Plus early on its much more important to have a large quantity of work coming out rather than spending one's time waiting on 'the' band to break out.
+1
This is the big problem when you start. You have not a name and you have to let bands to know you.
Personally for this purpose I ask one of the biggest band in my city, to record a free promo and they accept.
The problem is that initially you don't have a large quantity of work, as Ermz said. You receive sporadic requests, for future recordings and if you wanna live with this job, it's very hard initially.
In fact, next weeks I'll start a data entry job for an insurance company, for 3 months, because I have no bands at the moment (I have 2 bands for the summer).
This problem is increased so much nowadays because everybody wanna do this job.
I spent lot of money in my equipment last year, because I wanna start with a decent amount of gear and look more professional than the horde of kids with a pod and a firepod that wanna record.
Initially it worked... I have lot of mics, I record real drums, I tune drums, I set everything and not only a plugin, etc... but now I notice there is a new kid that works more than me, for "2 cent", with a fuckin' dfhs, impulses, only one mic for vocals.....but bands go in his bedroom to record. This guy asked to a friend of mine what he uses for drums, what he uses to trigger....because he knew nothing about....after a weeks he had already his myspace offering recordings. Ok, it's a free world. But I waited 2 years before offering some services online, because I didn't have all the equipment I need to offer a professional services. Probably I'm a stupid thinking that these things still count at the end.
So....I don't know which sorts this job will have....I'm not so optimistic sincerely.
Yeah, you study, you buy gear, but the first kid that ask 100€ for a full ep, stoles you the work. Yeah, you look more professional, you record the real thing....but if someone asks less money, for the 90% of the bands he's better. And sincerely, if I have to ask 100€ for a full EP, I would definitely sell all my gear.
Unfortunately, it's no more an elite job, nowadays it's a simple job like making t-shirts or doing websites and everybody can buy an interface and claims "I'm running a studio".
I decided to do this job for the passion....because I feel very good when I tune a drums, when I hear a drums that sounds really well, when I run my amps really loud, and when I see the face of the guys when they like the sound we create.........I wouldn't do this fantastic job with a fuckin e-drum, with dfhs, and podfarm for guitars....I think it's ridicolous because you loose all the energy of the real thing. Yeah, it works, you get great results the same.....but in my opinion it's ridicolous.
