have your specific gear.
4. Mark your name and Postcode on all hardware with a security pen. It’ll make it more difficult for thieves to sell on your kit without it being discovered as stolen at some point. It’ll also again help Police with identification.
5. Make sure that you have excellent locks on your studio door, even if the door doesn’t lead to outside.
6. Fit an alarm, so that if someone does get in while you’re asleep in the next room, you’ll hear it! I know that sounds rediculous, but these guys filled a van full of my gear virtually under my nose as I slept. You can pick up an inexpensive but noisy alarm at any decent DIY store.
7. Make backups of your important files, and KEEP THEM IN A DIFFERENT BUILDING. I made backups of a lotof my work, but the thieves took the backup drive too, as it was sitting on top of the PC; I thought I was backing up to secure agains hard drive failure; it didn’t occur to me that my stuff might be stolen. There are online backup services too that might be more relevant in some situations.
8. Record Stem mixes of your tunes, burn the files to individual CDs/DVDs, and store them in a different building. If your music computer is stolen, the chances are that you won’t be able to recreate or replace all the sounds and plugin settings for your tunes,even if you’re able to get hold of or remember which plugins you used for the tune.If you save stem mixdowns of your tunes as a matter of course when a track is completed, you’ll be able to:a) easily remix it or do new mixdowns when you come to master for a release,
   b) still play versions of them live with Ableton etc, and
   c) get at the tunes on a different computer if you suddenly find that you have no music studio.

   For me, this point is the one out of all of them that I wish I’d done the most.

So well I hope that helps somebody, do get this stuff done; it’s so so simple, but could totally save you in the future!