Re: Awesome
My advice for any business is to look at it pessimistically, and find your own light that will differentiate you from your competitors. This applies whether you open a recording studio, or a donut shop
Why would artists (or wanna-be's - ofteh they are less hassle in a lot of ways) desire to record with your studio?
1. Price - you're the cheapest.
2. Equipment - you have the baddest stuff.
3. Environment - your studio is comfortable. It has latte. Free donuts
4. Quality - obviously the most important, but can you mix? Master?
5. Relationships - who do you know, why do you know them, and can they throw you business (pro level, not wanna be level).
Lets say you and I open a donut shop right next door to each other on main street. In a year, if that, one of us will be gone. Why would it be me, or you, that's gone?
The key is figuring this out ahead of time. Of course hindsight is available after you disappear, but you want to try to figure what that hindsight would be ahead of time
No easy task.
The studio I co-own upstate did "okay" because we did not have a lot of local competition (like I will where I am in NJ), thats certainly part of it. But we ran our studio as if it were my living room. Clients paid us to be "guests", and were treated as such. Anything they needed that I had the ability to provide, whether it be equipment, patch cords, coffee, nice clean comfortable environment, etc, we did. I'd like to think the main reason was the people we are, and employed. We took the "customer is always right" very seriously and really went out of our way to make it real.
Of course if a client asked for an over-compressed thin sounding vocal track, we might make a few suggestions, but since its their art, and we're applying our art on top of that, we felt the fundamental art was the "leader" in all decisions.
Regarding you specifically - know that mixing a recording is part science, part art. I actually have the same background as you (starting with Netware in the days Novell made hardware using 68000 microprocessors - if you remember those days). Anyway, if you're from the computer industry, you know what i'm talking about. take 10 guys and give them 10 computers and 10 copies of Win2000 and say "make this a secure webserver" it would be my guess you'd have -at least- three different ways of achieving the same goal - and examples of each from the 10 people.
Music is the same way. Understanding compression, reverb, acoustics and other spacial information, A/D & D/A conversion methods, cabling (balanced versus not), op amp theory, EQ methods (basic, graphic, parametric, etc) analog filter theory (bandpass, butterworth, Twin-T, etc) and all that is true engineering.
Its also an art - how much compression do you need to make it sound G O O D? Most of us can figure out how much compression to add to keep the tape from saturating, but how much sounds good? Maybe its the same, maybe its not. To me, this is the fun part of being a recording engineer/producer. The "feely" stuff.
Regarding a business plan - damn good idea. First, decide what your market will be. Garage bands? Mariah Carey? I know you're leaning towards poor starving musicians, thats cool, but figure out what you need to acquire to do that properly. Of course there are a billion right answers, but you need to figure it out ahead of time of course, to make sure you can project the real costs you will have.
You also have other costs, one thats often forgotten. MARKETING!
Slapping up a web page and hope people come is not going to benefit you short term, don't let your ISP fool ya
Word of mouth is by far the best method in which to acquire new customers, because they come in happy before you twiddle one knob. "Bob liked your work, so I'm a referrel". Good! But before you and all your friends can spread the good news, you need not to starve in the meantime. Newspaper ads and direct marketing worked very well for us - how we got the list of people to directly market was the old fashioned way - we went to every music store, every bar, and every other place we could think of with little papers on corkboard that said "My Band available for Play at your bar!", as well as all the "need bassist" type of things. Here in NYC we have a rag called the Village Voice which used to have pages of these kind of ads. We cold-called every one of them.
Hope that helped.
ElSilva said:
Thanks, Frederic, for a fantastic amount of information. It was actually your posting about the space you found and what you're doing with it that inspired me to seriously consider doing the same. Certainly, when heading into any unfamiliar venture, research is of paramount importance. I'll take any and all suggestions on putting together the best business plan. You've given me a great head start.
A little background on me, if anyone cares. My normal career is in computers. My degree is in computer engineering, and I'm very handy with the code as well as the hardware. I've done consulting and led software development teams, integrated systems and built many, many sophisticated web sites. I just really love to build things, whether it's with wood and nails, solder and PCBs, or lines of code.
I've played guitar on and off for 15 years, and trumpet 10 years before that. The last five years or so, I played in a local band, and we recorded two CDs at a very nice studio in Chicago (Gravity, owned by Doug McBride). Several years ago, before our first CD, I got the bug and bought into a Roland VS880 8-track hard drive recorder. Thus ensued the never-ending quest for more knowledge and better sound. I'm now up to a brand new DAW I built myself from parts, running Sonar (see the computer forum for the details, if interested).
I've been recording singer/songwriters from my small home studio for a few months, and getting good results and satisfied customers, but it's very small scale stuff, and I'm barely charging anything. I do it for fun. I host an open mike in town, and so there's a never-ending stream of new talent interested in being recorded. Of course, these are also folks who generally have very little money. Regardless, I enjoy it so much, it would be simply wonderful to find a way to make this into a career.
I believe I've developed a firm grasp of the basics, and hope to develop my skills through repetition and study.
So here I am, on the brink of a career change, and I'm wondering what the right next step is. For sure, I have a ton of research to do. However, here's a question:
1. Should I take some time and try to get a job interning at a local studio to gain experience? I have the good fortune for a limited period of time (about 6 months) to be able to volunteer myself free of charge, and I know I'd be of value. I'd be head and shoulders above any joe that walked in off the street without any training, and even many with training.
or
2. Should I get to work building out my own studio, and learn as I go? With the resources here and in other places on the 'net, it would seem an apprenticeship or formal training is hardly a requirement anymore to get into this business. At the end of the day, it's the sound that matters, and if it sounds good, business should come (with proper marketing, of course).
I think interning would be valuable experience, but I doubt anyone would want to hire me if they knew I was just going to turn around and start my own competitive studio. I'm also not a big fan of making other people's coffee and cleaning toilets, and it might be months before anyone would let me near a console.
Perhaps I might build out a new studio and then hire a qualified engineer to come in and teach me as we go?
Any thoughts appreciated.
-ElSilva