Pro commercial release cost

  • Thread starter Thread starter ecktronic
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ecktronic

ecktronic

Mixing and Mastering.
Does anyone know roughly how much it costs for big bands like Deftones, A Prefect Circle, Incubus etc. to get an album produced (recorded, mixed, produced and mastered) these days?
I think Terry Date and Andy Wallace were involved in either the mixing or producing of theses bands at some point.

Im just trying to compare the price of our album getting produced to the big boys.

Cheers,
Eck
 
The amount varies considerably. I think it's pretty safe to say it's well into the six figures USD. A friend of mines band who is unsigned was quoted by a local studio (big time, but no gold records on the wall) - at about 50k. Needless to say, they just laughed their asses off.
 
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ecktronic said:
Does anyone know roughly how much it costs for big bands like Deftones, A Prefect Circle, Incubus etc. to get an album produced (recorded, mixed, produced and mastered) these days?
I think Terry Date and Andy Wallace were involved in either the mixing or producing of theses bands at some point.

Im just trying to compare the price of our album getting produced to the big boys.

Cheers,
Eck
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well it can cost them an upfront fee that can easily reach 6 figures (as NL5 mentioned) as well as points (percentage) off album sales. That's just for the producer.

It used to be that you saw million dollar deals for these kind of things, but it's not nearly as common anymore.

But remember, that dosn't include the studio fees, preproduction costs, rentals, locking out the studio, buying the analog tape (big part of the budget), bringing in other types of professionals (vocal coach, a musical producer, composer, etc).

By comparison, these are relatively large productions due to the nature of the projects.


However, you will usually see a newly signed artist with a budget at about that 50k range NL5 talked about. Thier success will generally dictate how much more they can spend the next time around.
 
Thanks guys.
Yeah I had a rough guestimate of $100,000-$200,000 in my head. :)

cheers,
Eck
 
ecktronic said:
Thanks guys.
Yeah I had a rough guestimate of $100,000-$200,000 in my head. :)

cheers,
Eck
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For big big time (a step above the bands you mentioned) you are about right.

$50-100K range is about right for the bands you mentioned.

It is hard to say nowadays though. With so much being done on DAW's and much of the tracking being done in the artists home studio's (guitar overdubs, vocals, etc...) it is hard to put a price on productions. I don't think labels are throwing down much money anymore until they KNOW for certain that the artist will sell.
 
Considering a 'hot' producer and mixer each take close to $100k, you can easily hit $250k (if not much more) for an established major label artist. That being said, budgets for the majors have been dropping like a rock for years now to the point it's not uncommon to see all-inclusive deals in the $50k range for new artists.
 
bblackwood said:
Considering a 'hot' producer and mixer each take close to $100k, you can easily hit $250k (if not much more) for an established major label artist. That being said, budgets for the majors have been dropping like a rock for years now to the point it's not uncommon to see all-inclusive deals in the $50k range for new artists.
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Yeah.
My aim is to produce our next album to the standards of Deftones (Andy Wallace and Terry Date) for as cheap as possible. I talking less than $10,000 for everything! A tenth of the price (at least!).

Eck
 
ecktronic said:
My aim is to produce our next album to the standards of Deftones (Andy Wallace and Terry Date) for as cheap as possible. I talking less than $10,000 for everything! A tenth of the price (at least!).
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You could try breaking in to the studio ... maybe kidnap Andy and Terry at gunpoint, and force them to produce your record, etc.

Or you could simply accept the reality of the situation, lower your expectations and realize that ... you're probably not going to produce your next album "to the standards of the deftones," as you put it.

The second option may not be as glamorous or sexy, but would certainly cost much less in the long run -- particularly in the area of lawyer fees, criminal records, and the like.

.
 
A lot :D

The way the band gets that recording is the label acts as a bank, they will front the money for you for the recording, you find the studio and producer, unless the label requests particular ones, and then you're expected to make the money back on record sales. The kicker is, you're led to believe you can actually make that money back, but when you don't and the album is not successful, then you're in the hole with the studio and will most likely get dropped. But that's the pessimistic idea of things. You can be successful, too.

