The Hit Factory
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The Hit Factory was a recording studio in New York City famous for its clientele, such as John Lennon, Michael Jackson, Tony Bennett, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Madonna, U2, Barbra Streisand and Paul Simon. In 1999, The Hit Factory purchased Criteria Recording and in March 2005 moved the facility to Miami, Florida under the new name Hit Factory Criteria.
It was purchased from Jerry Ragavoy by Edward Germano on March 6, 1975. After Germano's death in 2003, the business was taken over by his wife Janice Germano.
On July 24, 2002, it opened Studios 6 and 7, complete with Solid State Logic 80-input XL boards. Each Studio contains a 48-channel Pro Tools MIXPlus system, a Sony 3348 HR, two Studer A827s, and outboard racks tailored for surround mixing. These studios have been utilized by Dream Theater, Lenny Kravitz, Matchbox Twenty, Paul McCartney, Santana, LL Cool J, Toni Braxton, Sting, Guster, Luther Vandross, Eve, Missy Elliott, Kenji Ozawa and Foghat.
Stevie Wonder recorded Songs in the Key of Life, which was the first album to be recorded in this facility. John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded their Double Fantasy album there in 1980. Also recorded there were The Rolling Stones' Emotional Rescue, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. and Paul Simon's Graceland.
From 1989 to 1993, the company also operated The Hit Factory London.
After the death of John Lennon, on December 8, 1980, the legendary status of the hit-generating Hit Factory became even greater. Lennon was killed after a day of recording at the Hit Factory. Mourners and music fans around the world read accounts of the murder in newspapers on the days following the shooting, and the Hit Factory, mentioned in many of these publications, became a household name for music fans everywhere.
The studio made history in 1994 when it earned 41 Grammy nominations for songs that had been, in part, produced there. That record was broken the following year, with 44 nominations, by its across-the-street neighbor, Sony Music Studios, a state-of-the-art multi-media production facility owned by Sony Music and equipped not only for audio recording and production but for video and teleproduction as well. This new "in-house" production model was a harbinger of things to come for the Hit Factory. Coupled with rapid advances in digital technology, the new recording industry began to render large privately owned facilities like the Hit Factory behind the times.
In February, 2005, after a decade of competing against the growing use of home recording studios and in-house facilities of major record labels, the Hit Factory finally closed its New York facility and moved its headquarters to Miami. The last album to be recorded in The Hit Factory New York was Dream Theater's Octavarium, on February 25, 2005.
