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Post by rowmat on May 29, 2016 21:09:07 GMT -6
I saw a thread on the Turtlerock forum (Australian pro audio forum) started by a guy who was trying to find a studio in Sydney with a large live room for recording drums with a decent console and outboard etc. The bottom line is there is no longer any large studios in inner Sydney that fulfilled his needs. They have all long closed down. Rhinoceros Recording Studios in Sydney charged $2500 per day back in 1990 and that still was not enough to be financially viable. INXS owned Rhinoceros and even though they were at the height of their popularity they couldn't make it profitable. Just based upon wages (which have tripled since 1990) if Rhinoceros was operating today their rate would be theoretically need to be around $7,500 per day just to keep up with wage inflation. However real estate prices have increased by almost ten fold since 1990 so even a daily rate of $10,000 would still not give a viable enough return based upon todays inner city real estate prices and overheads. In 1990 Sydney's median house price was $120,000. In 2016 it is $1,000,000. And this is just for an average suburban house, not inner city commercial property. Prices in the CBD (central business district) have increased even more maybe like 15 fold since 1990. The original building that housed Rhinoceros was demolished and replaced by a $90 million apartment complex in 2011. These days record companies are basically no longer financing recordings anyway and musician's income in real terms has gone backwards in the last thirty years so no inner-city studio could charge $10,000 per day and expect to get even one booking no matter how state-of-the-art it was. That's why they have all shut down. So when someone says I want to record in a state of the art studio in the inner city and I need a 40 channel Neve console, racks of vintage outboard gear and a massive live room to record drums in all for no more than $500 per day you can say... "Tell 'em they're dreamin'!" |
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Post by Bob Olhsson on May 29, 2016 21:24:20 GMT -6
I think the future is recording live shows.
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Post by rowmat on May 29, 2016 21:28:39 GMT -6
Excerpts from the movie "The Castle"
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Post by drbill on May 29, 2016 21:29:10 GMT -6
I think the future is in banking, insurance or hedge funds. Maybe real estate.
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Post by tasteliketape on May 29, 2016 22:00:14 GMT -6
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Post by rocinante on May 29, 2016 23:18:35 GMT -6
A lot are gone its true and sad. And there's way too many hacks in basements (including myself) but there's still a a few awesome places in NY (city and upstate), Nashville, LA, NOLA, Chicago just too name a few cities. All equipped with nice neve or trident consoles and tons of outboard.
I left the studio i worked at and cut my teeth during the demise. It was sad. I was the overnight asst. engineer and 'PT specialist' and i watched it every day dry up more and more. Eventually there was no need for an overnight asst engineer cause they reduced rates so it didnt matter if it was prime time or whenever. The chief engineer took off for Asia where audio work was plentiful and I was down to two days a week. And then one day a week if i was lucky. I moved and started my own during a studio dry spell in VT and less than a year later the former studio closed. Ironically I believe the owner is now into real estate.
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Post by rowmat on May 30, 2016 4:20:07 GMT -6
If you think about it 10 days recording in Rhinoceros in 1990 was the equivelant to one years wages.
Today 10 days recording in a similar studio costs around one months wages.
It's been a race to the bottom for some time and the mastering business seems just as tough.
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Post by jazznoise on May 30, 2016 4:23:14 GMT -6
If you think about it 10 days recording in Rhinoceros in 1990 was the equivelant to one years wages. Today 10 days recording in a similar studio costs around one months wages. It's been a race to the bottom for some time and the mastering business seems just as tough. To think of it another way an artist could easily bankrupt themselves spending a yearly wage on their musical project, where now a months wages will do the same job and get them a comparable product. |
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Post by rowmat on May 30, 2016 4:37:00 GMT -6
If you think about it 10 days recording in Rhinoceros in 1990 was the equivelant to one years wages. Today 10 days recording in a similar studio costs around one months wages. It's been a race to the bottom for some time and the mastering business seems just as tough. To think of it another way an artist could easily bankrupt themselves spending a yearly wage on their musical project, where now a months wages will do the same job and get them a comparable product. We already put in around twice the hours that we charge the client for on some projects if we think it the job is worth the extra effort and the client is strapped for cash. What really affected the live music business here in Australia were the main live music venues (bars and clubs) replacing bands with poker machines about 25 years ago. The live music venues dried up and the few that were left offered little or no money to bands to play. Prior to the casino's taking over there was much more cash circulating at the working end of the music scene. Once the corporates took control it was about maximising the return per square foot of business floor space. Less income from playing meant going back to a day job for many. Others thought they could make a killing from opening up a recording studio! Yeah well... |
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Post by gouge on May 30, 2016 5:43:59 GMT -6
if 2500 per day isn't enough to make you financially viable then there is something seriously wrong with the business model.
