[Glamdring]

Originally Posted by forthemusic.com

Depending where you are with your skill, experience, gear and lets not forget location (which will greatly affect your competition and bottomline), the scale rate listed by six wax from Los Angeles is a very accurate assessment.

On the independant level which is where I will guess your at, given that Chris Lord Alge isn't going to ask this question, you can probably figure between $100 for those singer/songwriter folks who ask you to balance out their guitar vocals and shaker and $350 to $500 a song to edit and mix up to 20-30 tracks of a full band with numerous vocal tracks.

As a refernece, the last project I did I referneced a standard West Coast Post Production contract (type in Local 700 if interested). I currently work as an Editor for one of the 4 Majors editing network shows, and based my pay accordingly. I set an initial $50 an hour, at 3hr's a song, for 14 songs. Any hours over that, including additional editing on my own time, was charged at $35 an hour. This gave the artist the "base line" budget for his project, which then alloted him a scale to plan out just how much he wanted to spend. As well as protected me from falling victim to the potential never satisfied client. Short story longer, the $2250 project turned into a $12000 project.

All this to say, I ended up paying a mixer with 25 years experience (U2, Elton John) to mix it on his own time between projects for $350 a song.
All this to say, mixing is an art form, and it was a breath of fresh air to the project to have him hear it for the first time and make the songs shine.

You need to be good at reading people, be able to sell yourself and most importantly have the client feel that you connect with their project. Also, don't sell yourself short. People want a deal, but they also want to know that they are buying quality. You may not get the job if your the most expensive, but you won't neccessarily get the job if your the cheapest.

Have confidence and start lower, build some satisfied clients and raise your rates from there. Just business 101. Good luck!

Excellent post.