Where to Record a Live Session in Europe: Nine Studios That Do It Properly (2026)

A live session is the cheapest honest record a band can make, and the hardest format to find a studio for: most "live session" results are media series you cannot book (KEXP, Tiny Desk, Audiotree, Crack TV's Invada Sessions) or video companies that shoot a performance without recording it properly. This list is the studios in Europe that record a band playing together, deliver release-quality audio, and film it or are built for filming: Tapetown in Denmark, Kore, Beckview, Resident, Crouch End and OYFE in the UK, The Hideout in Aalborg, OSLO STUDIOS in Switzerland and Little Big Beat in Liechtenstein. We run one of them, so we are first; the rest are in order of how close they are to the format, not of quality.

Studio	Where	What a session is	Published price	Sessions they point to
Tapetown Studio	Aarhus and Djursland, Denmark; also on location	Fully live, no overdubs, no click, audio first, filmed; recorded and mixed by the same engineer on a hybrid analogue chain; most sessions mastered by Emil Thomsen at ET Mastering	Quoted per session	75 since 2016 with 56 artists: Iceage, The Murder Capital, Mikal Cronin, Moaning, Bambara, KEXP's SPOT Festival sessions
Kore Studios	Acton, West London	Audio-first live recording with video synced to the final take; API 1608 console, Pro Tools HDX	Hourly or block rates on request	Not named on the page
Beckview Studios	Yorkshire coast, UK (opened 2023)	Live recording package with multi-camera video; optional 24-track 2-inch tape; audience tickets can offset the cost	From £750	Not named in the launch article
Resident Studios	London	Live session recording with video, per song	From £295 for one song (Encore, 2023)	Not named
Crouch End Studios	London	Full-day record, mix and master in a large live room, filming as an add-on	£500 ex VAT plus £250 for filming (Encore, 2023)	Not named
OYFE Productions	Kent, UK	Six-hour session: three or four mixed and mastered songs, one filmed studio video, photos	£349 (Encore, 2023)	Not named
The Hideout Studio	Aalborg, Denmark	Live sessions and video as part of a one-stop package with podcasts and social content	DKK 3,500 per studio day incl. engineer; sessions quoted	Not named on the page
OSLO STUDIOS	Switzerland	Audio and video live session in the studio or on location, five-step process, Dolby Atmos certified	On request	Not named on the page
Little Big Beat Studios	Eschen, Liechtenstein	Ticketed live session in front of a small audience, recorded to 2-inch tape, filmed in 4K, pressed to vinyl	Not published; artists are booked for the series	Incognito, Jazzanova, Avishai Cohen, Nik West

What separates a live session from a filmed rehearsal

Three questions sort the studios above. Is the audio recorded on multitrack by an engineer whose job is the record, with the video following, or is the camera crew in charge and the sound an afterthought? Is the take kept as played, or quietly repaired afterwards? And is the room built for a band playing together: isolation where it is needed, bleed where it helps, and a mix that treats the room as part of the sound? The studios that publish a per-song video price are usually selling the video; the ones that talk about consoles, tape and mixes are selling the record. Decide which you are buying before you compare prices.

How Tapetown does it

A Live at Tapetown session is one take per song with the whole band in the room, no click and no overdubs, recorded on multitrack and mixed afterwards by the person who recorded it, which since 2016 has mostly been Rasmus Bredvig. The cameras follow the sound, not the other way round. Sessions have been recorded at the studio in Aarhus and on location, from a bowling alley in Odder to the Great Hall of Musikhuset Aarhus for Elias Rønnenfelt at SPOT Festival 2025 and the KEXP sessions at SPOT. The full list of who recorded and mixed what, session by session, is the Tapetown session credits; the audio of most sessions was mastered by Emil Thomsen at ET Mastering. The Reserve at Friland, our new complex on Djursland opening in 2027, is being built with live rooms for exactly this.

What it costs

The published UK packages run from about £300 for one filmed song to £750 for a multi-camera day, with mixing and mastering sometimes included and sometimes not. Danish studio days are published at around DKK 3,500 including the engineer, before video. Tapetown quotes per session, because a one-song clip for socials and a four-song filmed set with full mix and master are different jobs; tell us the band size, the songs and the dates through the contact page and you get a number within two working days.

