| As someone who did soundalikes pretty often for a year or so for toy companies, I usually charged around 400 bucks per song.... I would guess that is pretty cheap as far as industry rates go but the company didn't seem to think it was too out of the ordinary.
To elaborate... I charged 50-60 bucks an hour (normal studio rates around these parts) and a song would typically take the better part of the day. When it was something easy like "Bad to the Bone" or "Smoke on the Water"... it would only take a couple of hours but I would still charge them for a full day (350-550) but it would even out when they requested stuff like Queen (I would charge the same price but it could take 2-3 full days)
They also would pay all session musician costs when the songs required an accordion, violin, harmonica or some other instrument that was necessary but hard to recreate via MIDI or out of the ordinary drums, bass, guitar, keys....
__________________
I think you'll find that 'generic and flavourless' is generally something that occurs before the microphone -Karloff70
Two f**in' weeks to make up your mind whether you want a beard or you want a job. This is the Buddy Rich Band; young people...with faces!- Buddy Rich |