How Much Should I Pay For Amature Mixing Mastering?

L

Les W

New member
This guy mastered and mixed my hip hop vocals the mix is not as I wanted and the mastering seems ok. How much is fair for me to pay him for his time? I've never had anything mastered before, but this was a good learning experience.

Thanks for your suggestions
Les
 
Price should have been agreed upon before-hand. Otherwise it's hard to say. Does he do this as a business or just a hobby? I think it would be his call if he wants to charge you.
 
Les W said:
This guy mastered and mixed my hip hop vocals the mix is not as I wanted and the mastering seems ok. How much is fair for me to pay him for his time? I've never had anything mastered before, but this was a good learning experience.

Thanks for your suggestions
Les
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WTF...?

You don't "master" vocals...

How the hell can the 'mastering' be okay if the mix isn't what you wanted?

None of this really makes sense...
 
Yep, your both right. How much time did he put in to this endeavor? What equipment does he use? Should have been decided on before hand like Daveg62 said. I would say payment shouldn't be much.
 
Les W said:
This guy mastered and mixed my hip hop vocals the mix is not as I wanted and the mastering seems ok. How much is fair for me to pay him for his time?
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Well, considering you haven't told us how much he actually mixed/mastered, how much time he spend doing it, and the fact that he hasn't finished his job yet, how much to pay "for his time" is an impossible question to answer.

But when the time comes that he actually finishes his job (i.e. actually gets mix approval from you before he "masters" anything), you might want to look at it this way. I don't know what state you're in - or even if you're in the U.S. - so, just for example, let's use the federal minimum wage as the base rate to pay him. At $7.25 an hour, you can calculate it this way:

Since the guy is an amateur (or is he an armature?), and since he did not state any rate or come to any agreement with you beforehand, and since everyone involved in this transaction is operating without a clue, I'd take that minimum wage and multiply it by zero, and then multiply that by the amount of time wasted. That will be the final bill, with the only profit to be made in the learning of the following lessons:

Anything worth doing is worth doing right.

Anything done right is something worth paying for, and probably won't be cheap.

Anything not worth doing is not worth doing. Anything not done right is not worth paying for.

G.
 
Les W said:
This guy mastered and mixed my hip hop vocals the mix is not as I wanted and the mastering seems ok. How much is fair for me to pay him for his time? I've never had anything mastered before, but this was a good learning experience.

Thanks for your suggestions
Les
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Listen to Massive on this one. The addage that "you get what you pay for" is very hand in hand with the music industry. Good quality production costs money, there's no way around that.

Besides, he should be able to tell you his asking price from the start.
 
In addition to all of these excellent points I'd like to add:

As I understand it, one of the important reasons for mastering is to fix problems caused my deficiencies in the mixing engineers room, signal flow, etc. Why would you have the same person mix AND master? And if you ARE going to, why do it at the same location?

Seems like, if you pay, you got taken.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Since the guy is an amateur (or is he an armature?), and since he did not state any rate or come to any agreement with you beforehand, and since everyone involved in this transaction is operating without a clue, I'd take that minimum wage and multiply it by zero, and then multiply that by the amount of time wasted.
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OMG! I just sprayed Pepsi out of my nose all over my computer. HAHAHAHA! This must be one of your funniest posts ever!

HAHAHA! :D :D :D
 
nate_dennis said:
In addition to all of these excellent points I'd like to add:

As I understand it, one of the important reasons for mastering is to fix problems caused my deficiencies in the mixing engineers room, signal flow, etc. Why would you have the same person mix AND master? And if you ARE going to, why do it at the same location?

Seems like, if you pay, you got taken.
Click to expand...

I think by "mastering" they mean strapping on a limiter and let 'er rip! I mean rap... errr... rip! Yeah.
 
dude, if your on about the tracks on your myspace, then i think there pretty well done if amateur. i think everyone is being a bit harsh here tbh, only my view though.
 
I think the myspace stuff sounded ok.... but the low end was rolled off pretty aggressive. I might replace a couple of lyrics too ;)
 
$23,678.48

Don't ask me how I got it, but it's DEFINITELY what you should pay him.

Trust me on this.
 
I reckon this guy is a pro, giving away bargains.

Honestly, I've never heard of a mastering engineer that could master vocals. He must be "off da hook."



















:rolleyes:
 
By definition as an amateur you shouldn't pay him anything. As soon as you do that would make him a professional and immediately disqualify him from the mastering olympics
Also if you didn't like the job as you stated, why would you consider paying anything at all, at least until he did something to correct it
 
There's a small bunch of those going around (made one myself, thanks). A lot of the "get me" and "[SELF-CENSORED]-ing A" stuff does go a little overboard, but think of them as "caricatures" of real-life experiences. I know mine was...
 
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