I’m guessing the ‘world’ you’re talking about is the USA?
CDs alone still account for 50% of global music sales. In Japan it’s nearer 70%. For some genres (I’m thinking specifically heavy rock/heavy metal, but there are others) a 10-track album is the most sensible way to go. For yet others, whether it’s sensible or not, they just want to go that way, regardless of the ‘way of the world’ today. Not every recording project is based on its financial viability.
Notwithstanding the fact that you’re asserting that it takes two years to record and release an album, what statistics/knowledge are you basing this on?
CDs are the currency for musician’s here in the South too. The funny thing about CDs is you can put just 3 songs on there and your fans will buy it. Then they’ll listen to it on Spotify. I said that people don’t tend to listen to albums. And those that do tend to be older.
@AJ113 I really trying to understand your responses. It seems you are particularly going after Mixerman. I’ll be honest, I really don’t get it. You are charging 12 pounds or euros per hour (from looking at your website pricing) and you don’t talk about this at all in this thread. This is somewhere between 13 and 15 dollars per hour in USD and $15-20 per hour in CAD. Your responses seem to indicate that you have this figured out yet your hourly wage suggests the opposite. Why would you not seek to understand how to charge a better rate from more experienced people like Mixerman? In Canada, I have to pay my assistant that knows nothing $15 per hour because that is our minimum wage.
How is it that you feel you can speak with any sort of authority on this subject when you have only figured out how to charge a little more than minimum wage? Furthermore, why would you suppose to be so against someone who has fought to the top of the most brutal industry on earth? My suggestion would be to spend a little less time being oppositional to a success story like @Mixerman and a little more time trying to emulate it.
It is well known in traditional business circles that there are only three types of business models.
Customer Service
Low Cost
Product differentiation.
That I know of, there is only one company in the world that has really achieved both for a time. Toyota.
Companies really only get to choose one of these. For most boutique companies, like studios, they need to have great product differentiation with reasonable customer service. You have chosen low cost as your business model and that is fine. In order to turn a profit with that model, you’d need to turn over a LOT of recordings with multiple employees cranking out songs as well. My guess is that if you really did your numbers you’d find that you are losing money on each song you produce. When that is happening you can’t make it up in the volume of sales.
That’s a bold guess bearing in mind you know zero about my business. Do you really I think it’s possible to oprate a successful business without doing the numbers, and by losing money on every transaction?
Regardless, I’ll stop posting since it obviously displeases you. Ill try to do as you say and emulate Mr Mixerman, especially this part:
My intention wasn’t to get you to stop posting, my intention was to bring some reality and business acumen to the discussion. My guess is not actually that bold. Here is what it is based on. 95% of businesses of any sort fail within 2 years. I see many, many businesses loose a nickel per unit and try to make it up in volume. The most common studio model is self funded studios that get their funding from someones day job because they are a hobby not an actual business returning a profit.
I’m not sure where you are recording. You may rent a facility, use your basement, garage or bedroom. If you are renting you’ll probably be putting the lions share of your profit into rent. If you are not renting you likely don’t count the fact that you should pay rent to yourself for the use of space and that this is a real expense. Most “hobby type” recordists spend every cent they earn on gear, plugins etc. There is nothing wrong with this and it should not be mistaken for a business. It is a hobby. A very rough estimate on profit for a lot of businesses can be run on percentage. Shop rate can be divided into 3. 1/3 Infrastructure costs(heating, equipment, property taxes etc) 1/3 staffing, 1/3 profit. Some companies like construction companies operate on very thin margins of 15%. Well run restaurants run at about 30% profit. So if you have no staff and you are very shrewd with your expenses 1/3 of your cash flow will be for expenses and you will be pocketing the rest. If you are booked for 50 weeks a year 5 days per week (maximum reasonable hours possible) that is a gross profit of $22500. If you take 1/3 for expenses you’ll have $7500 for expenses. and $15000 to live on. Converted to pounds you’ll be sitting at roughly 20,000 cash profit and 10,000 for expenses. To be quite honest I can’t see running a facility of any sort and turning a profit at that price. Especially since the reality is that few studios are 100% booked.
Don’t get me wrong I totally respect that many hobbyists make great recordings and have no need for cash flow because that comes from a day job. That is the majority of home studios.
What my post was meant to inspire was a critical fact based discussion, not a shutdown. What I hear is mixerman divulging is his strategy for maximizing what he can bring in for cash flow. In this situation it is true that not all clients will pay the same rate and he will do more or less a similar job. In my experience it is 100% true that clients that are only worried about the cost end up being a total pain and taking even more time than a reasonable person will estimate. People that will pay the higher rate are often good decision makers, get projects done, and don’t sabotage the work by second guessing decisions that don’t create a positive emotional impact. When you get a good client that pays well you tend to do better work because you are free to do your best without the frustration of people that work against themselves.
People were waiting to see if you would figure out how much Eric’s knowledge and experience exceeds anyone we’ve had with us to date. But now many of us are scratching our heads wondering why you just won’t be quiet and learn something for however long he decides to stick around.
Look, if Donald Trump walked into an networking event and started taking over the conversation in the room, and I didn’t want to hear listen to his bullshit I’d just go to another room and snack on free horderves there until he went away. I wouldn’t stay there and heckle him because its impolite to the people that are trying to speak with him, and even worse, it would make me look like a stupid pretentious ass hole that shouldn’t even have been invited to the event. Yeah, I may not have asked for Trumps help, and I may not even want him at the event, but the reality is that other people do and the world doesn’t revolve around me.
This entire forum is past pretending that it is a ‘home recording forum’. We’re both on another forum that’s a ‘home recording forum’. I’m sorry if that’s a blow to your ego (well, actually I’m not) but the other reality is this is NOT the same forum we came from.
