kcearl
I see deaf people
oh oh...you made a funny lol 
masteringhouse
www.masteringhouse.com
So according to the above logic and the poll to date 65.38% of the members taking the poll are homoauduals?
(not that there's anything wrong with that)
Maybe the name of the site should be changed to homorecording.com
[I keeed, I keed]
(not that there's anything wrong with that)
Maybe the name of the site should be changed to homorecording.com
[I keeed, I keed]
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SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
The name of this thread has certainly been double-entendred to the max
G.
G.
R
RAMI
Guest
Yeah, like:
I've mastered myself in the shower so often, I'm surprised a baby hasn't crawled out of the drain yet.
I've mastered myself in the shower so often, I'm surprised a baby hasn't crawled out of the drain yet.
masteringhouse
www.masteringhouse.com
(double post)
masteringhouse
www.masteringhouse.com
Yeah, like:
I've mastered myself in the shower so often, I'm surprised a baby hasn't crawled out of the drain yet.
(picturing swamp thing)
frederic
New member
I run into this all the time with my IT consulting business. I have a rate sheet for different skillsets and project types, and a lot of recently downsized IT guys poise themselves as IT consultants and undercut my rates significantly.
For example, a month ago, a customer balked at paying $1000 for a fully dynamic, content generating, SEO2 compliant website for his business. Instead, he hired this guy for $25 an hour, who estimated it would take two days or so - roughly $200. Figure another $100 for back-and-forths. So, the customer though $300 was great and went with that guy.
That customer called me a few days ago to ask again how much it would cost for me to create that fully dynamic, content generating, seo2 compliant website. Guess what, $1000. He placed his order and I'll have my web gal start on that this coming monday. It will probably be online by tuesday evening.
I asked him what happened, and he was honest with me - that guy he hired for $300 had no idea what he was doing and after a week of billing $25 an hour (which after 40 hours would be $1000 BTW), that guy had nothing to show for all that time, except a very crude static framework that he was hoping the customer would "tweak" himself. So they're having a fight about if that guy should be paid and I won the business back after all.
Glen, I really don't think you should try to price your studio in the same range as home studios, as you should instead be pricing yourself appropriately against your peers - not studios below you, not studios above you.
If the trend in your geography is for pro studios of your size, equipment and talent is to lower rates a little, lowering your rates a little might be necessary. But to choke yourself earning peanuts for hard, solidly good work is insane. That will close your doors faster than having less customers coming in now.
The other way to "decrease price" without actually lowering your rates is to include more services, features, access to equipment, or whatever. Lets say you have a special piece of gear that is normally rented for a session on top of the normal studio session rate - instead of charging $X per hour for access to that device, you could "throw it in". You could also offer a free consultation before the project is ordered or paid for, whereas you and your recording/mastering client could sit down without cost to him and frame out how the project should go. Heck, you could even throw in a few pizza's if a customer rents the studio for the entire day.
Having owned a pro studio myself many years ago, I ran into similar situations as you have. At the time Tascam was stamping out 4-tracks like candy and a lot of local garage bands though buying one for $800 would be cheaper than paying my studio $1100 for two days of studio time, and they could work at their own pace, control their own destiny, and so on.
Some of them were happy. Many of them soon realized that if you don't know how to work the machine - any machine - you're not going to get a good recording.
I think most people here would agree that comparing a recording/mix made by Andrew Jackson (Pink Floyd's engineer) on a cheap 4-track will sound at least as good as the same recording made by an amature with top of the line gear.
So many people focus on the gear. The gear, the gear, the gear. That's cool, I like gear, and have lots of it - but the key to it all is knowing how to use it, how to tweak it, and most importantly - why.
If you lower the price of your pro studio with the pro gear and the pro people to match a $25 an hour home studio run by a seasoned amature, well, you're doing yourself a huge disservice - and, you're killing the industry.
Another option is to learn how to sell your services better - and that's probably the most difficult change to make!
masteringhouse
www.masteringhouse.com
Frederic, excellent response!
Hopefully mastering jobs won't be shipped to India in the near future ...
Hopefully mastering jobs won't be shipped to India in the near future ...
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
You're preaching to the choir, Fredric
. You're making the exact same arguments I am.Many folks who are new to self-employment are kind of afraid to charge true market rates. I find that this is usually either because on one end of the spectrum, they know they aren't worth it, or because they are worth it but they haven't really researched the market and the competition, or simply because they don't want to "go through the hassle" of actually having to *sell* themselves.
