Mastering cost

[mr. torture]

I was wondering, What is the typical cost of having a song mastered?
Lets say a 5 minute song. Also what type of format do they require?
And as my final question, What about a mixdown and master. I record with an AW4416. Could I just burn the tracks I recorded to a CD and send it out for mixdown and mastering? Of course this would require the mixing/mastering house to have a 4416 to be able to play back the tracks.
Thank you!!

 

[BrettB]

Mastering studio's have fees for an hour.

Many mastering studio's ask you how much money you are willing to spend andtry to work within that limit.

A normal master fee for a good mastering house is about 70 - 80 € each hour. For one song, that will be enough time

For the mastering house, you have to give them a data Cd with a wav or aif file.

 

[jazzrich9]

Pretty accurate,

I'd add though that my own MO is to always do a thirty second free sample, which along with giving the artist an idea of what their tracks could sound like also serves the purpose of giving us an idea of whether it will be mastering or a 'rescue session' we figure out how much time it would take us to do the project, and usually charge a flat fee based on that, and like brett said, an idea of what budget the artist has to work from.

There are some other talented ME's on this board who'll probably chime in with other ways they do it.

Cheers.

 

[Massive Master]

If you're paying an hourly rate, figure on about a half-hour or so per track plus materials. That's "fairly normal."

75% of the time I use an "all-inclusive" program-time based "indie" scale. The packages include the standards - Disc, backup, PQ log, error certification & shipping.

I do the "sample" stuff also. Only by mail now. I opened that up as an online feature and I was getting about a dozen sample requests daily within a week. That brought things to a screeching halt here, so I brought that to a screeching halt also. Now, the client sends a blank CD-R and a SASE. Still a little crazy, but manageable.

 

[masteringhouse]

I was wondering, What is the typical cost of having a song mastered?
Lets say a 5 minute song. Also what type of format do they require?
And as my final question, What about a mixdown and master. I record with an AW4416. Could I just burn the tracks I recorded to a CD and send it out for mixdown and mastering? Of course this would require the mixing/mastering house to have a 4416 to be able to play back the tracks.
Thank you!!

It will depend on the experience, client list, gear, location of the studio and other factors. If you are interested, you can check out my rates here:

http://www.masteringhouse.com/mastering.html

My preferred format for the mixes is a data CD with 24 bit stereo interleaved files at the same sample frequency used to record the material. I can also accept data files in nearly any other format (No MP3s please). If a data CD is not possible, a DAT or an audio CD are also acceptable.