In 30 years...

[lolzgreg]

Absolutely... since the field is being saturated with more and more amateurs by the minute, the real animals behind the monitors will become even more apparent... if you continue to keep your clients happy, they will talk, and you will have more.

There are definitely issues with the industry, and the biggest issue being that people are devaluing this trade by charging retarded prices for work that is worth a lot more. Anyone who is doing this is a real ball licker, and deserves to be hanged for not only being a fucking idiot, but also disrespecting themselves, everyone else, and the craft of audio engineering as a whole.

 

[Glenn Fricker]

in 30 years, I hope I'm retired!!!

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

There are definitely issues with the industry, and the biggest issue being that people are devaluing this trade by charging retarded prices for work that is worth a lot more. Anyone who is doing this is a real ball licker, and deserves to be hanged for not only being a fucking idiot, but also disrespecting themselves, everyone else, and the craft of audio engineering as a whole.

Yeah. Lately I've had a lot of bands asking for a quote and then going "Oh, that's unfortunately a bit too much, we have budgeted $80 per song for mixing and mastering." What? Reduce taxes and such and I probably make way less than you do at your day job. How exactly is it too much?

 

[Put]

I always have this vision of being the first person to record a song after the nuclear apocalypse. Acoustic instruments built out of garbage recorded onto an old dictaphone or something I had found in the ruins...

+1

 

[Hez]

Absolutely... since the field is being saturated with more and more amateurs by the minute, the real animals behind the monitors will become even more apparent... if you continue to keep your clients happy, they will talk, and you will have more.

There are definitely issues with the industry, and the biggest issue being that people are devaluing this trade by charging retarded prices for work that is worth a lot more. Anyone who is doing this is a real ball licker, and deserves to be hanged for not only being a fucking idiot, but also disrespecting themselves, everyone else, and the craft of audio engineering as a whole.

Word, to the latter part. My friend who has recently sorted his place out and started getting clients in for real fees has been completely taken aback by how cheap people are expecting to get a record produced for. The worst part is when they name drop another local studio, you google them and see that they really are charging an absolute pittance.

Fortunately, the quality coming out of these places tends to be representative of their prices. Hopefully all these stories you hear of recording studios closing up left right and centre are stories about these half-assed, rushed projects that lacked the care and passion to succeed anyway.

I think the importance of a good reputation and very slick back catalogue is going to be more relevant every day.

 

[Skyweaver]

Recording provides a service to its main source of income is musicians/bands. For studios to survive, it really depends on the state of the music industry, on how much demand there is for music and quality in the future.

Part time bedroom guy will never be as good as someone who Mixes and produces consistently over a long period of time.

We may well see a lot of bands do their first album on their own, and once a budget is established they will want better production quality.

 

[LeSedna]

I'm curious, are there any folks who not only aim at rock/metal/bands but also at more mainstream types of music to insure a security income ?

 

[lolzgreg]

I do every genre happily. I love nearly every genre equally. I have a melodeth, a power pop, and a pop punk EP coming out within the next two months.

 

[LeSedna]

I do every genre happily. I love nearly every genre equally. I have a melodeth, a power pop, and a pop punk EP coming out within the next two months.

I was thinking more about pop or even just singers and not bands, but glad to read. I guess it's not the same work usually, since many of them are not "so" musicians and usually need their songs arranged by someone who would be producing the whole project.

I would be very interested in a Rap album producing if it was in a direction similar as Chronic 2001 by DRE, I mean very groovy tracks and real basses, beats with character etc.

 

[Ermz]

Yeah. Lately I've had a lot of bands asking for a quote and then going "Oh, that's unfortunately a bit too much, we have budgeted $80 per song for mixing and mastering." What? Reduce taxes and such and I probably make way less than you do at your day job. How exactly is it too much?

You're lucky to even get a response. Most bands don't even reply after i spend time doing a substantial cost breakdown for them. This is around 80% of the time.

On the other hand it separates those who are serious almost immediately.

 

[Line666]

I would be very interested in a Rap album producing if it was in a direction similar as Chronic 2001 by DRE, I mean very groovy tracks and real basses, beats with character etc.

Yeah that'd definitely be an interesting if the content could justify being creative, a lot of good rap albums have interesting arrangements - I dig the shit out of "How You Sell Soul" by Public Enemy; good bit of brass + lots of other niceties. Plus there'd be none of the hassle of having to drag some floppy haired band through recording drums and guitars note by note.

 

[LeSedna]

Yeah that'd definitely be an interesting if the content could justify being creative, a lot of good rap albums have interesting arrangements - I dig the shit out of "How You Sell Soul" by Public Enemy; good bit of brass + lots of other niceties. Plus there'd be none of the hassle of having to drag some floppy haired band through recording drums and guitars note by note.

Actually I have a close friend who wants to do some rap/slam music and he is really into this sort of stuff. We've talked of making a 4 song demo where i would write/produce the arrangemetns, and it could be amazing.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

You're lucky to even get a response. Most bands don't even reply after i spend time doing a substantial cost breakdown for them. This is around 80% of the time.

On the other hand it separates those who are serious almost immediately.

Oh, it's pretty much the same here. One of my top irritations for sure. I hate wondering if I'm doing the gig or not.

 

[GarethSE]

Yeah that'd definitely be an interesting if the content could justify being creative, a lot of good rap albums have interesting arrangements - I dig the shit out of "How You Sell Soul" by Public Enemy; good bit of brass + lots of other niceties. Plus there'd be none of the hassle of having to drag some floppy haired band through recording drums and guitars note by note.

Yeah. Cypress Hill, NWA, Sweatshop Union, Sage Francis, Aesop Rock..
A lot of hip-hop out there that puts a lot of metal to shame.

 

[jangoux]

LeSedna, 80% of my clients aren't rock metal. Most are brazilian music/country/pagode (romantic pop samba), stuff that I really dislike working, but I've got two daughters to feed and a wife ready to kick my ass if I don't bring Da M0n3Yz home eeheheh On my home studio, I only get rock stuff, tho'.

 

[Plec]

When people are talking about adapting to the current ways of working they tend to miss out on the fact that this automatically means you're not paying full attention to your specialty anymore.

If you're a full time mastering engineer for instance and you're suddenly forced to take up some other part of the job to make ends meet, you're of course not going to be able to be at the forefront of the mastering game. Add to this things like songwriting, production etc... you end up with people not specializing in anything really.

This means that audio engineering in the future will just become a task for the musician to handle and not a job per se. It will change if the music industry starts to turn up real profits again. It's just a sign of the times. Musicians need to do more themselves because budgets aren't there to support full productions handled by an engineer anymore, although everyone would like to have that again since that is what's ultimately going to create the best results, people focusing on what they do best and leave the rest up to someone else specializing in that field.

 

[MondoLikeMetal]

I've alwas wondered what kind of music we would listen to after a nuclear war as survivors. Would we listen to music at all, and if we did, would it be Dark/Death metal? Maybe we wouldn't listen to dark themes or death music because it would be all aroumd us - so let's not let this happen - a nuclear war could be the end of death metal