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Post by jeromemason on May 30, 2016 8:56:11 GMT -6
I think the future is in banking, insurance or hedge funds. Maybe real estate. You're onto something...... The first place I learned how to day trade was slow days in the studio. The guy that owned it was at one point a millionaire that was with Enron (yes, he got out and never did anything wacky) and he would basically take 10k and show me how to bull and bear it into 20k by close of business. His bills including the studio were about 30k a month, so he'd basically take about 2 days and shuffle that money around, all purely off speculation or the news. Never had any inside sources, never any hotlines or tipsters, he just went off the ticks. That's how we kept it open until 2010, by day trading, going long and short on stocks.... To this day, if I want to go on a vacation or something, as long as I've got $3k-$4k in capital and a few free trades from the broker I can make enough to pay for the trip and have a few extra daiquiris. My wife is also an Insurance Agent for State Farm  |
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Post by Johnkenn on May 30, 2016 9:01:01 GMT -6
I think the future is in banking, insurance or hedge funds. Maybe real estate. Mammmaaaa don't let you babies grow up to be musicians |
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Post by Ward on May 30, 2016 9:27:00 GMT -6
Every musician with a macbook pro or similar PC is suddenly operating a studio these days and giving someone an album for nothing. Only about 5% of artists seem to even understand the value of good work anymore, so that may have contributed to the demise of the inner city studio as well.
I have a couple of friends doing very well in Hollywood with inner city studios but the appeal is the individuals, not the location or establishment.
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Post by swurveman on May 30, 2016 10:23:36 GMT -6
Every musician with a macbook pro or similar PC is suddenly operating a studio these days and giving someone an album for nothing. .....and how many of them could even come close to half the way to the fidelity of this simple song? |
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Post by Johnkenn on May 30, 2016 10:48:31 GMT -6
Every musician with a macbook pro or similar PC is suddenly operating a studio these days and giving someone an album for nothing. .....and how many of them could even come close to half the way to the fidelity of this simple song? Um...where are da beatz dog? |
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Post by swurveman on May 30, 2016 11:21:10 GMT -6
.....and how many of them could even come close to half the way to the fidelity of this simple song? Um...where are da beatz dog? I grew up listening to the non-country side of Nashville music- Fogelberg, Neil Young and all the other Putnam/Briggs/Quad artists. That's an amazing story. A great period in Nashville history . Here's a quote from Norbert Putnam about how profitable the studio business could be back in the day: "“When we established Quad in 1970, we paid $35,000 for the house and the lot in back,” Putnam recalls. “I remember David [Briggs] and I put together a budget with Elliot [Mazer]. I think we had a little over $100,000 to $125,000 involved in the Quad Eight console, the tape machine, all the mics, the piano — the entire ball of wax. By 1972 or '73, the studio was grossing $400,000 to $500,000 a year. So we paid back everything we had borrowed literally the first year. It was all profit after that. That's a good small business. " |
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Post by Bob Olhsson on May 30, 2016 12:40:14 GMT -6
In the mid '70s there was a glitch in the tax laws that allowed rich people to take a 100% tax credit for building a studio if they wrote it off as part of investing in an album. When that law went away after a few years, most studios found themselves in competition with their former chief engineer who had paid pennies on the dollar for one of these tax shelter studios. That was really the end of the studio business as we'd known it other than as a rich man's hobby.
That same loophole is how Stephen Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas got their first features financed outside a Hollywood establishment that wouldn't have given them the time of day.
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Post by rowmat on May 30, 2016 13:16:09 GMT -6
A friend of mine who has been playing live music for almost 30 years says the average band payment for a live gig was $100 per band member 25 year ago.
Today the average payment is still $100 per band member.
In that time, at many of the same music venues he still occasionally plays at, a beer has gone from $1 to $7 and a meal at the bar has gone from $8 to $30.
Go figure?
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Post by Bob Olhsson on May 30, 2016 13:24:25 GMT -6
It was that 45 years ago too! Steady decline since the Beatles made being a musician fashionable. I'm not a musician but we recording engineers are joined at the hip to musicians when it comes to wages.
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Post by kilroyrock on May 31, 2016 7:35:27 GMT -6
I think the future is in banking, insurance or hedge funds. Maybe real estate.
So what you're telling me is that selling hot air is where the real money is (I think you're right). Real estate is such an expensive game.
According to the big nerds that short markets betting on failure or growth.. they're investing their money in.. wait for it...
water.
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