I manage a college radio station. We've just spent ~$18k in a new recording studio to be used by faculty, students, and non-students. While I'd like to keep the cost to students/faculty as low as possible, I still have to charge something to recoup our investment. While not professionals in the sense that we record for a living, we have several individuals with a lot of experience with sound engineering, etc. We can promise close-to-professional quality recordings, mixing, mastering and the like.

Question: what kind of pricing schedule would you suggest keeping in mind that the engineer and the organization will split any revenue. I was thinking somewhere from $15-$30/hr for students/faculty, and $30+/hr for non-students, but I'm not an economist. The only other competition is the school library which offers recording rooms best used for garageband or film soundtrack composing.

Sounds like your prices may be a little too low. You have great intentions, but if you want to re-coup $18k and you're getting $15 an hour...that's a lot of hours.

Maybe you could try pricing by the day? Like $200 for non-students and $100 for students for a good 8-12 hour session. That is still very cheap as long as you guys can offer pretty professional stuff. Or you can price by project. If a student wants to do some project work, let him in there for really cheap, but if some guy wants to record an LP that'll take a week or two, make him pay a grand.

What kind of gear you got in there? That's kind of important when putting together rates.

I don't know how well this is going to format, but here's list of some of our equipment.

Computer Apple/Mac MacPro Tower, 2.66 GHz, Quad Intel proc
Recording/Editing Software Logic, Audacity, etc Bundled or Proprietary Software
Control Surface/Preamp M-Audio Project Mix I/O
Tube Preamp Rack Focusrite Focusrite Platinum OctoPre 8-Channel Mic Preamp
Audio processor Aphex Aural Exciter 204 and Optical Big Bottom
Pop Filter Raxxess Pop Filter Kit
Monitor Speaker M-Audio BX8a
Headphone Sony MDR-7506
Headphone Direct Sound Extreme Isolation
Headphone Dist Amp Samson Sphone
Microphone Shure SM-57
Microphone Shure PG-6 Drum Mic package
Microphone Studio Projects C1 Condenser microphone
Hard Drive Rain Recording StormDrive Ext Firewire HD
USB-MIDI Controller Korg Kontrol 49
Acoustic Treatment Auralex ROOMA1 - Alpha 1 Roominator Kit
Acoustic Treatment Auralex wedge panels
Direct Box BBE DI-100
Guitar Effect/Direct Box Line6 PODxt


While not everything, that's a pretty good representation of the quality of our gear.


It's not super important that we make $, as we're funded by the school and make $1500/yr through other enterprises and have no expenses not covered by our budget, but if we wanted to continue to grow, we'd need some capital. I really want the studio to be open to as many people as possible, so I'm willing to lowball the rate, but I still want to compensate my "engineers" and make enough to put on open air festivals and the like.

Thanks for the price ranges so far.

Your $30 an hour translates to $300-$400 a day, roughly. In most places you can get quite a lot of real studio for that much money.

Anything more than rehearsal room money would be unreasonable, in my mind. $15 an hour seems about right.

A bandmate and I have put together a pretty decent recording setup that we put together by combining our gear. It's quite a bit better than what you've got listed, equipment-wise. And of course the room is one of the more critical elements, so that's hard to compare without knowing the rooms and all.

What we agreed on was that for recording projects other than our own bands, there is a flat charge of $50 a day, and that money goes not to paying for the gear we already bought, but to paying for upkeep on it. Trying to recoup the cost of the gear would be a lost cause, as good gear ends up costing many many thousands of dollars by the time you've got a whole fancypants setup. And on top of that $50 a day, whichever one of us is engineering has the opportunity to charge whatever we want for our time, which can be $0, or some berrs, or whatever dollar amount.

So far, people seem to find the $50 a day reasonable. Assuming a 10 hour day, that's $5 an hour for the non-engineer-compensation charge.

scott wrote:A bandmate and I have put together a pretty decent recording setup that we put together by combining our gear. It's quite a bit better than what you've got listed, equipment-wise. And of course the room is one of the more critical elements, so that's hard to compare without knowing the rooms and all.

What we agreed on was that for recording projects other than our own bands, there is a flat charge of $50 a day, and that money goes not to paying for the gear we already bought, but to paying for upkeep on it. Trying to recoup the cost of the gear would be a lost cause, as good gear ends up costing many many thousands of dollars by the time you've got a whole fancypants setup. And on top of that $50 a day, whichever one of us is engineering has the opportunity to charge whatever we want for our time, which can be $0, or some berrs, or whatever dollar amount.

So far, people seem to find the $50 a day reasonable. Assuming a 10 hour day, that's $5 an hour for the non-engineer-compensation charge.

You are a noble man.

bobbynukem wrote:I don't know how well this is going to format, but here's list of some of our equipment.

Computer Apple/Mac MacPro Tower, 2.66 GHz, Quad Intel proc
Recording/Editing Software Logic, Audacity, etc Bundled or Proprietary Software
Control Surface/Preamp M-Audio Project Mix I/O
Tube Preamp Rack Focusrite Focusrite Platinum OctoPre 8-Channel Mic Preamp
Audio processor Aphex Aural Exciter 204 and Optical Big Bottom
Pop Filter Raxxess Pop Filter Kit
Monitor Speaker M-Audio BX8a
Headphone Sony MDR-7506
Headphone Direct Sound Extreme Isolation
Headphone Dist Amp Samson Sphone
Microphone Shure SM-57
Microphone Shure PG-6 Drum Mic package
Microphone Studio Projects C1 Condenser microphone
Hard Drive Rain Recording StormDrive Ext Firewire HD
USB-MIDI Controller Korg Kontrol 49
Acoustic Treatment Auralex ROOMA1 - Alpha 1 Roominator Kit
Acoustic Treatment Auralex wedge panels
Direct Box BBE DI-100
Guitar Effect/Direct Box Line6 PODxt


While not everything, that's a pretty good representation of the quality of our gear.


It's not super important that we make $, as we're funded by the school and make $1500/yr through other enterprises and have no expenses not covered by our budget, but if we wanted to continue to grow, we'd need some capital. I really want the studio to be open to as many people as possible, so I'm willing to lowball the rate, but I still want to compensate my "engineers" and make enough to put on open air festivals and the like.

Thanks for the price ranges so far.

i think what you are doing is great. i wish a studio like that was available to me when i was going to school, but your mic selection alone makes $30/hr unreasonable. my gear is a also a bit better than what you've got there, because i'm a nerd with an ebay addiction (finally nabbed a royer and a rnp). i don't have any acoustic treatment, but my couch makes a nice bass trap! i usually just record my own stuff, but when i record my friends i charge about $100 a day. plus, i spend lots of time working on the mix and master that i don't even really charge for. then again, i do this for fun. the few dollars i earn usually goes towards new gear.

Man oh man........ I know i'm not charging enough.

I only get $20 per song......... I have $12K in the gear and a modestly treated room.

$20 a song is enough to keep me chain-smoking thru the recording and mixing process, and buy McD's on the way home..........

When do you really know "you are worth more than what you get"?

-Jay

Steve V. wrote: ...and $100 for students for a good 8-12 hour session. That is still very cheap as long as you guys can offer pretty professional stuff.

That breaks down to less than the $15 an hour he wants to charge students, which would make it even harder to recoup his investment.

bobbynukem wrote:Microphone Shure SM-57

. . . .