In my endless struggle to determine the best way to charge bands (per hour, per song, per project, try and charge for editing? etc) I built this little spreadsheet to help me out.
Basically how it works is there are 4 rate types:
a) The hourly rate you bill the client (usually it's easiest to only bill them for setup and tracking and if you are lucky mixing, billing hourly for editing usually won't fly)
b) The actual rate you make per hour at the end of the day (includes ANY work you put into the project, so it is whatever you get paid total, divided by however long the whole thing took)
c) The Project Rate, which is how much it cost for the entire project
d) The Per Song rate, which is how much it cost per song on the project.
There are 4 worksheets that look the same but all make their calculations from one of these rate types respectively. So the "Hourly Rate" worksheet has you enter what you are charing per hour for each service and the actual hourly rate, project rate and per song rate are calculated automatically.
The "Earned Rate" spreadsheet has you enter what you want to get at the end of the day per hour (so say you feel your time is worth $20/hr, you enter that and it will tell you how much you SHOULD charge the client for setup/tracking/mixing in order for it to work out to $20/hr when you add in the editing time you are doing for free.)
The "Project Rate" spreadsheet has you enter what the band is paying you for the project and then lets you see what you are getting per hour, per song and what you would be billing per hour to make the same money.
The "Per Song" spreadsheet is the same deal as the project rate, you just enter the per song rate you are charging instead of the project rate.
On top of this, you obviously have to enter how many songs and the total time required for each instrument for each aspect of the project.
The blue highlighted cells on each sheet are the ones you are manually entering, it changes depending on which sheet you use of course.
There are a few things you might want to tweak based on personal taste (ie. maybe you take 5 hours to mix the first song and only an hour for each subsequent song instead of the same time for each song, or maybe you can't get bands to pay hourly for mixing) but if you have any idea how to operate Excel then you should have no problem manipulating any of the formulas to suit your needs.
Anyways, I have found this uber helpful because bands hate paying by the hour so this way, you can figure out how long it will take you easily, type in what you want to make per hour in the "earned rate" spreadsheet, and it will automatically tell you what to charge per song so that you don't get ripped off for your time, or get stuck with a band that thinks it'll only take 12 hours to record a 6 song EP just because they are cheap and you are charging hourly.
Of course this will never be perfect because you can't predict exactly how long it will take to do everything, but you can get a much better estimate of how much to charge and break things down this way.
The other thing it's useful for is if a band wants to do 8 songs and says they can only afford $750, you type that in as the project price and type in how long you think it'll take to track and edit each instrument as well as mix and BAM, you can see what you are going to be making per hour for your time if you agree to do the project for that price.
Anyways, hopefully you guys find it useful, it's helping me out a lot.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3616293/studiorates.xls
Basically how it works is there are 4 rate types:
a) The hourly rate you bill the client (usually it's easiest to only bill them for setup and tracking and if you are lucky mixing, billing hourly for editing usually won't fly)
b) The actual rate you make per hour at the end of the day (includes ANY work you put into the project, so it is whatever you get paid total, divided by however long the whole thing took)
c) The Project Rate, which is how much it cost for the entire project
d) The Per Song rate, which is how much it cost per song on the project.
There are 4 worksheets that look the same but all make their calculations from one of these rate types respectively. So the "Hourly Rate" worksheet has you enter what you are charing per hour for each service and the actual hourly rate, project rate and per song rate are calculated automatically.
The "Earned Rate" spreadsheet has you enter what you want to get at the end of the day per hour (so say you feel your time is worth $20/hr, you enter that and it will tell you how much you SHOULD charge the client for setup/tracking/mixing in order for it to work out to $20/hr when you add in the editing time you are doing for free.)
The "Project Rate" spreadsheet has you enter what the band is paying you for the project and then lets you see what you are getting per hour, per song and what you would be billing per hour to make the same money.
The "Per Song" spreadsheet is the same deal as the project rate, you just enter the per song rate you are charging instead of the project rate.
On top of this, you obviously have to enter how many songs and the total time required for each instrument for each aspect of the project.
The blue highlighted cells on each sheet are the ones you are manually entering, it changes depending on which sheet you use of course.
There are a few things you might want to tweak based on personal taste (ie. maybe you take 5 hours to mix the first song and only an hour for each subsequent song instead of the same time for each song, or maybe you can't get bands to pay hourly for mixing) but if you have any idea how to operate Excel then you should have no problem manipulating any of the formulas to suit your needs.
Anyways, I have found this uber helpful because bands hate paying by the hour so this way, you can figure out how long it will take you easily, type in what you want to make per hour in the "earned rate" spreadsheet, and it will automatically tell you what to charge per song so that you don't get ripped off for your time, or get stuck with a band that thinks it'll only take 12 hours to record a 6 song EP just because they are cheap and you are charging hourly.
Of course this will never be perfect because you can't predict exactly how long it will take to do everything, but you can get a much better estimate of how much to charge and break things down this way.
The other thing it's useful for is if a band wants to do 8 songs and says they can only afford $750, you type that in as the project price and type in how long you think it'll take to track and edit each instrument as well as mix and BAM, you can see what you are going to be making per hour for your time if you agree to do the project for that price.
Anyways, hopefully you guys find it useful, it's helping me out a lot.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3616293/studiorates.xls
