First Contract

[Erratic]

Hey, I finally managed to get a small recording/mixing/mastering contract for a local project and I was asking myself some questions.

Question would be about how much to charge for the whole project ?

To begin with, we're gonna be recording the drums in a small studio that the drummer have so I don't have to worry about the studio fee, so it's cleared out.

Recording of the Guitar and Vocals will take place in my house, and the guitarist is extremely picky about his takes and tone so I know there will be a lot of time spent tracking and deleting and editing, as for the Tone of the whole EP, we are shooting for the old school death metal in the veins of Demilich, Adremalech Demigod so

It implies, sound programming like Choirs, bells, synth, orchestral sections, tone creation via VST and Cabinet impulses; which I will all take care off but I still have to create those sounds.

Plus, Guitar tracking will be done with a drum machine (SD 2.0 TMF) then Real drums will be tracked, yeah weird but that's what we have to do unfortunately.

Now, 25 minutes of music and shitloads of programmings, sound synthesis and the normal job?

How much should I charge my best friend client?

 

[Nick M]

What do you normally charge to do this? Just charge your normal rate

-or

If this is your first job, do it for free(or close to it). Far more valuable to learn and build your name/track record than worry about money in this case.

hmm..are you asking what everyone else charges for that type of a job?

 

[Erratic]

What would people would normally charge for a job like this?

Cause I've done enough free of charge jobs and I got a packages of experience from all my 6789436 side projects

 

[AdamWathan]

I would probably be charging $2000-ish personally, I'm pretty cheap though :/

 

[DanLights]

hard to tell, but don´t do it for free, make your time actually worth something, doing stuff for free or even dirt cheap will only hurt you in the long run, but if it really is a REAL friend as in close buddies, you could negotiate something. The only time I worked for free was for my best friends, a short Ep and the guys were very very conscious of the value of my time plus they are good musicians so it was really pleasant and it ended up being a great final product for both them and me, but I reckon that´s not the case for everybody so beware if you´re going free/very cheap

 

[Erratic]

@DanLights - Exaclty to case I'm on to be honest.

@AdamWathan - Damn, that's expensive for 4 songs!

But I guess that's the price, A shame there is no guideline for that kind of stuff, I don't want to charge to high and lose the contract which won't probably happens but just trying to avoiding any sort of embarrassment if the price is too high, I guess I should have to go for something like 750$ or something but then again I find this to be too cheap, I'm puzzled tbh :/

 

[BLUElightCory]

$2000 for 4 songs is actually not expensive in the grand scheme of things - in my experience with most metal projects that's about $30-40/hour including the studio. You can't even hire a licensed plumber at that rate!

That said, I'd figure out what you want/need to be paid hourly, and estimate how much time you think each part of the process will take - then simply add it up and that's your ideal rate.

 

[Erratic]

Ok thanks to all for pointing out, I now have a generic ideas of the job price.

 

[AdamWathan]

25 minutes of material is 4 songs? Wow, long tracks, haha...

I was figuring more like 7-8 songs. I usually charge $200-300/song, so that's where that figure comes from. It really depends how much work you expect to put into it. If you have to edit all the drums for 25 minutes of relatively complicated material, that's a lot of hours right there. Plus creating orchestral arrangements and stuff from scratch with the band, also a lot of work!

I created a helpful spreadsheet when figuring out what to charge, you might want to check it out. Basically you can enter what you want to make per hour at the end of the day, enter how many songs you are doing, how long you expect each instrument to take per song, etc. and it'll calculate a project price based on what you want to actually make for your time.

Link to the original thread is here:

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy-sneap/550984-people-struggling-rates-how-charge.html

 

[Erratic]

Wow, thanks I'll definitely use this mate!

Yeah well there is an intro and an outro which use around 1min15 and contains like 10 tracks of midi arrangements I have to deal with and the songs are about 5-6 minutes so yeah, roughly 25 minutes