In a word, yes. I thought about going into the whole 'it's slightly varied by where you live...' but then I saw you also live in Australia. We're essentially fucked. You need to realize this before trying to take any career into the music industry here. Our music industry is shit. There is no other way of looking at it. Our ability to market and publish shit internationally is extremely limited, so at the very best you'll be doing nation-wide scale stuff. At the very best. Most of the work at project studios these days is demo recordings, and even so the market is declining as more and more home studios open up around the place.
People don't feel a need to pay $300 a day to cut a demo, and I mean that's as low as the prices get. Studios simply can't keep doors open if they go any lower than that. Even so, with these rates, they barely break even most of the time.
If you're looking at it from the perspective of a musician... you can get bar gigs all over the place. But it's extremely hard, as a band, to break out of that local pub-gigging scene. I have mates who've been into the metal/gigging thing for years with absolutely no progress. A new EP here or there, but it's always the same shit.
Psycroptic got international exposure... but figure, they're goin to Europe.
From my experiences with audio guys, and what they've told me.. you need to be prepared for the worst, especially here. The market is declining, it's oversatured with Audio Engineering/Music Performance students like myself. It's extremely hard to break into and get a 'career' in the industry. Even so, as James said, it would be freelance work. So if a band don't want to pay $300 a day anymore, why the hell would they pay $300 PLUS your freelance fee on top of that just so YOU can do the demo instead of the in-house guy?
Things are bad. But if you can deal with that, you'll be right
Sorry if this seems like 'know-it-all' rambling, it's 2am.
