How much do you charge?

Wow that is crazy... so frustrating these days with studio prices.

You can make $11 an hour flipping burgers in some cities... yeah!

$70 - $100 an hour to work on your car. Ranging everywhere from a dude in a garage to dealers.

$15 - $25 an hour for rehearsal spaces. Even an $350 or so a month, how often are you actually there?

It is even $25-$35 an hour to hire a housekeeper, yeah someone to clean, something everyone can do.

So a studio requires specialized and expensive equipment and a dedicated space. Also the amount of knowledge necessary, time, and specialized skills to make up for their lack of talent... and you can't pull $10 - $15 an hour out of them. If you actually have to live off of that, pay for a building, and maintain your gear and gas.... you would be dead broke or working 100 hours a week just to eat.

But money is money... and some is better than none. Even the reputable places are struggling and their rates are stupid cheap.

Dark times... dark times....
 
aortizjr said:
Wow that is crazy... so frustrating these days with studio prices.

You can make $11 an hour flipping burgers in some cities... yeah!

$70 - $100 an hour to work on your car. Ranging everywhere from a dude in a garage to dealers.

$15 - $25 an hour for rehearsal spaces. Even an $350 or so a month, how often are you actually there?

It is even $25-$35 an hour to hire a housekeeper, yeah someone to clean, something everyone can do.

So a studio requires specialized and expensive equipment and a dedicated space. Also the amount of knowledge necessary, time, and specialized skills to make up for their lack of talent... and you can't pull $10 - $15 an hour out of them. If you actually have to live off of that, pay for a building, and maintain your gear and gas.... you would be dead broke or working 100 hours a week just to eat.

But money is money... and some is better than none. Even the reputable places are struggling and their rates are stupid cheap.

Dark times... dark times....
Click to expand...

+10000, thanks for having an opinion that isn't stupid!
 
$125 a song. I do recording on the side, so when people record with me I can't really meet and deadlines that well due to having a dayjob and a life :lol:. I refuse to master anymore either. The most I am willing to do is strap a limiter across the 2 buss if the band is to cheap to pay for mastering. So far though most do.

There is a catch to my price though, I have a cap on how many tracking hours that includes and if it goes over I charge $25 an hour after that. Bands never go over that time anymore, they used to CONSTANTLY. The time is based on an average of what it takes a band to track, setup time included. I also have fees for backups and discs. Discs are cheap, but it's a pain in the ass to go pick up more and sometimes the band want fucking 8 copies of their song and expect me to just front the discs. :lol: No that will be $2 a disc please.

I'm changing to a price scheme much like 006 here in a few months. It won't really up the price that much, but like he said it would make the band think twice before wasting time.

There are some little places in my area that charge $30-50 a song. They can't hold a flame to anything I'm doing though and I consistently take business from places like that because they fucking suck. :lol:

If a band is so cheap that they only value the recording process to be at 30 bucks a song then they deserve the quality they get: SHIT.

It's cut down on the REALLY REALLY shitty bands as well.


Also:

This is my studio agreement contract. Anyone have any input on it?

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=67883524&blogId=525617660
 
Right now i'm $200 per 8 hour day. I occasionally throw higher prices to bands i dont really want to record, but I plan on raising my prices some this year since i have a new building and more legitimate setup. I basically just raise prices when i'm too booked up for my own good and my demand goes up.

I'll also be raising prices further once i make the jump to PT HD
 
I'm definately gonna start limiting my day to 8 hrs, they can pay extra per hour after that then. Did 1 project where I recorded on location till after 3 am, did about 15-16 hours that day. We started early the next day did about 5 hours and the guy said we didn't do a full day the 2nd day so only wanted to pay for half a day, he thought nothing of me doing the extra hours but as soon as it wasn't working in his favour he got tight! Worst thing is I charge 70 euro a day to track so the money he was fighting over was 35euro, most guys would spend more than that in an average night in the pub. There was 4 guys in the band so that works out at less than a tenner a head.

