Veering back to the original topic... sort of....
In my opinion there are really two roads to go here:
1.) Getting a job in the audio industry
OR
2.) MAKING your own job in the audio industry
I think that #1 is pretty difficult these days, because there are a number of people exercising the #2 option.
Which leads me to....
TexRoadkill said:
If they are paying $25/hour for first year engineers in Ohio then I am moving.
Ohio is a great place to start your own recording business. Why? Because we are not NYC or LA... there isn't much of a recording industry here in the first place, but there are a lot of people in bands that want to record if you go out and find them, talk to them, and sell them on your services.
Most of the studios here in NW ohio S*U*C*K big time. Not all of them, but in this area there are only a few here and there that are any good. In Toledo most of the bands that are serious about recording go to OTHER cities to record--be it Cleveland, OH (large city), Detroit, MI (large city) or Ann Arbor, MI (large and rich college campus, many bands). I think that it is *pathetic* that bands have to travel almost 150-200 miles to go to a decent studio to get a decent sound.
There is one place around here that is 50/hour that does good work depending on the engineer. There is another place that *used* to do good work (for the time) but they haven't upgraded past a Mac G3 400mhz/MOTU 2408 MK II in 5 or 6 years... falling pretty behind the tech curve. Finally, there is a larger studio that mostly does commercial recording that virtually never records bands because they are 75/hour+ and have an older Pro-Tools system that was still 16 bit as of last year (plus they are pretentious nobs because they have a 96 channel PT system.... woopee).
What I'm trying to say is that the good market is in the medium sized cities like Toledo. There aren't any PRO studios here. Not one studio that could handle a professional major label album; not one studio that has anything remotely as cool as a single LA2A that I've seen. Most of these places try to impress you with their Aphex preamp... ROFL! It's a total joke and they are open to competition in today's market.
But there are over 1 million people within a 50 mile radius of here... some of them ready, willing and able to record if they can find a place that meets a decent price point. It's not going to be the same everywhere--but cost of living is so low here in NW Ohio that 25/hour is a decent fee to charge if you can keep yourself booked about 20 hours a week and don't have ludicrous amounts of bills and overhead.
The studio I work at is *so* booked with rappers that to stem the tide we built a 'studio B' and set up an apprentice engineer that is going to stay at 25/hour and the 'studio a' where myself and the studio owner is going to 40/hour.
I guess the moral of the story is one good tactic if you want to open your own studio is move to a place with a need and demand--typically a smaller city, lots of college students, a few affluent suburbs, low building costs and taxes, relatively weak competition and devote yourself to audio engineering.
Now if you're trying to open up a new shop in Boston, LA, NYC or even Jersey City... god help you. Those places are super saturated and filled with engineers with probably 10 times the experience and connections. I wouldn't even bother if I lived someplace like that.