Funding Your Studio Project

Once upon a time, a young artist walks into the door of The NatCave Studio, partnered with the two other members of his group. Anxious to grace me with the work they have already conducted, he whips out a cassette tape (by the way, the year was 2007) and offered me the pleasure of listening to a sample of some songs they had already recorded. After dusting off my cassette player, I played the tape and mentally repainted the picture these young talented artists had created on the cassette tape. I invited them to use the studio for one hour at no charge just so they could get a taste of what the studio could do for them. A few minutes into the session is all it took to blown them away with the difference working inside The NatCave made. In less than an hour’s time, we had rerecorded their song and they were ecstatic to experience such a drastic improvement. All I kept thinking in my head was “Jez… I haven’t even begun mixing yet!” I won’t toot my own horn too loud, in fact I knew exactly what was to come from them remaking the song. A home stereo with a karaoke mode is no match for The NatCave Studio.
Completely gracious for the opportunity to use the studio, their excitement soon dissolved into stunned frowns. It is that magical moment where we cross over from music to business, hoping to cross back over to music… the studio rate. This is what separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, the players form the haters and the ambitious from the quitters. They looked at each other, then looked back at me, thanked me for my time and uttered a painful phrase “We have no money.”
No money? Is it really possible to have… no money? I was so confused. I tried to imagine myself going to the grocery store, spending an hour filling up my cart, then pulling up to the cashier saying “I have no money”. For those reading this that have not been to The NatCave before, it wasn’t about paying for the session they just had, I actually encourage people to come in and record with us at no charge before making any financial decisions, but to hear afterwords “We have no money” just felt incredibly awkward.
First of all, having no money is impossible. I asked them how they got to the studio, low and behold, they weren’t even from the same state, they traveled from New Jersey into Brooklyn, NY just for us to meet. This required each of them to take the NJ Path train into Manhattan and transfer to the MTA to get to Brooklyn, How do you have no money? Not one of them showed up without clothes on their back, no money? For a second I actually felt insulted but then an idea popped into my head, maybe they don’t know what I know. What I know is everyone has money, the trick is deciding where that money goes.
To make a long story short, I told the leader of the group that if you truly feel you have no money then your next step is to review your resources. For young artists, there really is no better resource than their parents so I suggested they start there. Later that evening would you believe I got a call from the leader’s mother? She called to thank me for allowing them to come in and use the studio without charging them. After a short pleasant conversation, she stated that she now had a situation on her hands because her son now could not think about anything other than coming back to the studio. It turns out she was looking to enroll him in a program to keep him off the street and out of trouble but simply could not decide what he could seriously benefit from. The happy conclusion to this story is the mother pre-paid for 50 hours to allow her son and his friends to work inside the studio. The group soon released a 20-track mix CD, recording, mixing, mastering, artwork and duplication all worked on inside The NatCave Studio. They ordered 200 copies of their CD and between the three of them sold every copy within one week of receiving the CDs. My last conversation with the mother was a warm heart-felt thank you because her son had learned how to take his talent and churn it into a successful entrepreneurial experience. They made every dollar they invested into studio time back via CD sales.
One of my greatest joys running the studio is to see artists grow. The transition from potential to kinetic energy has become a guilty pleasure of mine and I love helping artists make that leap to jumpstart their careers. I have seen more than enough success stories to encourage every artist I encounter to push themselves to the next level. Unfortunately, I am not always that lucky, I can also recall people (not artists, people) booking studio time merely because the ad said “Free.” Instead of working on a music career, they see an opportunity to play out a fantasy and why bother paying for it when I can get it free at this guy’s studio. Talking to them about the studio rate is like reading the morning news to a dead person, I get more out of than they ever will, but the sad thing is I am not doing it for me.
This article is not for the general public, this article is for artists. Artists… don’t ever tell yourself you have no money. It is an immature lie that will ultimately push you further away from your goals. Financial resources are all around you. Family members, friends, banks, jobs, etc. I even give free studio hours to artists just for referring the studio to other artists. In fact, I have an artist that does nothing but refer other artists to the studio. To this day, he has worked on 30+ tracks at The NatCave Studio and has yet to pay for one of them, simply because he keeps our business cards handy while he is networking. While it is true, he has never purchased studio time with money, he has earned it by exercising his natural born networking and marketing skills. I have been happy to accommodate him as a thank you for his generous efforts.
Most of the time, the feeling of having “no money” comes from a psychological condition that prioritizes certain purchases you make as automatic such as rent, car payments, cell phone bill, etc. Many of these automatic payments are legitimate but if you look carefully, you will always find a few that sneak in there and rob you of the opportunity to work in the studio. In other words, the money is there but you can’t acknowledge it because somehow you know at the end of the month it will disappear regardless. Currently, our studio rate is $50 an hour. For veterans in the music business the rate seems like a hell of a discount. Even some new comers who do their homework and shop around see the benefit as other studios of equal quality post rates of double or more.
What I tell an artist that sees the $50 an hour rate as lot of money is try not to think of it in hours, think of it in minutes. Truthfully, a studio hour consists of a variety of tasks, procedures and instructions that the artist or engineer carries out during each hour. Not one of these tasks takes an hour, usually it is a matter of minutes and if your working with a professional a matter of seconds. $50 an hour actually turns out to about 83 cents a minute. That’s right, 83 cents. If you really want to hear something crazy, $50 an hour works out to about 1 cent a second. Granted, most people do not look at their finances like that but just image the next time you come across a penny, do not say you have “no money”. Say you are “one second” closer to booking studio time at The NatCave Studio.