Definately going to change my pricing scheme to include mixing too, right now I only charge for tracking and it's a serious pain to work mixing into my work schedule especially when its not bringing in any cash.

Pretty sick of guys asking if I'll give em a discount for doing more than a day or 2- you work for cheap so that they'll spend more time on the recording, and then they try to get you to lower your price even more because they did.
 
aortizjr said:
Wow that is crazy... so frustrating these days with studio prices.

You can make $11 an hour flipping burgers in some cities... yeah!

$70 - $100 an hour to work on your car. Ranging everywhere from a dude in a garage to dealers.

$15 - $25 an hour for rehearsal spaces. Even an $350 or so a month, how often are you actually there?

It is even $25-$35 an hour to hire a housekeeper, yeah someone to clean, something everyone can do.

So a studio requires specialized and expensive equipment and a dedicated space. Also the amount of knowledge necessary, time, and specialized skills to make up for their lack of talent... and you can't pull $10 - $15 an hour out of them. If you actually have to live off of that, pay for a building, and maintain your gear and gas.... you would be dead broke or working 100 hours a week just to eat.

But money is money... and some is better than none. Even the reputable places are struggling and their rates are stupid cheap.

Dark times... dark times....
Click to expand...

yea it blows ass, but i'm just another bedroom warrior who does this shit on the side - i have a full-time job that pays the bills plus a little more, and take the recording gigs as they come. of course i'd much rather work in a studio for a living, but if it happens, it'll be something i'll have to ease my way into over a period of time, and at this point i have no delusions about the fact that it probably isn't going to happen.
 
£ 175 per 8 hour day. for studio and me.
Gonna be moving to a MUCH bigger premises soon, so that may go up.
OH! and £ 50 per hour Overtime. I HATE overtime.
 
for the most part I just charge $20 an hour. I don't need to do much tracking, usually just editing and sometimes mixing. Sometimes I'm asked to add stuff ... a guitar part, bass part, keyboards, etc ... unless its super involved (or the people are annoying) most times I'll throw that stuff in for free

I feel right now $20 an hour is pretty fair because I work fast but I have very little overhead ... I don't have to pay rent on a studio space or anything. This way I'm just covering the cost of what I invest in plugins and (soon) some great hardware
 
professorlamp said:
Do you get a lot of custom with those prices skinny viking? sounds pretty damn reasonable to me
Click to expand...

For the most part I seem to get something new when something else is finishing up or maybe a little after. I don't really try to dig up work but if something drops in my lap I'll take it. The few bands and individuals I've already done work for always seem pretty happy with the job I do for them so they come back when they have new stuff. Like I said, I only charge that much per hour because I have virtually no overhead ... but I'm limited. I can't track drums for one thing. I get sub work from a studio in the city when their clients ask for something that THEY can't do or don't have time to ... like drum editing or vocal tuning. In turn, when a band or individual I've worked with is looking to do more than I can provide, I refer them right to my buddy's studio. As for the musician thing ... I play guitar, bass (like a bass player), and can orchestrate things fairly well with keyboards and sound FX. If I'm getting along with the client and they ask for me to throw something down for them, I'll do it and not charge but if they're annoying or asking for something more in-depth, I'll do it but at the same rate as anything else I do for them.
 
I had a problem with knowing what to do when I first started, in the end I settled on hourly. Mastering is a fixed rate though.
For mixing I have it in price brackets, like 1-3 songs is £20 p/h, 4-8 is £15, and 9+ is £10. I have a cap set at 5 hours per song though, so any work completed over that time is done free. Since the customer can't sit and watch you work, it gives them some comfort that you're not going to take the piss. Effectively, it invariably ends up hitting the 5 hour mark anyway, so it kind of is like having a fixed rate, but with the added security that it could be cheaper if it's a simple mix, to keep it fair for both parties. I think with a fixed rate you can end up getting stuck on a mix for way too long, and end up shooting yourself in the foot for undercharging. Ya know, think of it this way - is it fair to get paid the same for a 2 hour mix than an 11 hour mix.
 
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