Deciding what to charge ultimately comes down to your gear, and your ability to use that gear, while taking into consideration alternatives artists can use aside from yourself.
There are also other "charges" to consider when running a pro or semi pro studio, which I will outline before.
Charge a "mic usage deposit", fully refundable when the mics go back into the foam cases. Microphones fit into pockets, and sadly if the studio is large enough you need eyes on the back of your head to keep track of everything.
I had a "guitar room" which I did the same - guitar players could use any guitar in there, but I swiped their card for the approximate value of the guitar, and refunded fully when the guitar was returned unscathed. A broken strings I didn't care about, gashes and dropping I did.
I also had a keyboard room, which I did the same thing.
Media charges - while nowadays DVD-R's and CD blanks are dirt cheap, when I had this studio I charged for media by the foot. 2" 24 track otari tape is not cheap no matter where you buy it. Make sure you are not only covering your labor at whatever price it is you want to charge, but don't go into a financial hole, even if small, by giving away media.
I also charged booking fees, which were refunded when they showed up. Essentially a booking fee is a non-refundable deposit, but I charged it this way because then NY state couldn't force me to refund it if a particular band/group/artist repeatedly cancelled last minute. Unfortunately, I had a few of those, but most of my customers were good people who were anxious to record.
While I charged by the hour (and not $15 either), I'd always have an endless supply of coffee, cream and sugar, often I'd bring in a box or two of donuts in the morning, pizza in the afternoon, etc. I seperated my rates based on rooms, so a vocal booth had one rate, the console room had another rate, and I had two practice rooms which weren't connected to anything but electrical, so they were much less costly to rent. But a few bands enjoyed them because they could play loud as hell and not have the police come and visit them. For me, it was a free $15 an hour per room, of which I had two. Got a lot of really late rentals too, was kinda strange.
Also, customers that booked larger quantities of time, say several days to a week, if they ran overhours during the days that they booked the entire place, I honestly didn't really care. It didn't cost me much to keep the lights on an extra hour, and its a nice gesture to allow the artists to get that last track down when their creative light is on full bright.
The only thing I was a real prick about was the pay phone in the lobby. ALL calls in and out to bands, artists and customers had to be done on the payphone. Period, end of discussion. Now that 10 y/o's have cell phones, this is moot.
Billing for me started the second I, or my assistant, walked into the console room or the main room, and started plugging in stuff. When I first started I only charged for recording/mixing time, but was losing many hours of my time setting stuff up before customers arrived and after they left. So, I started billing that out as well, at a lower rate than if some real engineering was involved.
I also had several "pig sty" fees, assuming there were potato chip crumbs all over the place, but I don't think I ever actually charged anyone. Most of my customers were very respectful of the recording environment, and of course, I made sure they knew I appreciated it. I did this by allowing overruns without the billing clock going.
One thing thats a nice "feature" of any studio that does work for someone else, is a detailed invoice. I had a full-fledged point of sale system that handled bookings, equipment rentals, and room scheduling, but what was slick was the itemized invoices, so clients could really see where their money was going. *I* as a consumer hate vague estimates turning into even more vague invoices, so this is a nice touch.
Also, should you ever be in a dispute over the bill, its easy to see that you charged approriately for CD-R blanks by counting the blanks in their hands. They have six, bill for six. Most of my customers really appreciated this.
And while it sounds like I nickel and dimed my customers to death, this ultimately translated to a $50 an hour rate plus media costs for most customers. Some were a hair over, some where a hair less, but thats about average.
Hope I didn't bore ya
