So, as a project studio, owned by someone who records, mixes, and masters “on the side,” I’m often approached by artists who are looking for a deal – which sometimes means they expect free service. In many instances, these are friends, or friends of friends, and in some instances they are really good artists – the kind I’d love working with! Or they want to use the studio and/or equipment but without me. Why not?
There is a part of me that would love to oblige good folks and even do what I do free of charge. I love what I do, and I love helping others achieve their musical goals. Early on, as I was “working on my chops” I did a few free projects – which took some of the pressure off and helped. When I listen back to some of those projects, I’m glad I didn’t charge!
As I got better, I found myself 50-75 hours into a project, listening to an artist ask me to “tweak” something (which sometimes would take several hours) and saying to myself: “I’d feel a lot better about this is I were getting paid!” True enough.
The fact is that many artists are unaware of the amount of time it takes, beyond tracking time, to get a project mixed and finished – even if it’s just vocals and guitar, or a few tracks of audio. Tracks have to be cleaned (gated or “stripped” of noise between clips of audio), de-essed, de-breathed (fixing loud breaths), equalized, sometimes compressed, automated as needed (louder in some spots, softer in others), run to busses, etc. etc. And even if a song is recorded in series with nothing changed, all of this has to be done differently for each song. In other words, a separate file has to be created for each song – and all of these steps done for each song. All of this adds up to TIME.
So about 20 years ago I started charging for my services. In my humble opinion, I’m still “a steal” if you compare my work to comparable work. And at this time I mostly charge by the project, rather than by the hour, which allows me to be the laid back guy that I like to be in the studio – and not to worry when I’m a little slower than some (perfectionist that I am).
JonyMac Studio 