Launching mixing service in 2023!?

Solidarity. The downside I've found is time. Between the day job and raising a family, there's little time left in the day. And I'm usually exhausted by that point.

I haven't read everything in the thread but I'll echo the general sentiment. Making a good living these days with mixing is going to be very very complicated. There's just so much competition and there's just less money over all in the music industry these days.

I know a few people who are still charging between 1k and 3k per song, most of them are old school guys in their mid 50s or more, who have a huge catalog and work for major labels, though most are working quite a bit less than they used to. The "younger" guys I know ( around my age 37, and I'm assuming you're somewhere in that range too) that are charging those rates went through the ropes the old school way, starting as assistants in major studios and then bonding with artists and growing with them.

I have a lot of friends charging around 500 per song and each one of them is extremely specialized, they either do only metal, only electronica, only punk and they've built a very faithful clientele.
I've read a couple posts talking about how having a diverse cliente genre wise is the way to go. In theory I want to agree with that but in practice I just don't see it. For live work it's true, but as far as mixing, all the guys I know that are making a decent living are completely specialized ( and most of them I know would love to do other genres too but just don't find the work).

And then I know dozens if not hundreds who have tried and unfortunately failed, and in the mix some of them were actually good but they didn't know how to market themselves or other things.

Concerning your Youtube channel, I'm sorry to hear that because I find the content great.
But when I think about it, I can't really think of any gear channels that are doing very well, besides Warren Huart and Glenn Fricker I can't think of that many guys who have a big following, and I can't think of any guys doing exclusively gear talk. Warren Huart does a lot of studio tours and interviews and tutorials and great content, but I doubt even he makes that much money from Youtube.

But when you compare those channels to guitar related channels, it becomes obvious very fast that the Audio Gear Youtube presence is a very niche market and some of the most watched videos are " starting your home studio" or comparing prosumer gear.

I can see using Youtube as a showcase for your mixing or teaching definitely! And for that you'll probably have to vary the content some more.

To you point about needing to be specialized, I don't know anything about anything, but it seems to me with the amount things you "can do" with digital that more genre-specific trickery and methods have developed over time.  So maybe it's just too hard now to be good and deep dive multiple genre's.  Just a thought.  

Yeah I didn't have time to get into specifics in my original post but that's exactly what I think.

I see it particularly with modern metal, the editing, the triggering and the overall sound has just become so specific and homogenized that a great mixer that's never worked with that genre of music would not be able to just jump into it and make a band happy ( unless maybe he's already specialized in electronica or dubstep where I feel there's a lot of overlap).

I once tracked a punk band, one of the guys was friends with a pretty big mixer ( who never mixed punk) and they got a great deal to have him mix the album. The test mix he did was so far off what they wanted that they stopped working with him right away, he'd taken all the agression away from the guitars, and the bass and the hi-hat sounded super smooth, I guess from a purely technical pov it was a good mix but man was it boring and the band hated it, I'm sure with some work he would've been able to do something more to their liking but what's the point when you can find somebody who understands the music and how to mix it.

It helps to find something related. I work for a University producing instructional media. It’s not rock and roll, but a similar skill set. And it pays the bills.

Christian I mentioned voice over earlier.
You're a natural talent for Media.
Have you done VO and/or any other Acting?
Chris

Yeah that's what I've ended up doing. I work for live corporate events and government conferences, doing audio video coordination, not necessarily my dream job but after working for 15 years exclusively in the music business, not always on projects that I found exciting I came to the realization that I could make in 8 days what I used to make in a month and spend more time, with family, working on music that I actually LOVE and running!

One of my closest friends, who started learning to record around the time I did, STILL thinks gear doesn’t matter. And mic technique doesn’t matter. And room doesn’t matter. Monitors don’t matter. The perfect take doesn’t matter. What matters? Using plugins to fix it. Stock plugins. And I haven’t been able to get through to this pretty smart talented guy for 20 years. And the amount of musicians who believe this is enormous. I have no chance in hell convincing the avg musicians it’s worth paying for quality 🥳

Understandable.
Still worth checking into these sorts of options.*
Including Radio/TV/etc...Host/Co-Host.

I'd like to see/hear some Guest Interviews on your Channel BTW.
If that's ever an option.
Chris

Like his Father my Son wants to do music professionally with no idea of the reality. He is gaining experience but speaks 3 languages and I told him if he learns to be a teacher he can work anywhere and do anything.
Touring and studio work in a band is impossible to make a steady career from these days unless you’re a duo but if he trains to be a language teacher him and his sister can have my church studio when I downsize or retire.
He agreed and I signed it over to them. I just want them to have a future in this ever difficult world.
My daughter speaks 5 languages including Korean and Mandarin so she is set but my son needed some incentive as he’s a dreamy creative.
If I was their age I’d study coding.

I think as some others having pointed out, a big part of being able to make a consistent living doing this is to carve out a niche or demonstrate you offer something unique, especially since the notion of what consitiutes "good" and "bad" is extremely subjective in music. FWIW, I've found over the past few years the greatest generator of mixing business and being able to charge a living wage was improving my skills as a producer, from an arranging and songwriting point of view. I've found that if the artist feels you've seriously leveled up their songs or flesh out their ideas, they are yours for life and will pay you whatever rate (and then some, sometimes!) to keep working with you.

At that point, they are no longer paying you for a technical skill so much as your unique judgement and taste, which is of course, harder for a "competitor" to replicate. I've lost clients over rate only to have them return and never make a peep about rates again, which I can only of course speculate is because they found out I did offer them something they couldn't easily find everywhere.