DEMO FEES

[DannyCam]

I am now searching for tight bands to create pro demos of my tunes for pitching.
What am I looking at for $$$ to make this happen? Thoughts?

[hummingbird]

I don't have any resources for you but I would suggest that you get loads of feedback on your tunes before paying anyone to make demos for them. Know what your target market for the demos might be, make sure whoever you hire knows that genre in and out. I say this because I spent a few thousand getting songs demo'd back when I was just starting. Those songs were not commercial. And the person I hired wasn't proficient in the genres I intended to pitch my work to. Because I didn't know enough about the industry, I wasted a lot of hard earned money. I didn't even get a work for hire, even assuming anything was pitchable to film/tv. Of course, that's just my experience. Lesson learned.

[Kolstad]

Around 400$ per demo. Maybe around 25% more for a work-for-hire deal. Thats the budget Nashville std.

But thats just for demos you can pitch to the artist listings. You cannot pitch a demo, where you dont own the master, to a tv/film/ad agency listing. Even if you buy out the master, it is complicated, because you will have to make sure that the musicians are not union in the US, because if they are they can claim reuse fees ect (which tv/film) wont pay. And it’s kinda shady to ask for non union musicians, imo, because as songwriters we have interests in protecting musicians, not the opposite.

But sometimes there have been Taxi members who can give you a good offer, where the work is ready to pitch for film/tv, without any subtexts.

[ernstinen]

Not everyone has the talent to do this, but early on in my career I decided that since I play so many different instruments (and have played in so many bands) that in the long run, I'd invest in studio equipment and learn how to do demos myself.

If it's actually a BAND sound that you want, that's quite a pricey proposition. At least in L.A., I don't know many quality musicians that would bring all their gear to a studio (that you'd have to rent), set up, spend time on microphone placement, learn the song, and in the end tear down for $100 each. Maybe $200-$300. So that gets very expensive quickly.

With the advent of quality samples, for many styles I'll bet a quality demo studio could give you what you're looking for. But if you can get a fully produced demo for, say, $400/song, that's an amazing deal. I used to be a demo producer/arranger/musician for many, many years and low-balled my fees which I really regret. But in a big music town like L.A. or Nashville, you have to compete with so many other demo studios that you have to do what you have to do LOL!

But once again, if you have the ears, experience and talent, personally I'd invest in my own studio. Much less expensive in the long run!

My 2 cents,

Ern

[mojobone]

Used to be, you'd have a publisher who hires a staff of writers and pays to have demos recorded, so as to be pitched to artists, artist's management or record company A&R men. (before that, there were song pluggers, who'd show up with your sheet music and sit down at the piano) There are a couple three places where this still happens, but since the advent of home recording with computers and the general democratization of the technical side of our industry, (you could read that as the total destruction of the recording industry) it just ain't done anymore. Today management puts together a beats producer, a music producer or two, maybe a rapper, a top line writer and maybe the artist and a vocal coach and sends them to song camps where the writing and production happen pretty much simultaneously over the course of a week or two, which leaves you, the independent non-performing songwriter out in the cold.

Just for giggles, let's have a look at the economics of the demo situation; time is cut into three hour blocks for morning, after lunch and evening with three to five songs cut during each block. Per musician that's $100/hr with a three hour minimum. Sessions do occasionally run over but not very danged often, cuz it comes out of the session leader's pocket in some cases. So you're looking at four or five musicians a leader/contractor and then there's the singer who gets $100-$300 an hour, plus there's the studio time and at least one engineer. Before the contractor and engineer get paid that's a minimum of $500 per hour, times nine hours divided by a maximum of between nine and fifteen songs. It all adds up PDQ and at maximum efficiency $500 X 9 songs = $4500 for a per-song cost of $300, but remember we still haven't paid the studio, the contractor and the engineer for that nine-plus hour day, and I didn't include those numbers because they can vary widely, but bear in mind, this is the demo rate, so you don't own the master and work for hire agreements are not provided.

There's still enough of this kind of work to support a cadre of world class musicians in Nashville and a few other places like LA, NYC and Chicago where there's lots of work in regional advertising.




So, given the points laid out above, I'd say $400 a song is on the low side and $600 a more reasonable target, but depending on location and other factors your mileage will vary. Ernst and I made the same sound decision and I opened a recording studio which has fallen on hard times cuz today everybody thinks they can make a hit record on their cell phone. It turns out you can, but I could write you a very thick book on all the reasons why you shouldn't.



If you found all that information to be stunningly unhelpful, bear with me, cuz there's an alternative; you can join Taxi, go to the Road Rally, meet some really plugged in music producers, develop partnerships and PROFIT.

[ernstinen]

Ernst and I made the same sound decision and I opened a recording studio which has fallen on hard times cuz today everybody thinks they can make a hit record on their cell phone. It turns out you can, but I could write you a very thick book on all the reasons why you shouldn't.

True, Mojo. I used to make a decent living being a demo producer... But these days, everyone with a laptop thinks they can do everything themselves. Some can, but most can't. It's just that they don't know it. It takes many, many years of experience to really know what you're doing.

My latest example: Since my demo studio work dropped dramatically, I decided to turn mine into a mastering studio. I spent $1000's on advertising, and got --- NOTHING. Maybe 2 clients. Why? Because these same amateurs think that they can MASTER their own material! Really. I couldn't believe it, but it was a waste of time and money. Another "D'Oh!" moment.

But since you never lose your experience as a composer, and (rarely) sell your expensive gear, I'm back to square one. Writing and producing my own music.

My 2 cents,

Ern

[Paulie]

Mojo covered a ton of great stuff, I humbly offer some more.

What genre are you creating? Rock trio is one thing, funk/soul with many different instruments is another. A "tight" band is tight because they play together often, or they are all top notch musicians which means they will expect local union scale for sessions. This also assumes that you have charts for the band members to read in order to optimize your time, otherwise triple the amount of studio time you need to get the band to feel good enough with the music to come off as "tight." Quality studio musicians can do this on the first take, often the second or third take are used to finesse stuff. But, this is a very expensive proposition.

Depending on the genre you could also work with some college musicians on the cheap if they are good enough. If you are in LA, there should be plenty of students at USC, UCLA, Santa Barbara, etc. You could hit a club and find a group in the genre and then approach them about doing some work for hire, being very clear up front that the gig would pay for rehearsal time and recording, and they would all need to sign work for hire paperwork. The cost would be negotiable, If you need them for five hours you could offer up $250 per player. Just a starting point... but it might work.

Good luck!