In the case of my guys, I think they assume that the work they do and the services they provide are average, the norm. They assume that everybody who hangs out the "home studio" shingle is actually very highly qualified and actually provides a top shelf product. In an ideal world they'd be right; that's the way it should be. But in the real world, the fact is that the level of production service they provide - much of which they don't even charge for, even though they should - is way above and beyond what your average "home studio" can provide. I tell them that the studio next door can't do this or doesn't do that, and they are incredulous; they take it for granted that those are basic services that everybody does.
That's a sign of a great work ethic, for sure, but it's also a sign that they can tend to undercharge for services that they take for granted but in reality outpace the market. It's also an indicator that they need to actively sell the difference between themselves, because it's something the customer cannot take for granted either.
It comes down to having the self-confidence and self-respect to charge what one needs to charge to pay the bills and make enough profit margin to make it actually worthwhile. I've been riding the self-employment train long enough to know all this already, but the owners are still kind of learning the ropes in that regard, so it leads to some interesting after-session discussion about all this stuff
.Finally, there is always the tactic that, one can always haggle down on price if need be. It's called having a "sale price". If business gets thin (so far not an issue), or if convincing a budget-challenged custy to go with Studio A instead of Studio B, you can always strike a deal if need be. But you can never haggle the price UP; undercharge for your service, and you're stuck with that rate, even if you wind up losing money on it.
That's really the biggest issue with most folks, I think. Especially in the technical fields like audio engineering or IT (I also have a history of IT consulting like you, BTW); where many of the best workers tend to be "customer service and sales challenged".fredric said:Another option is to learn how to sell your services better - and that's probably the most difficult change to make!
Like it or not, the minute one starts charging for their services, it's a business. The whole "in the internet age, everything should be free" attitude is pure bullshit when your bills come past due and your family goes hungry. It's business, and business requires salesmanship and customer service skills. You can be the absolute best producer or programmer in the world, but if you can't convince an ignorant world of that, it'll do you no good whatsoever.
G.
frederic
New member
You're preaching to the choir, Fredric
Laaaaaaaaaaa.
...Laaaaaaaaa.
.....Laaaaaaaa.
Eeww, that sounded terrible. Must be the cheap 4-track I'm using, for certainly it's not my skillset. ;-)
I think it's more of a lack of confidence in ability to sell combined with a strong desire to get customers quickly.
Obviously if you've borrowed money from yourself or a bank in order to start a business, you have to make payments whether you have customers or not. So often times new businesses make stuff far cheaper than makes sense trying to get a slew of customers in the door quickly, to cover that monthly nut.
Selling is not that difficult if you understand how to do it, and there are several proven methods. Though, over the years I've had to amend that thinking because I've discovered that most people, even if they do all the right things, couldn't close a deal even if the customer had a pen in their hand. They're just not wired for it.
I could easily write a rant on this but I'll be a nice guy and spare you
It comes down to having the self-confidence and self-respect to charge what one needs to charge to pay the bills and make enough profit margin to make it actually worthwhile. I've been riding the self-employment train long enough to know all this already, but the owners are still kind of learning the ropes in that regard, so it leads to some interesting after-session discussion about all this stuff
I'm sure it does lol. An "easy" way of solving this problem is to price out all the things you normally give away and list them on your rate sheet. The person selling can still throw those if necessary but assigning them a price will cause the salesperson and the customer to at least ask about the value for the dollar of those things.
When I had my studio, though that was 20 years ago, I used to have a line item on my rate sheet for rewinding media - a spool of 2" tape that zips by at 30 inches per second takes a while to rewind - so that time was valuable and yes, often I'd throw that in but it *was* listed on the price sheet.
It's also when you don't want a sale - I'm sure you've run into this - a customer comes in the door and instantly you know regardless of everything else, you really want them to go away and not come back. They get the full rate sheet "as is" and that's that. If they do hire your company, they're in a sense paying an "asshole surcharge" which obviously you can't list on the invoice as an "asshole surcharge", as tempting as it would be.
Another tactic is to focus on total price, not the individual line items in the list. Discount them or drop things off or throw things it, it really doesn't matter. What does matter is your customer has $10K to spend and not a penny more. Who cares if recording is $75 an hour with a free tech or $65 an hour with a $10 per hour setup tech charge - if the total breaks the customer's piggy bank they're walking.
