So you want to know the real difference between audio mixing and mastering music for producers and artists? Let me start by saying these are irreplaceable parts of the music production process!
If music is cake, and there are different flavors of cake, but your favorite is strawberry! Let’s say you want to bake a strawberry cake! What do you need? You need the right amount of, well, the correct ratios of flour, butter, sugar, eggs, strawberry, and any other ingredients to get it to a perfect mix. Then you have the cake go through standard heat to make sure it is now perfectly baked! Could you eat right after baking? Of course, you can! It might be hot, though!
You can also have a nice finishing touch with icing on the top of the cake and sell it in your store! So you see icing is more like the mastering phase of the music production. We need it at 100% to make your music commercially acceptable! For sure... anyone can do the icing, but an expert will always bring you the desired results and consistently! Can mixing ingredients and icing the cake be replaceable? Not really! So you know the answer is the same for mixing audio and mastering music for producers and artists!