Daniel Levitin - Music Producing, Consulting, and E-music Career

Music Producing, Consulting, and E-music Career

In the late 1970s, Levitin consulted for M&K Sound as an expert listener assisting in the design of the first commercial satellite and subwoofer loudspeaker systems, an early version of which were used by Steely Dan for mixing their album Pretzel Logic. Following that, he worked at A Broun Sound in San Rafael, California, building speaker cabinets for The Grateful Dead, for whom he later worked as a consulting record producer. Levitin was one of the golden ears used in the first Dolby AC audio compression tests, a precursor to mp3 audio compression. From 1984–1988 he worked as Director and then Vice President of A&R for 415 Records in San Francisco, becoming President of the label in 1989 before the label was sold to Sony Music. Notable achievements during that time included producing the punk classic "Here Come The Cops" by The Afflicted (named among the Top 10 records of 1985 by GQ magazine); engineering records by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Santana and the Grateful Dead; and producing tracks for Blue Öyster Cult, the soundtrack to Repo Man, and others. Two highlights of his tenure in A&R were discovering the band The Big Race (which later became the well-known soundtrack band Pray for Rain); and for having had the chance to, but not signing M.C. Hammer.

After leaving 415, he formed his own production and business consulting company, with a list of clients including AT&T, several venture capital firms, and every major record label. As a consultant for Warner Bros. Records he planned the marketing campaigns for such albums as Eric Clapton's Unplugged and k.d. lang's Ingénue. He was a music consultant on feature films such as Good Will Hunting and The Crow: City of Angels, and served as a compilation consultant to Stevie Wonder's "Song Review ~ A Greatest Hits Collection," and to "As Time Goes By" and "Interpretations" by The Carpenters. Levitin returned to the studio in 2002, producing three albums for Quebec blues musician Dale Boyle: String Slinger Blues (2002), A Dog Day for the Purists, 2004, and In My Rearview Mirror: A Story From A Small Gaspé Town (2005), the latter two of which won the annual Lys Blues Award for best Canadian Blues album. In 2006 mixed and co-produced tracks for Diane Nalini's "Songs of Sweet Fire" CD. He has performed on saxophone with Mel Tormé, Sting, and Bobby McFerrin, and on guitar with Rosanne Cash, Blue Öyster Cult, Rodney Crowell, Michael Brook, Gary Lucas, Victor Wooten, members of the Steve Miller Band, Norton Buffalo, Whitney Houston's band, and David Byrne .

In 1998 he helped to found MoodLogic.com (and its sister companies, Emotioneering.com and jaboom.com), the first internet music recommendation company, sold in 2006 to Allmusic group. He serves on the Science team for Signal Patterns, leading the development of its online music preferences survey. He was also consulted for the United States Navy on underwater sound source separation, for Philips Electronics and AT&T.