Well, as a producer/engineer first and now producer/engineer/studio owner, I look at this from the “other” side.
There was a time when budgets for an album project were $200,000 to $500,000 and up. With that budget you
- went into rehearsal,
- preproduction,
- rented a good studio in a location that was positive for the project
- paid for travel/hotel for the band/producer/engineer/assistant, equipment transport
- Per Diems/pay for roadies, guitar/drum techs
- recorded/mixed for a couple of month or until it felt right
- mastering (including travel/hotel for the producer to go there and make sure the guy wouldn’t compress too much)
and mostly had some money left over to get the band dressed up and equipped for a tour, hire a few professional people to help them on their way to become rockstars and make tons of money for the label.
Problem:
A&R guys changed from being ex musicians to accountants, budgets got cut and labels realized that instead of spending $300,000 on one band with ten songs, they could spend $30,000 each on ten bands with 100 songs. The odds seemed to be in the labels favor. At the same time high end(-ish) and affordable recording equipment showed up on the market, and the first people to get cut out of the process were the producers and engineers. Everybody could now produce and engineer their own album (why should we pay those guys?). Labels even enforced the idea for a band to, (and I quote): “just buy some ADATS and move into a garage” to get that oh-so-popular “raw” sound.
I make my money by producing/engineering/mixing records and I need a certain amount of time to do that. For that time I charged a recoupable “producer’s advance” which covered my bills and cost of living. With the “new budgets” I would have to rent a studio and do a complete project within two weeks (at $1,500/day for a decent room), and that would mean I’m spending the whole budget just on studio time, no help from roadies, drum tuners, no travel, pick the closest studio for everybody and go, no equipment/instrument rentals, cheap mastering. And no pay for me until the record sells and the initial cost (sometimes including the $$$ cost for videos) had been recouped, which could be two years later. With that system I would be dead by now or asking: “do you want fries with that?”.
Solution:
Get your own studio! Yes, it is a big investment at first and it will take a few years to pay off the gear, but you can
take your time recording and mixing and deliver a good product. You are working in a familiar environment (which can be a blessing or a curse) and you can offer “Blockrates” to the label. They like having a set number of $$ to work with in their budget, if you go over, it’s on you. But
YOU CAN DELIVER A BETTER PRODUCT which might actually sell, and still make some money after your gear is paid off. I haven’t charged a producers advance in years, people don’t even know what that is anymore. But I do get paid for the studio time (no spec deals!!!), which is better anyway, because I don’t have to recoup it. Am I stepping on the income of large studios? Yes I am, but my ass is closer to me than my shirt and I have to make a living. I had to adjust to what the market offers, and so do the big studios. Unfortunately it’s not as easy for them with all that overhead. And in essence I am now a “big studio” owner myself, even if it’s not as “plush”. But people hire me as a producer/engineer, not as a studio owner. That’s why I can make my own decisions about which equipment to use, and don’t have to have the latest million $$$ console or the “Industry Standard” DAW, as long as I can produce good results.
And it looks to me like the theory of having better odds by spending less per band is backfiring like an old Pinto. Yes, on paper the odds are better, but by releasing records into the market with maximum one (or no) good songs, the crap to gold ratio points quite a bit more to the crap side and
THE KIDS WON’T BUY IT!!! especially since they can download it for free anyway. IMO that is where the problem lies, release good material (Evanescense etc.) and the kids will buy it, even if they could download it for free.
Bottom line:
If, as a producer/engineer, I want to put out good records in the current market, owning a studio is the first step.
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