Today we’d like to introduce you to Anthony Lopez.
Anthony, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My story is an eventful one. We moved a lot when I was a kid. It wasn’t military-related, but we just moved a lot any time my stepdad found a higher-paying job. He worked at meatpacking houses/slaughterhouses. Any time there was an offer for a higher paying job, or if he just found himself without a job, we would move. The people around me were always changing and I never had long-term friends, but there was one thing that I always had no matter what, and that was a love and talent for music.
As far back as I can remember, I sang along to the music on the radio. I was probably that toddler that you think of who sings along and maybe is actually horrible, but good enough that you think they are pretty good for a toddler. At the age of 8, my mom bought me one of those kiddie pianos from a garage sale. I had never played the piano before but I was able to make sense of it and I was able to find the notes for the songs I would hear playing. My mom had a lot of old records. Crates of them. She had a lot of music. Everything from The Beatles to Michael Jackson, and a lot of Motown, all in either vinyl records or cassette tapes. If she wasn’t playing something from the collection, she had the radio playing. But there was always music and it was usually being played at high volume. No matter what she played I could poke around on the keyboard and find the main notes and start playing along to anything that came on.
Of course, this lead to taking every music class I could get. In band class, I found other musically talented friends and a few of us became close. One of my friends had an electric guitar and I thought it was the coolest thing and I asked if I could try it. Sure enough, just like the piano as a kid, I was able to make sense of it and I could pick around and find the notes and after a couple of minutes I could play along with anything that came on. It was rudimentary, of course, but I understood how the instrument functioned and I could make actual music with it.
Naturally, we started a band. Our band had a couple of things going for it, and that was 1. that we were all actually good, and 2. that our drummer’s dad had a popular Tejano band at the time, and so we had access to lots of gear for live shows. I was 14 at that time and that’s when I first got to use professional audio gear. I never really planned to become an owner of a studio as a kid. I was lucky to have met the kids I met and that TJs dad allowed us to use all of that gear any time we wanted to. I started going with their Tejano band to their shows, usually big quinceaneras or weddings, and I got to run the soundboard for them. As a 14-year-old kid, I was hooked.
For the next decade, I helped record friends on everything from 4 track cassette mobile studios, to DAT, Reel to Reel, digital multi-track recorders and started doing PC recording/studio recording in 2001. After the age of 18, I continued the family habit of moving around a lot, so I never really rooted down long enough to do anything major beyond running sound for churches and some small events. It wasn’t until I was about 25 years old and living in Agusta Georgia, that I decided I wanted to actually make music a career.
I started with just a Compaq Presario PC, a sound card for gaming, and a very cheap microphone and microphone preamp. I put bed foam on the walls in one of the rooms in the trailer house that I was renting and I printed some business cards by hand and started offering to record people. To my surprise, people started coming to record. People even became regular clients and it was the weirdest thing to me that I was making money doing stuff that I had been doing for the fun of it up until then.
A couple of years went by doing sessions on the side and I decided that I wanted to move back to Texas a good friend of mine convinced me that Dallas was the place to be. So, I packed my stuff into my car and I made the drive to Dallas in a 20-year-old chevy cavalier. The water pump went out on the way to Dallas and I had to stop every 20 or so miles for the last 300 miles just to make it to Dallas.
Eventually, I made it to Dallas. I never had any guidance growing up so I didn’t really have a plan. I was broke and only had what fit in my car and my engine blew out the first week I was in Dallas. The only thing I had was the friend who talked me into coming to Dallas, and she had a house in Oak Cliff that she was buying to fix up and sell. I got to live there in exchange for helping with the remodel work and I was able to build a vocal booth and start recording. So, I spent the last of my money to build the booth and print some flyers and business cards and I went to the Wynnwood Shopping Center and just started handing them to anyone who looked receptive and I took them to record right then and there for $20 for an hour if they wanted to.
Doing sessions in that half-remodeled house made me the money I needed to buy a little truck, which allowed me to finally get a full-time job. So, music has definitely saved me many times. At this point, I went back to the plan of working full time while doing sessions part-time from my home studio. Over time my home studio would become more and more professional and then in 2010 I ended up going to work at a larger studio in Hurst. After a couple of years working there, I went back to working from my private home studio. I professionally built it out and it was called Audio House Sound Labs in Bedford.
