Pro Sound Web: One of the things that musicians, engineers and producers sometimes have trouble with is how much to charge for their time. Here’s an excerpt from The Music Producer’s Handbook that covers the pros and cons of all the alternatives. It’s aimed at producers, but just as applicable to engineers, musicians, and any professional trying to decide how much to charge.
2 comments:
This article was very informative and had good insight for each payment option. This ties very well to our lecture the other day in Meta Skills about choosing gigs and getting paid. Although the "get paid on spec" option may work for signing a label, I don't believe this is as relevant for theatre. It is possible you could work for a director or a company for free who later becomes famous and calls upon you to work for them, but you would probably have to work on many projects before something like this happens. I think while you're in college this is acceptable but once you're off in the real world it probably isn't very realistic. It sounds like an hour fee may be the best option because it will keep the performers on task and realistic. The article seems to allude to the fact however that this may be too expensive for most bands and you may not get the gig. As with theatre, the choice has to be made between supporting yourself and losing the gig. As Joe suggested, looking at how much time the gig would take and if you would make enough to support yourself financially over that period could be really helpful here as well.
Like Michael said, this article does a very good job explaining each payment method. I think this is particularly interesting because in the first mini I took a sound recording class and a small bit of it was spent learning how recording engineers make their money. What we learned was that most engineers will charge by the hour so they do not get used by the artists for more than they charged. In other words, the more work you put into the recording process the more money you get paid. Although the recordings we made were all free to the performers I remember my professor telling us who we would make a lot of money off of and who would leave us poor. It was always the organized performers that knew exactly what they wanted out of the session that were the "cheapest" to record.
Post a Comment