FAQ

Can we bring our own videographer to a live session?

Most studios allow it; some, like the audio-only live rooms in the UK, expect it. Ask who directs on the day, because two crews with two plans is how a session loses its takes.

How many songs fit in a live session day?

Three or four with proper soundcheck and listen-backs; a full set on location is possible when the set is rehearsed.

Do we need a label or a big budget for a live session?

No. Most studios in the table take unsigned bands (Little Big Beat books artists for its own series), and the live format rewards a rehearsed band more than an expensive room.

What should we do with the session afterwards?

Release the audio as a live EP, premiere the video with a blog or magazine that covers sessions, and keep the stems for the deluxe edition. KEXP, Tiny Desk, Audiotree and the European radio sessions are earned, not booked; a strong self-made session is what their producers watch. Our guide to how music blogs cover live sessions has the specifics.

Facts checked on 31 October 2026 against each studio's own page or the linked article; prices are the studios' published figures and may have changed. If you run a studio that belongs on this list, write to us with the format, a price and a session, and we will add it.

If you want to record your band live in one room, filmed, with the audio mixed by the person who recorded it, start with recording a band live in a room at Tapetown and write to us with your dates.

How Music Blogs Cover Live Sessions: Data from 328 Independent Articles (2015–2026)

Our press archive shows that independent music media cover a live session quickly and mostly from abroad: a Tapetown Session drew a median of six outlets, 71% of the follow-up pieces about a session appeared within four weeks of the first one, and 79% of the articles with a known outlet country came from outside Denmark, while only 3% of session articles named an engineer.

Tapetown Studio is a mixing, mastering and live-recording studio for indie and alternative music, founded by Rasmus Bredvig in 2011, and we have released the Tapetown Sessions since 2016. Tapetown has studios in Aarhus and on Djursland, Denmark, and is building The Reserve, a new, large recording studio facility at Friland on Djursland, about 30 minutes from Aarhus in a nature reserve, opening in 2027.

In October 2026 we collected every article we could find about our sessions and the records we have worked on: 732 entries in all. This post is what the independent part of that archive says about how music blogs and magazines cover live sessions and records. We think it is useful to any band or label about to send one out.

How we counted

We kept the 328 independent articles that pass the counting rules on our press page: paid placements, press-release copies, artist and label pages and coverage of our founder's own band were left out, syndicated copies count once, and an outlet's country is where it is based. Every number below comes from a script that reruns on the same files, and the full method lists each exclusion and mapping.

What fell out, and why:

Archive entries	Count
Independent articles, counted	328
Paid or submission-network placements	62
Press-release or publicity copies	40
Artist, label, platform, database, festival or institution pages	110
Other: our founder's own band, not about the session or record, dead links, duplicates, outside the press pages	192
Total	732

The 328 articles were published in more than 120 outlets in 19 countries. They cover 34 Tapetown Sessions, 14 records we recorded, mixed or produced, and the studio itself.

Where the coverage came from

Outlet country	Articles	Share	Outlets
USA	97	29%	21
Denmark	59	17%	11
UK	52	15%	28
Germany	29	8%	11
Italy	9	2%	5
Netherlands	8	2%	6
13 other countries	28	8%	22
Country not known	46	14%	18

US outlets wrote the most articles; the UK had the most outlets. Danish outlets wrote 13% of the articles about sessions and 22% of the articles about records, so records lean more on the Danish press than sessions do.

Of the 328 articles, 215 (65%) were published from 2017 to 2020, with 2019 alone at 85 articles in 48 outlets. The earliest counted article is from August 2015: Sound of Aarhus on Tin Can Telescope. Our archive holds earlier mentions of the studio, from 2012 and 2013, but they are news items about band competitions rather than coverage of a session or record, so they are outside the counted set, and our press page counts from 2015 as well.

