Hey guys,

So, if we haven't agreed in advance that this will be part of the session (i.e the tracks are getting mixed elsewhere and they want the stems), I usually charge the minimum charge (£35) to bounce down a project and send the individual stems to the client (if I'm having to call it up months after the fact). If they suddenly decided they wanted stems at the end of the session, they'd be paying for the time that took anyway, so...

Today we've had a client ask for individual stems to be made available to them for a project that was recorded, mixed and delivered around a month ago. A 4 song EP. Now, this may have been something I could have done for free but I am extremely busy with 4 big projects at the moment as well as the usual small jobs. The list of things to send here and there and upload to dropbox etc is never ending as it is.

It's not only because I'm busy - the client's band actually got well over 7 days of studio time for the price of less than 2 days (yes, you heard right, but I liked them and wanted to help, regardless of their very small budget). This wasn't and still isn't a problem but when I get a very abrupt message asking simply for the files and 'is that okay?', I kind of feel a bit like people are taking advantage.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the client is extremely unhappy about having to pay the £35 and actually feels like I'm 'ripping him off', telling me exactly what I need to do to bounce them and that it - ''should only take 1 hour and 15 minutes at the most, and that's just waiting time''.

I'm sorry but I'm just taken aback that people think we should do this for nothing.

If I do it during studio hours, nothing else can be done during that time. I suppose I should come in after hours and find something interesting to do while checking on the bounces, time that you can divide by 4 for finishing one song and moving onto the next. And what about the other clients waiting for their tracks on dropbox or in their email? And it's just a DVD or two, right? They don't cost anything.

I would just like a bit of confirmation that I'm not the 'cowboy' I'm being made out to be here and it's a pretty standard thing. I've always said if I was to win the lottery you'd still see me in the studio recording local bands. It's never been about money for me but a business IS a business and life is life. If I did all these little jobs for free, there wouldn't be a studio here for any bands to record in. Pretty simples!

Anyway, unusually grumbly post over!

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http://www.loverslanestudios.co.uk

Nope, not unreasonable for the reasons you've pointed out — its tying up your resources and removing your ability to generate income. So there's a cost attached.

On the other hand, you want people to go out recommending you, and you may want to work with these guys again if the music is worthwhile? FWIW, I suspect they're not *trying* to be stoopid — it does seem like a nothing job if you do this stuff at home and have all the time in the world, and a day job to fund your hobby — and they might reasonably assume that this sort of thing was done as standard, as part of a project archival process (not a bad idea...), in which case it really would be a drag-and-drop job.

In your shoes? I might go back to them, explain what you've explained here and charge them half rate this time; and explain how it would work in future. And in future, I might think about having a standard rate card for all this sort of stuff, so that you can be seen to offer discounts when you agree costs/time upfront, rather than adding things on at the end. That way nothing really changes from a bottom line point of view, but you get happier punters...

Charge him full whack. You gave him some free studio time (big no-no, IMO) so what's he got to complain about? He needs those stems. He'll pay for them.

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I'm All Ears.

I don't think you did anything wrong by cutting the guy a deal for his original studio time, but I have to wonder if, in this case, he has developed the impression that your time isn't worth much because of it.

Regarding the stems, there's nothing wrong with charging for your time. If you feel like doing the guy a favor and doing for free, it also doesn't seem unreasonable that you do it on your own time frame and not his.

Cheers dudes!

Yeah, I have explained all of this. Hopefully he understands it a bit better but I'm afraid I can't offer any more discounts. Call me a badass but I really am up to the eyeballs with favours.

It's amazing how many times I get 'remember that guide track we did? can you send that please?' and 'I'm no good with computers, if you could just email me it that would be great'. Before you know it you've spent two hours rough mixing old tracks and waiting for the stupid internet to ''Speed Up!!!''

Tricky business. I've never fallen out with a client so I'm not about to start now but when I get accused of ripping someone off when I've given DAYS of extra studio time away, its a bit hard to swallow!!!

I know I should value my time more but if I didn't help out, how are these young bands going to record anything??

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http://www.loverslanestudios.co.uk

I don't think not valuing your own time enough is the problem. You should definitely help out young bands and you should definitely work with whatever the budget is that people have to offer (within reason), especially when you really dig the music. It can still be a business and have projects that you're personally invested in.

I think the real trick is making sure the client values your time, especially when you're doing them a favor, and I don't know if there is a catch-all solution to this...