Absolutely... which is why starting off as the cheapest supplier usually fails. Walmart has made a great thing about of being the cheapest, and they're ruthless about it.
But... if you were to compare the value for dollar there versus somewhere else, you'll find that it's about the same.
For example, my local Walmart has a big box of oreos for $2.39 "rollback". My local pathmark sells that same big box of oreos for $2.49.
Driving three additional miles in my 1993 F350 crewcab to get to that Walmart costs me far more than the 10 cent differnce.
Also, I wear golf shirts most of the time, and the ones I buy from Land's End for $15 (on sale, end of year) last me 4-5 years where as the ones I got in Walmart didn't survive anywhere near as long - they're thinner, less comfortable, and have a heck of a lot more polyester in them - bleah.
It's all in how we look at things as salespeople and customers, and if someone wants to start off as the low price leader, they're going to choke on those discounts for the rest of their existance.
Walmart has this problem too - and they solve that by aggressively and arrogantly telling their suppliers "F-U we're Walmart, make it cheaper" and, their suppliers do because they're afraid of losing the global Walmart enterprise as a customer.
(grin)
Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
---
I recently got burned by a guy on the internet who has a "professional pro-tools recording studio" and charges $45 an hour. I selected him because I'm working with a vocalist who lives about 12 hours away from me and due to a temporary medical issue cannot drive. So, I picked this guy because of his proximity to her - a simple 10 stop bus ride. He also had protools and while I'm not a fan of that product line generally the new-entries into the recording industry won't make that kind of investment right off the bat. Talking with him on the phone he certainly wasn't a wizard by any means but after playing Q&A for 20 minutes I felt comfortable he could point the mic in the right direction and set the levels correct, and record her voice in multiple takes.
Which is all I wanted him to do - play a stereo mix that I provided in her headphones, set all the controls to neutral and adjust levels accordingly, record as many times as is necessary (up to the full day in the studio I pre-paid for), and upload ALL of the resulting vocal tracks - good or not - to my FTP server. I figured a full day is more than enough to record one good vocal track for one song.
She called me that night to complain that he's a chain smoker and smoked his brains out, which made her uncomfortable singing in the same room. She also didn't like that "that room" was also his bedroom and he was apparently kind of sloppy. He also shared the house he worked out of (and apparently sleeps in) with three other guys. That also made her uncomfortable.
Anyway, a few days later he uploads one file - a low-bitrate mp3 file - which is a mix of one of her WORST takes (very pitchy) with the music I sent him mixed in behind - but he made my stereo mix very muddy, over-compressed but not even consistent across the tune, and basically just killed it.
I called him to clarify why he sent this instead of just the vocal tracks as I had asked, and paid for? He claimed to misunderstand and promised to make good on it but as it turned out in the end he didn't save the recordings they did that day - well, apparently not past his making the mp3 file. He offered to give her another "half day" as a consolation prize and after that experience I told him no thank you.
Who deletes recorded material the day after they depart from the studio? Hell, I have stuff all the way back to 1985.
So, I'm resolving the problem by mailing her a Zoom H2 "handy recorder" preconfigured so all she has to do is sing into that and adjust the H-M-L switch on the side for powerful voice. With an 8gb SD card it has 12 hours and 30 minutes or recording time and I'm sure she'll get a good take in that window. She now has the music in MP3 format and will play it into her headphones, and once the lead-in snare starts, she'll push record on the Zoom device.
Not exactly how I wanted to do this, but it has to be done. This recording needs to be on a CD by July 20th because she has a unique opportunity to meet with a country music "giant" for 10 minutes that day. She will have his undivided attention, and play this CD for him.
::eyeroll::
I *KNEW* I should have driven out there and done this myself.
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Villain S Deeds
Member
I'm DIY for everything, and not just because it's the only way I can afford. It's mostly because I strive to be good at everything I do, and I want to take as much pride in my art as I possibly can. I think both the creative and technical aspects of it are equally important, and gaining more experience in one area will certainly reflect in the other.
masteringhouse
www.masteringhouse.com
While I understand and respect where you're coming from it's my belief that no man is an island and you become stronger by surrounding yourself with people more competent in an area than you may be.
Villain S Deeds
Member
I totally agree. I want to hear other people's opinions of what I've done, as any constructive criticism is only going to help.
PoorBoyRecordings
New member
I do it all myself. But I'll tell ya, my first attempt at recording myself was a total disaster. It sounded like so 5 or 6 year olds trying to play. But I have since improved somewhat (but still not great). I read ... alot ... here on HR and have learned so much from all you guys.
