The million dollar question...

[crillemannen]

Swedish women :hotjump:

Oh yeah. I got a freakin hot girlfriend

Well, the grass is always greener on the other side.

About the VAT (sales tax) issue, it's indeed deductible by the client and when selling the service cross borders there's a reverse tax that voids it (when giving quotes to clients I never include the VAT either).

The "problem" comes when you deal with a client who is not registered for VAT, where you're prices are suddenly 25% higher. Nothing weird about that, but if you want to do your business by the books and a competitor doesn't, you'll have problems trying to compete with that. But that goes only for a certain type of client (a band that wants to record a demo or something) but I personally never really deal with anything like that anymore. Just mentioning it for reference and I know lots of other are in that kind of situation, not only in the music business.

Well atleast i got a hot girlfriend .. anyways..

Well i came to the conclusion that you should always include VAT in the price you give to the clients because as you said many clients that don't have a company and that can start an argument when it all the sudden is way more then they expected.

better to be clear about those matters then surprise the clients.

 

[tgs]

Oh yeah. I got a freakin hot girlfriend



Well atleast i got a hot girlfriend .. anyways..

Well i came to the conclusion that you should always include VAT in the price you give to the clients because as you said many clients that don't have a company and that can start an argument when it all the sudden is way more then they expected.

better to be clear about those matters then surprise the clients.

Oh, yes of course, I wasn't clear enough. When I give a price quote I clearly say it's without VAT. However, 95% of my clients are businesses and not in Sweden. Thus, no VAT.

 

[crillemannen]

Oh, yes of course, I wasn't clear enough. When I give a price quote I clearly say it's without VAT. However, 95% of my clients are businesses and not in Sweden. Thus, no VAT.

Yes i was also doing that. Writing the price ex. Vat. but people that aren't used to that sometimes overlook that and get surprised anyway haha. So dealing with clients, atleast Swedish clients i always write the whole price including VAT. Just to avoid any confusion

 

[colonel kurtz]

my price happens to be too low and too high at the same time

it's low enough to make it worth my time - basically the amount i would make per hour in OT at my regular job, since any recording i do is on top of my full-time employment, which averages over 50 hrs/wk.

but then the price is too high for all the cheap-ass, crap-ass bands in the area, and they end up recording with some clueless kid for next to nothing...and you can tell do in the final product. living in an economically depressed area sucks.

 

[Pedro Teixeira]

This a really hard one. I'm one of those that had to get a regular job, the studio I worked at closed, so I have no place to record anything, I don't have any money saved, can't really ask for money to my parents as they have none, so I have to do what I have to do to survive basically.

It's pretty hard, a lot of people I know live with their parents, so they have nothing to worry about, no rent, food, taxes etc. Even with a couple of big label releases it's still crap, most of the inquiries I get are way too young and clueless to be worthwhile, not to mention their expectations payment wise are laughable.

People like Christian are doing well, even if the tax man removes that massive chunk, it's still doing well in my book, so kudos to the guys that start recently and are able to do it, in todays economy it's definitely something.

 

[Demonstealer]

Since I live in India and bands here are always broke the comparative rate to what you guys charge is very different.

I used to charge 100$ a song approx Rs.5000 (Indian Rupees). Completely mixed mastered and recorded. Only thing is this was with programmed drums. Live drums would cost an addition Rs.1000 per hour which was the rate I got from a studio I had to hire that had a decent room (needless to say all bands were broke so no recording live drums).

My current rate is Rs.8000 per song. Which is 150$ which compared to what you guys charge seems like pittance but I'd need to be Andy Sneap to charge 350$ per song in India oh well I guess if any of the American bands need a good job done cheap they can always come to India. Our best metal engineer would charge like 12,000 INR a song. Once they get better and can charge more than 12k per song they move over to other more lucrative work like studio work with big music producers and stuff in India.