There isn't, is there? Bar telling them ''now I'm doing you a fovour here you realize... this would usually cost £xx'' Which kind of sours the mood.

I think its just different strokes for different folks. Not long ago I finished a single song for a client, it cost them 3 times what this band payed for a 4 track EP and I still got a bottle of wine and a thank you card at the end. I'll stick to my ways and accept that every now and then they may not be appreciated by everyone

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http://www.loverslanestudios.co.uk

That's just it though...This happens time and time again. If you do people favours and give them time for nothing then eventually, however politely (or not) they do it, they get used to your time being free. They start asking you to 'just do this' and 'just do that'. And the fact is that if you love the band and you want to help them, you don't mind getting them in for a little overdub because it'll make the project better etc etc. But when they ask you to spend hours printing stems you don't really feel the love, because it's not moving the project forward and it's insanely boring. They should pay for it, unless you had an agreement with them from the beginning that stems would be provided.

J

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www.jackruston.com

Quote Persuazion:

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I know I should value my time more but if I didn't help out, how are these young bands going to record anything??

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It isn't their right.

When I was younger, a recording session in a real studio was out of reach for many. Amateurs made do with 4 track cassettes and MIDI. You run a studio. As you say, it is a business. No-one intentionally runs a studio at a loss except Dave Stewart.

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I'm All Ears.

Make a reasonable charge for your time (and the price you've mentioned sounds perfectly reasonable to me) and expect them to pay it - and stick to your guns. Either way, if they complain about it or refuse then you're not going to be working with them again, so nothing lost. If anyone is going to whinge about such a relatively small charge then they have no respect for you anyway - you're better out of it.

I never take liberties with my fees, and everyone I work with seems to appreciate and respect this - for these people I put in a lot of free time, which I am happy to do for the sake of helping a project along.

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Thanks all. Good to know I'm in good company

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http://www.loverslanestudios.co.uk

Hang on - they're putting up a fight over £35?!

I'd be willing to bet the last time they drove to a gig, it would have cost them £35 on petrol. My band spend at least that on a couple of pints each at a gig, given that there's six of us. Hell, a moderately-dedicated boozehound could spend that himself in an evening. Or it's an average-priced meal for two.

If they're not prepared to pay you such a small amount, how much do they really value their music...?

I often discount my fees for people who I like and who I know cannot afford much. That said, I have noticed that the ones who pay full price turn out to be the ones who are most appreciative.

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Daniel Davis
Edinburgh Recording Studio Windmill Sound

Quote Persuazion:

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Thanks all. Good to know I'm in good company

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er, not really - you are being given bogus advice!

If, with the word 'stems' you actually mean the individual tracks and not stem-mixes, then those tracks are the band's property. That is a subject we have thrashed to death here quite a few times and it applies in Scotland, justr as much as it does elsewhere. Just 'wich' them over to a DVD and give 'em their stuff. You are using Logic, so it is just a matter of dumping all the WAVs or AIFs into one zip file.

If, on the other hand, the stems really are stem mixes and not the tracks, £35 really is a bit low!

I would just give them their WAVs and let them get on with it!

^good point. I understood stems meaning exactly that. If they want the multi track, then it's much easier to export these from Logic these days. Offline, takes less than a few minutes to render. I would, however, disable any DSP on indiv. tracks if they are to mix them elsewhere. Either way, they must pay you for your time.

However, if it is the stems, there has been no bogus advice as far as I can tell. It is their property, but they still need to pay for access. No question.

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I'm All Ears.

Just to comment on the Bladder's post - I asked exactly this question in reverse a while back - i.e. I was paying for studio time and wanted to know if was reasonable of me to ask for the stems (or indeed the project) as part of that (even after the session had finished). The advice I got was that those stems are mine - I paid for them - exactly as Bladder just said. Project probably not.

The difference is I guess that I was paying full whack - does that mean the producer thinks our stuff is crap?! He said he liked it

Point I'm trying to make is that it isn't necessarily clear what you can reasonably expect for your money when you go into a studio, so I'm sure that the band perceive that the job is pretty trifling.

L

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please make it all simple.

Is there a terminology problem here?

To me, 'stems' mean a mix of subgrouped channels -- eg, a stereo drum kit stem, or backing vocals stem.

A stem, to me, implies a creative element has been introduced as an elemental part of the overall 'mix'.

I would expect to charge for my artistic experitise in creating stems, in addition to charging for the time involved in delivering them.