Only in the last two years have I taken the studio on full time. I had to lower my expenses since I was not going to keep a separate job, but I knew that’s what would have to happen to get more business. February of 2020, right before the COVID-19 Shut Down, I opened Major Media Studios in a commercial building and with no other source of income. Now I own a smoke shop in Irving and have my studio in the same building and this is my full-time work now. If I’m lucky, people will continue to support us and both businesses will continue to grow.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I definitely had struggles along the way. Struggles are part of life and there will always be something to work out. Some of the things I struggled with was not being supported when I was starting out and lack of funds to improve. It was a bit of a cycle. It was hard to get regular customers because the studio was pretty low budget, but on the other hand, you can’t improve the studio with no income.
I don’t have any family within the state, and no rich uncles or anything like that. I had to find my own way and support myself while also buying up gear or replacing old gear when I could. I would work a normal job during the day and record clients in the evenings and weekends. Some weeks I would have a busy week with sessions, so between working full time and sessions, sometimes I just didn’t get much sleep but I still had to wake up and go to work. It was a lot of hours.
Hindsight is always 20/20, and today I would have done some things differently to move along faster, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know until I learned it. Looking back, I would have just lived in a much cheaper place for a couple years and buy up all the gear much faster, and then jump into a commercial building sooner.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Major Media Studios is a production service and marketing service. We mostly do music production work, such as recording, mixing, mastering, and composition, but we also do video work and marketing. We do corporate-level digital marketing and most of our marketing customers are businesses.
A typical day for me is getting messages and responding to messages about the studio. Every day I receive multiple inquiries from potential new clients about our services and pricing. I take care of messages as quickly as I can and get ready to take care of the sessions or any other work that I have booked for the day.
Now that I have two businesses it’s even more chaotic, but also very exciting. My smoke shop, The Glass Gallery Smoke Shop, is brand new. I just opened up in Irving in December and it is starting to get more local attention. Meanwhile, the studio is also getting more and more bookings.
What makes my businesses different, is that my smoke shop has a studio in back and my studio has a smoke shop up front! But that’s not the half of it. My studio is different because I bring over 20 years of recording experience into the session. I took music all through school and I have the knowledge of music and not just the ear for it. I take the time to work with new artists in each session to make sure that every record comes out its best. We are also priced super competitively and, on top of all of that, we work fast.
Many of the bookings are one-hour sessions. I pride myself in my ability to work quickly in the session and I tend to have most of the mixing and mastering done even before the vocalist is done laying down vocals. Generally, by the time the vocalist is coming out of the vocal booth, I may just need another minute or two to finely polish the mixing and mastering. Many of my clients tell me that they have tried to find another studio that works as quickly as I do and with the same level of quality and that they can’t find a place to match what we do at Major Media Studios. I take pride in that.
Upfront, my smoke shop is primarily focused on hand-blown glass pipes. We carry a wide selection of glass pipes of various sizes, styles, and colors. We also have great water pipes and all of your general everyday smoke shop stuff, like lighters, cleaners, ashtrays, scales, and the likes. It’s a fancy-looking little shop and when you come to buy a pipe, you may just hear some awesome music being created in the back of the building!
What matters most to you?
What matters most to me are the people who love me and my dog. The reason that is important to me is because when you grow up moving all the time like I did, you don’t get to know what it feels like to have friends that you’ve known your whole life. I don’t have any lifelong friends. But ever since I settled down in one place, here in DFW, I have made friends that have been like family to me. I love everyone. But I truly love those who show me love because I don’t have family to get that from.
Pricing:
- Studio time is $50 per hour
- Music Videos start at $400
- Websites start at $300
Contact Info:
- Email: majormediastudios@gmail.com
- Website: www.majormediastudios.com
- Instagram: @AnthonyKingOfficial
- Facebook: @MajorMediaStudios
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOE6MUpjtqQ9961XHoSf59g