What kind of coverage it is

Coverage type	All	About sessions	About records
Feature or interview	121 (36%)	91	23
Review	61 (18%)	19	42
Roundup or list	60 (18%)	39	21
Post built on the session video	42 (12%)	40	2
Premiere	29 (8%)	17	12
News	15 (4%)	8	3

Sessions and records get different kinds of attention. A session is mostly written up as a feature or a short post around the video; only 19 of 214 session articles are reviews. A record is reviewed: 42 of its 103 articles are reviews. For 26 of the 38 sessions and records we could time, the first article was a premiere or a feature.

Sessions against records

	Sessions	Records
With counted coverage	34	14
Articles	214	103
Median outlets each	6	4.5
Reached five or more outlets	23 of 34	7 of 14
Follow-up pieces within four weeks	71%	30%
Article names an engineer	3%	21%
Article names only the artist or release	3%	41%

These are the ten sessions and records that the most outlets wrote about:

Rank	Artist	Session or record	Year
1	Catch the Breeze	Record	2018–2022
2	The Murder Capital	Session	2020
3	Mavourneen	Session	2019
4	Les Big Byrd	Session	2019
5	Dumb	Session	2019–2020
6	The Psychotic Monks	Session	2021
7	Ulrika Spacek	Session	2017
8	John Alcabean	Record	2016
9	Heathe	Session	2019
10	SOON	Record	2022

Seven of the ten are sessions. A session is one video and one or two songs, so it is easy for a blog to embed and write about the same week. A record has a longer run, with singles, the album and the year-end lists, and its coverage is spread over months.

How fast the coverage comes

We store release years, not release dates, so we measured time from the first dated article in the release year (usually the premiere or the release-day post) to every later one. That covers 38 sessions and records and 149 follow-up articles.

After the first article	Follow-ups	Share	Sessions	Records
Same week	45	30%	44	1
1–4 weeks	44	29%	32	12
5–13 weeks	36	24%	20	16
14–52 weeks	18	12%	7	11
More than a year	6	4%	3	3

For sessions, the median follow-up came one week after the first article, and 41% came in the same week. For records, the median was seven weeks. Measured by year, 94% of the articles were published in the release year.

The first article was as likely to come from abroad as from home: for 17 of the 38 it was a Danish outlet, for 19 an outlet outside Denmark.

Who the articles name

The article names	Articles	Share
An engineer or producer	35	10%
Tapetown, but no engineer	243	74%
Only the artist or release	50	15%

Session articles almost always carry the series name, which is usually in the video title: 92% name Tapetown. Only 3% name the person who recorded or mixed the session. Record articles are the opposite case: 21% name an engineer or producer, but 41% name only the band and the release. These figures come from the notes taken when each article was checked, so the engineer count is a lower bound.

How long the articles last

Of the 328 articles, 287 (87%) were live when we checked them in October 2026, 38 (11%) survive only as archive copies, and three were blocked or down at the check and confirmed by hand. Age matters: 28% of the articles from 2015–2016 are archive-only, against 13% from 2017–2020 and 2% from 2021–2026.

Few articles link back to the studio. Of the 25 counted articles we checked word for word, 4 link to tapetownstudio.com.

The outlets that come back

Most outlets wrote about one session or record and moved on: 79 of them, or 64%. But 22 outlets covered three or more, and 9 covered five or more. The most frequent was Destroy//Exist in the US, with 48 articles about 31 different sessions and records. Four outlets followed with 16 articles each: The Joy of Violent Movement (US), We Love That Sound (Germany), Sound of Aarhus (Denmark) and Last Day Deaf.

What this means for a band sending out a session

• Plan for the first week. Seven in ten follow-ups on a session arrive within four weeks of the first article, and two in five in the same week. Line up the premiere and the first few blogs before the video goes public.

• Start with a premiere or a feature. That is how coverage opened for two thirds of the sessions and records we could time.

• Pitch outside your own country. Nearly four in five articles with a known outlet country came from abroad, mostly the US, the UK and Germany.

• Find the outlets that come back. Nearly one in five outlets covered three or more of our sessions and records. Blogs that already write about live sessions are the ones most likely to write about yours.

• Put the credits where writers copy from. Only 3% of session articles named an engineer. If you want the recording and mix credited, write the credit line into the press text and the video description.

