Opening up studio for paid sessions - advice on pricing

My fairly unique and tried and tested method. Studio time for FREE. Period. End of story. THEN, an HOURLY only wage for your services when you are engineering, producing, arranging, playing, etc..  Studio is not available for outside engineers to book.

You can't argue with "I can get time for free from my bandmate or brother in law". Cause they can. What they CAN'T get is you. How much per hour do you make at your day job? How much per hour does your client(s) make at their day job? How much does a plumber make when you call him? An electrician? Average those all out and charge that much an hour for your personal services. You will have far less people arguing and lowballing you when you tell them your WELL equipped studio is FREE!!!! (probably WELL more equipped than their bandmates studio or their brother in laws freebie studio) and they get yours for FREE!!! as well - and they only have to pay you a fair hourly rate to compensate from taking your valuable time away from your paying job and/or family.  (Only an @$$ would argue with that, and you probably don't want to work with @$$'s anyway)

My guess on hourly is somewhere between $40 and $80 per hour depending on where you are and how affluent or not your clients are. This MO has worked very well, and culls out the freebies, and makes people respect your time. Also, time starts at the hour booked - not when they show up. Never take sessions without a deposit. If they book 2 days, they have to give at least 2 days notice to receive their deposit back. If they book 2 weeks, then 2 weeks notice to cancel. Etc..  Balance of session paid for by CC or cash at the END of the session.  Hard drives don't leave before balance has cleared your bank or you have cash in hand.

Respect yourself and others will respect you. Whore yourself out, and others will see you as a whore. Sad, but truth.

I was charging $250/5 hour session, $450/10 hour. I wouldn’t book less than a 5 hour. Rates were set. No discounts for anyone, price is the price. $250 per mix (where I would allot myself the 5 hour block for mixing (plus 2 revisions if needed). Mixing was on my own time though and not attended. If someone wanted to attend, they booked a regular $250 block. Revisions outside the block were billed at $50/hour (1 hour minimum).

Yeah, you obviously need to have enough gear to do the job.  But which gear, how much, etc. is a phantom dream that we keep chasing and throwing money at.  We are our own worst enemies (financially).  

Size does matter though.....,  

Generally 350$ an 8 hour day or 350$ a song depending on which I think will benefit both parties most.

If it's someone new, I'll only do a full day to start. After that I'll decide if we'll do less than full days. I'll generally do half days after that.

It's hard to bill by the hour because folks sit there and count the minutes rather than working on their music.

It's strange that I've found that the larger the block of TIME, the less folks seem to think about it. Even if the money works out to be the same, the smaller the block of time, the more folks tend to worry about money.

I've had folks set up timers so that we don't go over allotted time, or to track the time we work to the minute. Others are a bit more carefree, and I'm a bit more flexible with them as well.

It’s really hard for most people to “hear past” the artist, even if your work is stellar. Aligning your business with talent will always serve your best interests.

I agree with a lot of what Bill is saying, especially about respecting yourself and I’ll add to it respecting your own boundaries of what you’re willing to work on. Coming up I had to take every single job working with hacks to pay the bills and it was emotionally draining. I don’t do that anymore. If the project isn’t on some level at least minimally interesting or fulfilling to me, I don’t take it. If I can see the band are a bunch of jokers that are going to argue with me the entire time, I’m fine sending them away or saying I just don’t have the time or one of my personal favorites “I don’t think I have anything of value to add to your project, somebody else is probably better suited”. Now sometimes that’s actually true, and other times it’s just because I can see where the tides are going before they change and I hit the road!

If it’s not actually your day job, don’t make it your day job. Just work with folks you know are capable of letting you do good work, put your name on it and be proud of it and move on to the next.

Actually, the day rate for high end studios is down significantly.  I'd guess down 80% or so.  Rooms that were $2000-2500 per day (that's a 12 hour day at most) are now down to $500 with flexibility on the amount of hours.

Working a day job makes your hourly time SIGNIFICANTLY easier.  If you have to take time away from your main source of income, it makes no sense to work for less on your "music" gig.  Anybody can understand that.  It would be like starving your family so some lame band can come in and record.  That's insane.  Now....add the cost of equipping and maintaining the studio, and your "music" hourly should be AT LEAST if not significantly higher than your day job.  If it's not - you will be miserable, and hating the studio business in short order.  Respect yourself, your abilities, your perseverance, and most of all your family.  If you can't do that, you're barking up the wrong tree.  Nobody should deliberately go into the studio business in 2023 to "make money".  You've got to take care of your #1 priorities first before launching into the studio "biz".  Good luck!  Like all of us - you'll need it!!!  

I'd go back INTO the studio business if they could pay like they did in 1985,,,,  

I talked to a fellow musician that recorded at GOLD STAR recording studio, LA. Ca. around 1968.

He said the rates were 75 Cents per minute ( $45.00 ph. ) before midnight.

It was $1.50 per minute ( $90.00 ph. ) after midnight.

I found it strange thinking it should have been the other way around.

I am the kind of person who will do whatever it takes to get it to sound as I hear it in my head. Unfortunately, I will probably give away a lot of time. Lots to think about. 

I'm not really thinking of being a public recording studio. I'm just interested in working with a handful of people I believe in to see if we can create something that both of us are proud of. I have been giving away my time, but it's like Bill said; some have brothers or cousins who own a computer and a little gear so when we start discussing the next project, they want it free as well. I'm fine with doing a tune for free to see how we get on, but after that, there has to be some compensation. On most of these projects, I have spent way more time fixing their parts than they spent recording them. But that's ok on a one-off.

You own the masters until paid in full, as I understand it. A good many clients won’t even think to ask for the files. But if you don’t give them the files, you’re sort of their defacto archive. And in my opinion, masters = raw multitracks. It’s nice to consolidate everything to 0:00, but I seldom get around to it, if I’m being honest.