K
Kingkudzu
New member
Mastering
Ultimately...I intend to do it all myself as well. You guys (I will call you the 'good' guys-the one REALLY trying to help) have much more patience than I. I read these Forums to learn, get better, so I can MASTER my own someday. The "Goober" from just North of sanity and comprehension ,for sure, just was flaming imo and didn;t deserve y'all's time.
Hey, there, Hoosier, go back from wherever it is you came. People trying to learn here!
Take off, eh?
Thanks again for all I have learned from the good guys--really...it means alot and that guy is just a waste of time.
Ultimately...I intend to do it all myself as well. You guys (I will call you the 'good' guys-the one REALLY trying to help) have much more patience than I. I read these Forums to learn, get better, so I can MASTER my own someday. The "Goober" from just North of sanity and comprehension ,for sure, just was flaming imo and didn;t deserve y'all's time.
Hey, there, Hoosier, go back from wherever it is you came. People trying to learn here!
Take off, eh?
Thanks again for all I have learned from the good guys--really...it means alot and that guy is just a waste of time.
K
Kingkudzu
New member
Mastering
Yea...I get my vendor from Google, I am so HIPPPPP! More like lazy and stooopid. Sorry--just wanted to flame the dude who was doing all the trash talking to those who obviously knew much more.
Thanks again all--and yes we should invade Canada--at least it wouldn't take very long.
Seriously,
Peace,
Kingkudzu
Yea...I get my vendor from Google, I am so HIPPPPP! More like lazy and stooopid. Sorry--just wanted to flame the dude who was doing all the trash talking to those who obviously knew much more.
Thanks again all--and yes we should invade Canada--at least it wouldn't take very long.
Seriously,
Peace,
Kingkudzu
bstarstudios
Useless Thoughts
im attempting to master my self. ive gotten my level a lot better and brought my mixes up to a better level. its tough work learning to master.
just a sample of my premastered track and my mastered track.
still cant get that darn industry brick wav form
just a sample of my premastered track and my mastered track.
still cant get that darn industry brick wav form
Massive Master
www.massivemastering.com
1) "Louder" ≠ "Mastering" --
2) What a waveform "looks like" has nothing to do with what it sounds like.
3) If you want a smashed waveform (and to make something ridiculously loud) just smash it into a limiter. A trained monkey could do it.
3a) That will still have nothing to do with mastering.
2) What a waveform "looks like" has nothing to do with what it sounds like.
3) If you want a smashed waveform (and to make something ridiculously loud) just smash it into a limiter. A trained monkey could do it.
3a) That will still have nothing to do with mastering.
bstarstudios
Useless Thoughts
ive realized mastering ≠ loudness. and im a noob when it comes to anything mastering. my bad.
thats why theres people like you in the world
J
JasonBird
Average Member
do it myself
i've been doing it myself for around 5 years, and it has been quite a learning experience. I read alot and basically i still do it all wrong. i do the recording , mixing, and the mastering. we have about two songs left and then will have all of the tracks that we have for a cd. more than likely i'll do everything involved in that as well, from the photography , the design of the sleeve, to the production of the master disc. most of it is like a previous poster, i want to learn about all of the aspects of it. the dilema that i face, is that i don't know what i don't know. So even though we are happy with the mix and the sound that i end up with, i can't help thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. I want to send a track to massive or mixmaker somebody on here that i see alot of and then get a taste of what i'm missing. i'd be happy to work with somebody and provide tracks etc. If there is any of you guys, Massive, mastering house, etc that would like to do that let me know. just accept paypal...lol.
Jason
i've been doing it myself for around 5 years, and it has been quite a learning experience. I read alot and basically i still do it all wrong. i do the recording , mixing, and the mastering. we have about two songs left and then will have all of the tracks that we have for a cd. more than likely i'll do everything involved in that as well, from the photography , the design of the sleeve, to the production of the master disc. most of it is like a previous poster, i want to learn about all of the aspects of it. the dilema that i face, is that i don't know what i don't know. So even though we are happy with the mix and the sound that i end up with, i can't help thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. I want to send a track to massive or mixmaker somebody on here that i see alot of and then get a taste of what i'm missing. i'd be happy to work with somebody and provide tracks etc. If there is any of you guys, Massive, mastering house, etc that would like to do that let me know. just accept paypal...lol.
Jason