• Keep your own copies. More than a quarter of the 2015–2016 articles now exist only in web archives. Save a link to an archived copy of each article when it comes out.

Our sessions and live-recording mixing pages explain how a Tapetown Session works, and every session credit is in Tapetown Session Credits.

FAQ

How many music blogs write about a typical live session video?

In our archive, a Tapetown Session drew a median of six independent outlets, and 23 of 34 sessions reached five or more. A record made at Tapetown drew a median of 4.5 outlets.

How soon after release does a live session get press?

Fast. For sessions, the median follow-up article came one week after the first one, and 71% came within four weeks. Records were slower, with a median of seven weeks.

Do music blogs name the recording or mix engineer?

Rarely. 3% of the articles about our sessions named an engineer, while 92% named the Tapetown Sessions. For records, 21% named an engineer or producer and 41% named only the artist and the release.

Which countries' music media wrote about the sessions and records?

More than 120 outlets in 19 countries. US outlets wrote 29% of the articles, Danish outlets 17%, UK outlets 15% and German outlets 8%. Of the articles with a known outlet country, 79% came from outside Denmark.

How We Counted: The Method Behind Our Press-Archive Report

This note documents how every number in How Music Blogs Cover Live Sessions: Data from 328 Independent Articles was produced. The count date is 27 October 2026. One script reads the files described below and writes every table the report uses, so the numbers can be rerun on the same files and checked. We publish the method so that anyone citing the report can see what was counted, what was left out, and where the soft edges are.

The sources

• The research log. Every article, page and mention we found about our sessions, the records we have worked on and the studio: 732 entries, each with its outlet, date, coverage type, what the article names, and a verification status.

• The reviewed link list behind our press page. 424 links that went through two review rounds. 328 of them are marked as counted; that set is what the report analyses, and it is the same set behind the headline on the press page.

• An automatic link check from October 2026: whether each link was live, whether an archive copy exists, and whether the page text names Tapetown.

• The list of sessions and records with their release years. We store years, not dates.

• The 32 fully verified pieces shown as featured on the press page, with publication dates and a note on whether the article links to our site.

The research log and the link list are joined on the article URL, normalised so that www, mobile and tracking variants of the same address match. Every one of the 424 links matches a research entry.

What counts

The 328 counted articles follow the rules we use for the press page:

• Independent editorial coverage only, checked by hand or by the automatic page check.

• Syndicated copies count once.

• A submission network counts once.

• Paid placements and press-release copies never count.

• Coverage of our founder's own band never counts.

• Organisations, festivals and artist sites are listed on the press page but not counted.

• An outlet's country is where the outlet is based, not the language it writes in. Eighteen outlets, with 46 articles between them, have no known country. They count as outlets, never as countries.

An article is one counted link. An outlet is one publication. A session or record is one entry in our list; one entry can hold two songs or two releases by the same artist. Three entries are about the studio itself, with 11 articles between them, and appear as "studio" in the tables.

Why not all 732 entries

The research log is a record of everything we looked at, not a list of coverage. Each entry falls into exactly one of these buckets, the first rule that applies:

Bucket	Entries
Counted: independent editorial coverage of a session, record or the studio	328
Paid or submission-network placement	62
Coverage of our founder's own band	22
Press-release or publicity copy	40
Possibly automated content	6
Syndicated copy or duplicate page	3
Not editorial press: artist, label, platform, database, retailer, venue, festival or institution page	110
Dead link with no archive copy	13
Reviewed and left out: not about the session or record	55
Editorial or unclassified, but outside the press page's sessions and records	93

The last bucket is left out on purpose. Those entries concern artists and releases without a page on our press section, or are still unclassified. They have not been through the press-page review, so they are neither counted nor analysed.

How coverage types were assigned

The research log holds more than 300 free-text descriptions of what each article is. Each counted article was given one of six categories, matched in this order on the description, the kind of evidence recorded, and the article title:

1. Roundup or list: flagged as a roundup in the link list, or described as a roundup, list, playlist, selection, ranking, year-end list, picks, weekly, mixtape, column or song of the day.