Raw tracks, on the other hand, would only be charged for the time involved in delivering them subsequent and separate to the original project session.

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Even the raw tracks have been extensively edited. Drum editing in particular took days so even unprocessed, individual tracks still have a lot of work associated with them, artistic expertise even?

Our minimum charge of £35 covers us for a lot of things. A voice over recording for example, the voice over artist is in and out within the hour. I think £35 for a professionally produced voice over isn't bad, but we're happy with that and the client is too.

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http://www.loverslanestudios.co.uk

1. The raw tracks, unedited, are their property. It would appear obvious to me that you edited and stem-mixed out of the goodness of your heart. I would not give them those under any circumstances whatsoever, if what you say is true. Had they paid for that work to be done, that would be a different matter!

2. A customer that haggles over £35 transfer fee is not really a customer at all.

3. Time to think about charging more and firing those customers that don't pay properly and penny-pinch.

Yeah we're in a slightly grey area in terms of terminology. If they just want their multitracks then fine. We wouldn't be having this conversation because Grant would have just told them to come over with a hard drive and dumped the lot across. Only reason to refuse those is if you haven't yet been paid.

To me, stems means isolated prints from a mixed track. Sometimes you get asked for bounces of say drums, bass, vocals etc, but some clients want every element of the mix bounced separately, with fx etc so that they can trigger them in a live scenario for example. Typically I get asked for those from electronic music producers. It's time consuming. These are not raw multitrack files. They are individual elements of a mix, bounced in place.

J

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www.jackruston.com

Exactly. And quite important elements that I know they specifically wanted were on bits of outboard anyway so it's just not as simple as they think. And original files? Don't exist. I don't have time to keep originals of every project I work on or ever have worked on, as well as multiple bounces of various editing stages etc, etc.

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http://www.loverslanestudios.co.uk

I make them take a backup of their project after the initial tracking sessions are done.

J

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www.jackruston.com

Quote Jack Ruston:

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I make them take a backup of their project after the initial tracking sessions are done.

J

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I have similar procedures for most big projects, but didn't for these guys. They only wanted them for their own remixes etc. Probably just a bit of an afterthought on their part. Part of the problem really!

And as for stems. Yeah, I see stems as mixed down parts of a whole mix. The lines are a but blurred, though as really, I'd end up going into the project and making sure x and y sounded okay and I would have to print outboard bits and bobs too for the project so make sense.

Because I'm a nice guy - I'm not blindly going to assume everything's okay with the project and ready to bounce when it's all routed out to a 24ch desk, with logic's faders all over the shop and just hit 'export all as yada yada' and hope for the best. You know you're bound to do some checking and fixing up for them before you do that.

Anyway, I think I've ranted enough.

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http://www.loverslanestudios.co.uk

Quote Persuazion:

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Exactly. And quite important elements that I know they specifically wanted were on bits of outboard anyway so it's just not as simple as they think. And original files? Don't exist. I don't have time to keep originals of every project I work on or ever have worked on, as well as multiple bounces of various editing stages etc, etc.

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This is also kind of the problem. By devaluing your time and effort with a charity band, you may have cut some corners on your usual workflow and archiving. Precisely because you haven't got the time. Anyway, good luck.

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I'm All Ears.

Quote The Red Bladder:

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1. The raw tracks, unedited, are their property. It would appear obvious to me that you edited and stem-mixed out of the goodness of your heart. I would not give them those under any circumstances whatsoever, if what you say is true. Had they paid for that work to be done, that would be a different matter!

2. A customer that haggles over £35 transfer fee is not really a customer at all.

3. Time to think about charging more and firing those customers that don't pay properly and penny-pinch.

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I would say, the RAW tracks are their property, yes. But access to them is paid for. I've got money in the bank. It's my money. But I pay the bank to hold that money and make it accessible. The rest of your comment is spot on.

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I'm All Ears.

Thanks all.

Absolutely no word from the band since I last messaged them so, the ball is in their court.

Thanks for all the comments!

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http://www.loverslanestudios.co.uk

the problem seems to be that you are a nice guy. I don't get a sense that you really believe your time is worth much in terms of fair compensation, so if you don't believe it why should those who get the "nice guy deal"? If those guys ever get some proper budget they most likely won't come back to you - they will assume the final product will be better if they pay more somewhere else. You are the favour guy who will do it real cheap. Sorry to be harsh but this seems to be the way of the world.

e