One of Hollywood’s legendary music recording studios is for sale as its proprietor prepares to finish his half-century run immortalizing many of the largest acts.
The checklist of family names who have recorded at Conway Recording Studios spans generations and genres. Burt Bacharach, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder, U2, Guns N’ Roses, Daft Punk, Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar are just a few of the artists who have recorded there.
While many studios have struggled, the distinctive area has attracted large names for many years.
Digital manufacturing instruments and dwelling studios have eradicated much of the want for conventional recording area, permitting artists to produce professional-quality music virtually anywhere, actual property information supplier CoStar said.
The digital revolution rocked the analog world of artwork, media and communication on a scale the industrial revolution did to agrarian and handicraft economies more than a century in the past. The creation of Pro Tools recording software program in the Nineties and the rise of music streaming companies in the early aughts irrevocably modified the enterprise.
Yet trade veterans say surviving services with expansive stay rooms, classic gear and many years of recording historical past may be changing into more useful as they become tougher to replicate. U.S. recorded-music income rose 7% to $6 billion in the first half of 2026, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America. Streaming, bodily codecs and licensing all posted beneficial properties.
Conway Recording Studios is a jungly hideaway on bustling Melrose Avenue created by a transplant from chilly Buffalo, N.Y., who arrived in the Nineteen Seventies with a imaginative and prescient to create an L.A.-style oasis in the center of the metropolis where he could pursue his craft as a sound engineer.
“I moved to California to be outside in the warm,” Buddy Brundo said. “I like sunlight.”
He defied recording studio conventions by bringing in pure mild through giant, soundproof home windows instead of working in chambers sealed on all sides.
“You kind of feel like you’re in Hawaii or somewhere else,” at Conway studios, said leisure actual property dealer Nicole Mihalka of CBRE. “That’s what’s kept Conway so busy over the years.”
Among the musicians who came to work there currently was Korean pop group BTS, the topic of a Netflix documentary launched in March that adopted the younger males as they recorded their comeback album “Arirang” after finishing their army service.
Brundo seems in the movie.
1. “You kind of feel like you’re in Hawaii or somewhere else,” a actual property dealer said of the studios. “That’s what’s kept Conway so busy over the years.” 2. Conway’s purchasers have included Justin Timberlake, Kendrick Lamar, U2 and Counting Crows. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Taylor Swift is a common and once created a run on firm merchandise by sporting a Conway Recording Studios sweatshirt in public.
People have requested Brundo for years when he might promote the studio he has operated since 1976, said Mihalka, who has the itemizing.
“Ten years ago I wouldn’t even think about this,” Brundo said. Now, “I’m 83, and how long can I keep this up? It’s best to walk away while I still can.”
He works out thrice a week and seems match, leaping up to play air guitar to Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” while exhibiting off the highly effective sound system in Studio B. The band recorded the hit 1987 album of the same title at Conway Studios, where members arrived by motorbike.
Brundo is asking $15 million for the property that spans more than an acre on the edge of Melrose Hill, a area of interest neighborhood at Melrose and Western avenues identified for its fashionable eating places.
It contains three studios, workplaces, tons of recording tools, including two grand pianos, lounges, and a kitchen that pointedly lacks a range.
“Every studio I worked with had a stove, and the kitchen was a mess,” Brundo said.
“Ten years ago I wouldn’t even think about this,” Conway’s Buddy Brundo said. Now, “I’m 83, and how long can I keep this up? It’s best to walk away while I still can.”
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Not that he hasn’t gone out of his means to accommodate his purchasers. Years in the past he shrank his own workplace to enlarge a lounge for a singer-songwriter who wanted area to camp out.
“Courtney Love wanted to book a bunch of time,” but also needed a place to unwind outside the studio. “We lived here for two months with the kids and the clothes.”
One of his studio improvements was an air-conditioning and filtration system that whooshes out smoke and neutralizes it with charcoal filters and blue lights that kill micro organism, because the official smoking coverage is “whatever they want,” he said. On a latest afternoon, a sturdy scent of hashish came from Studio A.
To create his rambling California oasis in the center of a busy neighborhood, Brundo acquired home after home on the south aspect of his lot over the years so he could hold increasing. He purchased and tore down 10 of them.
“Each house was a battle,” he said, notably one where the house owners had an problem with guitarist and outdoorsman Ted Nugent, who by chance shot an arrow into their yard.
While the property could be used for other functions, Buddy Brundo hopes to discover a purchaser who will hold the music going.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Brundo had set up a Styrofoam deer and a bear on the back of his property to entertain archer Nugent. The musician missed a shot and his arrow handed through the fence and came shut to placing a neighbor in her yard as her husband stood close by.
“He was really pissed off,” Brundo said of his neighbor. It took Brundo another 12 months to purchase the neighbors’ home “because the price went up,” he said.
Today, the foliage a full-time groundskeeper tends has grown tall and thick. Sleek cats roam the grounds.
The parking zone is giant for the studio’s dimension, and its 59 striped areas have accommodated about $2 million value of fancy vehicles at a time, Brundo estimated. It’s also large enough for basketball video games, and Brundo lately painted a full court docket on the asphalt so singer The Weeknd could play ball during downtime.
While the property could be turned to other makes use of such as shops and housing, Brundo hopes to promote it to someone who will hold the music going even as occasions change.
The latest backlash against AI-generated music has prompted “a reversion back to the real” with bands utilizing more devices and needing more area to document, Mihalka said. “There are fewer studios now where you can actually do this.”
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