2. Premiere: described as a premiere or an exclusive.

3. Review: described as a review, in English, Danish, Italian or German.

4. Feature or interview: an interview, Q&A, profile, studio visit, feature, spotlight, editorial or credit piece.

5. News: news, an announcement, an advance, a preview, a brief, a report, a partnership or a mention.

6. Post built on the session video: the remaining session, embed, video and stream posts.

The line between a feature and a post built on the video follows the labels used during research and is soft. Read the two together where it matters: 163 articles, or 49 per cent.

Who the article names

This classification is built from what was recorded when each page was opened during research; the pages were not re-read for the report.

• An engineer or producer is named when the research notes say the article credits, names, quotes or interviews one of the people who recorded, mixed or produced for us, or when the evidence recorded for the article is a named engineer or explicit personnel. Who those people are is listed in Tapetown Session Credits. Notes saying that a credit came from a release page, a database, the artist or our own credits post are not counted, and neither are filming credits or tags.

• Tapetown is named, but no engineer when the automatic page check found "Tapetown" or "Bredvig" in the page text, or the title or notes say the page names Tapetown or the Tapetown Sessions.

• Only the artist or release when neither applies.

The "engineer named" share is a lower bound. A page that names an engineer without the notes saying so is counted lower, and the automatic check can also find "Tapetown" in a tag or a sidebar.

Outlet country

The country is the outlet's own, as recorded in the link list. The report's "outside Denmark" share uses only the 282 articles with a known country: 223 of them, 79 per cent, came from outlets outside Denmark.

Dates and timing

A publication date to the day comes from the research log first, then from the featured pieces, then from a year-month-day pattern in the article's own address. 257 of the 328 articles have one. Year-only and month-only dates are not used for the week counts.

Because we store release years and not release dates, no article can be timed against a release date. The report uses two measures instead:

• Year lag: the article's year against the session's or record's release year, for entries with a single release year. 242 articles qualify; 94 per cent were published in the release year.

• Weeks after the first article: for each entry with a single release year and at least two dated articles, the clock starts at the first dated article published in the release year. Articles dated before the release year, such as pre-release singles or older band news, are left out. Every later dated article is measured in days and then whole weeks. That gives 38 sessions and records and 149 follow-up articles. The first article is usually the premiere or the release-day post, so this approximates time from release, but it is not the same thing.

Entries whose releases span two years are left out of both timing measures, because the clock cannot know which release an article follows.

How long the articles last

For the 328 counted articles, a link is archive copy only when the link on our press page is a web-archive copy, or the review recorded it as archived. It is live when the automatic check returned the page, and for the hand-reviewed links when the reviewer saw it. Three articles were blocked or down at the automatic check and were confirmed by hand.

Whether an article links to our site is recorded only for the 32 featured pieces, 25 of which are in the counted set. Four of those 25 link to tapetownstudio.com. The link was not checked for the other articles, so the report gives only that figure.

Rounding

Percentages are rounded down to whole numbers, so shares can add up to less than 100. The headline counts are rounded down in the report as they are on the press page, "more than 120 outlets"; the tables keep exact numbers. Medians are exact.

Known limits

1. One article is probably misfiled. A 2018 article counted under a record released in 2025 concerns, according to the research notes, an earlier recording made elsewhere, and names Tapetown only through a showcase. It adds one article to that record's count and changes nothing else.

2. Paid submissions. One counted article carries a note that it may have come through a paid submission category, and 11 of the counted outlets also accept paid submissions. Until our full submission records are matched against the archive, the headline outlet count has a worst case of "more than 110".

3. Unknown countries. Eighteen outlets with 46 articles, 14 per cent, have no known country.

4. The counted articles run from August 2015 to 2026. The research log holds entries back to 2009, from before the studio existed and about our founder's own band, and two entries from 2013 that are news items about band competitions. None of them is counted, so the report and the press page both count from 2015.

5. A few year values are missing in the research log; none of them belongs to a counted article.

Where to go from here

The report itself is How Music Blogs Cover Live Sessions: Data from 328 Independent Articles (2015–2026). Every counted article is listed, with a link, on Tapetown in the press. The script and the tables behind the report are kept with the archive, and we share them on request.