What I'm just trying to say is unless you have the equipment, know-how, and talent to sound like what you're trying to get, you'll probably have a hard time getting there with substantially less money.

What you could do is go to Chicago and pay Albini $650/day to engineer your project, like people around here do, and then say he produced the album, which is pretty silly. Then at least you can have a big name on your credits right? :)
 
chessrock said:
... you could simply accept the reality of the situation, lower your expectations and realize that ... you're probably not going to produce your next album "to the standards of the deftones," as you put it.
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Why would I ever want to lower my expectations on how well I can produce my next album? I am striving to be up there with the big lads, and the only way to do that is to push myself. I have confidence that I will be able to manage it for the next album. That will give me about a year to plan out how its going to be recorded and mixed, and to get the songs ready via demo recordings so Im happy to go ahead with the recording of them.
I know I need better equipment to do this, so I either need to upgrade or hire a fekin awsome recording engineer to help out and a half decent studio. Im thinking of the 2nd option as a better one. Saves me recording the album all by myself. :)

Eck
 
Cult_Status02 said:
What you could do is go to Chicago and pay Albini $650/day to engineer your project, like people around here do, and then say he produced the album, which is pretty silly. Then at least you can have a big name on your credits right? :)
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Well we are only getting $10,000 (minimum) towards our next album, so I font think we can fly over to the USA with all our equipment and pay $650 a day just for a recording engineer!
Acht, Im sure we will manage.
Eck
 
ecktronic said:
I know I need better equipment to do this, so I either need to upgrade or hire a fekin awsome recording engineer to help out and a half decent studio. Im thinking of the 2nd option as a better one. Saves me recording the album all by myself. :)
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That's not a bad option, and I'm sure it will yield perfectly good results. I just think you're setting yourself up for disapointment if you're expecting Deftones / Perfect Circle, etc. It's just not realistic.

.
 
chessrock said:
That's not a bad option, and I'm sure it will yield perfectly good results. I just think you're setting yourself up for disapointment if you're expecting Deftones / Perfect Circle, etc. It's just not realistic.

.
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Ok. If you are still around this forum in a year and a half then we shall see how it turns out.
Eck
 
if you really want to get high quality on the cheap, you should find a full-on pro studio that allows rental of the studio without an engineer...then go in and track the shit yourself in their great room and with their great gear, then go home and mix it yourself
 
This is going to be hilarious to watch pan out. I can almost script it!
 
Recording and mixing is about a fraction of the cost to release. Marketing the recording is where you get into the deep kimchi.
 
Ironklad Audio said:
if you really want to get high quality on the cheap, you should find a full-on pro studio that allows rental of the studio without an engineer...then go in and track the shit yourself in their great room and with their great gear, then go home and mix it yourself
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All else being equal (which it isn't quite, I know), I'd rather have a gunslinger of an engineer in an average prosumer project studio than a rookie engineer in a Big House.

A bonus is often that gunslinger will bring some of his favorite guns with him (e.g. a great mic or two and/or a portable rack of high-grade iron).

G.
 
For an established artist, the budget of them exceeds $5 million easily. Music videos by themselves, each costs roughly $1 million dollars to produce. Just for recording, I know that Kanye West spends for tracking & mixing about $300-350K easily. For bringing in other artists from different labels, that ranges can start from $25K to $1 million dollars for 1 song, 1 performance, from 1 artist. In the hip hop world, Dr Dre costs roughly that much to feature up on someone's track. Budgets from like Bad Boy Records have known to exceed over $20 million dollars once.
 
Ironklad Audio said:
if you really want to get high quality on the cheap, you should find a full-on pro studio that allows rental of the studio without an engineer...then go in and track the shit yourself in their great room and with their great gear, then go home and mix it yourself
Click to expand...
You dont really need a great room for the genre of music I am recording (heavy rock). Alot of the micing is close micing. I agree that good gear would help.

Cheers,
Eck
 
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