Payment/fees/rates

[RobPG]

Hey all, I have a little situation, of which I could use others opinions on.

I recently finished helping with a friends band, producing, engineering and mixing their demo, I'm really not sure how much money I should ask for though. I don't want to rip them off, but I have spent a lot of my own time helping them, I would like to give them mates rates though

It would be the first time I have asked for payment for my services, but I have done mixes and helped record an EP for them before, for free.

I'm not to sure what my services, skills and time are worth to be honest. Does use of all my (modest) recording equipment count towards anything?

Any one else been in this situation? What did you do to make sure you got what you were worth?

The proof is in the pudding so they say,http://www.myspace.com/cellarghostiow

The thing I'm not happy with is the vocals, we didn't have any time to record them and the singer is very much a hard ego, very difficult to pin down for any prep and preproduction, but he has the nerve to ask about auto tune when they are being mastered.

Thanks for listening, I look forward to your replies.

[TOM@METRO]

If you didn't talk about this in advance, my advice would be to ask them what they feel your services are worth to them.

[Gravyblue]

Dude!
You've got to ascertain how much they can afford, and given that they've made the recording without an arrangement, what their expectations are.(I'm sure you want to keep them as mates!)
Find out what it would have cost if they'd gone to your local demo studio, to give yourself an idea of what they would have spent without you.
If this is your first fully fledged project, you'll be hard pushed to justify a proper engineer rate, and if the band are unsigned its normal to arrange a set fee as opposed to day rates, although when I quote I usually guesstimate an amount of time required and use that with my day rate to set a price. For unsigned bands I normally quote mixing based on a day a mix, regardless of the time spent.
Roadrunner pay a maximum of $350 per day for engineers for example.
If you're a name, you can ask what you want.
Another option thats kind on the band, but not normally very fruitful is points.
The idea being that if the band sell any cds, you get a percentage. This is quite hard to regulate, rarely accurate, but attractive if hard cash is short.
Hope this helps!

[DrFord]

This is tough because you didn't establish anything beforehand. They could say... oh man we don't have any money sorry bud!

Do yourself a favor and establish what YOU feel you are worth. Find out what YOUR budgetary needs are to spend that amount of time doing their project and quote people before hand rates they can afford. Yes, you should always ask "what kind of budget are you working with on this project?" and when they say "I don't really have a budget for this project... just not too much" quote them a breakdown of the time and services offered. If I quote $1000 per song, (example only) I always present a proposal that shows how many hours of production, rates for session players, cost of assistant engineer, cost of mix room for mixdowns, cost of production space, gear rentals, cd's... anything I can to make them understand you are just charging them fees off the top of your head. Look professional, be professional.

Also, two things to keep in mind. 1, the rule of odds. People go for odd numbers over even numbers. Scientifically proven that people buy because they associate odd numbers with prime numbers, and the mind thinks it must be the lowest price I can get. People will bargain with even numbers. If you don't believe me look it up or try for yourself. 2. Pricing yourself at "round" numbers sells less than exact numbers. By that I mean, $999 will sell less times than $1100.

Sounds crazy, but I land production proposals more often with exact numbers than rounded numbers.

HTH

[Kryst]

Originally Posted by Gravyblue

Another option thats kind on the band, but not normally very fruitful is points.
The idea being that if the band sell any cds, you get a percentage. This is quite hard to regulate, rarely accurate, but attractive if hard cash is short.
Hope this helps!

I go by this method. My work has gotten an R&B singer up to a point he's happy, traveling with a live band and such. Not a huge band, so nothing major... Though the guy's been pretty honest with me for ages and says often he's buying me a new Mac ASAP.

I also currently have a black metal artist being eyed by a label thanks to a demo I helped on. Of course, I haven't seen ANYTHING from him so I told him to take a hike and go pay some larger recording studio.

Originally Posted by DrFord

This is tough because you didn't establish anything beforehand. They could say... oh man we don't have any money sorry bud!

Do yourself a favor and establish what YOU feel you are worth. Find out what YOUR budgetary needs are to spend that amount of time doing their project and quote people before hand rates they can afford. Yes, you should always ask "what kind of budget are you working with on this project?" and when they say "I don't really have a budget for this project... just not too much" quote them a breakdown of the time and services offered. If I quote $1000 per song, (example only) I always present a proposal that shows how many hours of production, rates for session players, cost of assistant engineer, cost of mix room for mixdowns, cost of production space, gear rentals, cd's... anything I can to make them understand you are just charging them fees off the top of your head. Look professional, be professional.

I agree with this. Back to the black metal artist, a main reason he was easy for me to toss away (other than no money seen... yet) was because he's stubborn, arrogant, and expected too much. He might get an album recorded/mixed/mastered in a month properly by an actual studio, but from a guy working for free? Even when I'd try to explain it all to him, he'd toss aside what I was saying due to his technological stupidity. I don't need to be bothered by unreasonable and cheap idiots.