[Marc Viner: The Role of the Producer]

Historically, a producer was the guy that the record, or girl, that the record label gave the money to for the band. See, because a bunch of 19 year old kids that are like really amazing musicians may not know the first thing about having six weeks and three-hundred thousand dollars to make a record. You know? Finding the recording studio. Finding the engineer. Who's going to mix it? Who's going to master it? You know? Who is going to basically be the liason between the artist and the label? The people that are putting up all this money, you know? So the producer is the person that’s in the trenches with the band, that is getting the funding from the label to pay for everything and that the label is holding directly responsible for producing, for manifesting, this record on time and on budget. That is really the defining difference is that the producer is the money guy.

Producers generally also just tends to be the one that has the big picture for the record that can think beyond just the one song their working on and how that song fits with like the other songs and you know, are we getting the right attitude across, you know? Especially once you get into sort of that Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, where like they might be thinking, "well no that song doesn't fit our demographic" (laughing), you know, and start to get all scientific about it. That’s all going to be sort of the producer. The producer and the A&R guy are gonna probably be the ones that are working closely because the A&R guy is the laissez-on between the label and the band and so you kind of got this conduit of people going through.

A producer is also somebody in its most basic level that can produce. That can like finish something. Because I’m sure a lot of people that will be watching this as artists will know how easy and inspiring it is to start a piece of music, but finishing it and saying "this is done". That’s the ability that a producer needs to have.