How to start a recording studio
Most people attempting to start a recording studio are fueled by passion, and honestly want to help others make better music. So, they start off by buying some studio gear, fiddling around with it, and making some recordings with a friend or two.
That’s why you see most recording studios fail before year five.
Recording studios are a highly competitive business space requiring large upfront overhead costs just to open the doors. And, as the ecosystem enabling artists to make money off of their recorded work has shrunk over the decades, so have the budgets for making recordings. These factors have combined to make starting any type of recording studio business a risky proposition.
Passion for the work simply isn’t enough on its own. Success in the recording studio industry really comes down to showing consistent and proven quality of work over a very long period of time, combined with marketing skill. Not a huge collection of expensive gear, or working with big name artists or labels.
The most important question to answer when starting any business is:
“How do I develop a consistent stream of well-paying clients?”
If you can answer this question successfully, you have a successful business. If you can’t, you’re out of business.
In this article, we’ll go over the first steps anyone opening a recording studio business should consider, before buying any gear, advertising, or working with your first client.
1. Focus your business model
Your business model defines the options you have for making your business sustainable. The old models of simply recording bands for a fee are rapidly becoming less viable. You’ll need to get creative in finding other potential revenue streams, in addition to doing band recordings as a service.
Here’s some ideas. You don’t have to do all of these. Pick one or two, or come up with your own.
Concert events held in-studio
Album release listening parties
Educational group recording workshops
One-on-one lessons or coaching
Video work and music videos shot in-studio
In-studio radio/podcast recorded interviews
Pooling resources with other engineers in a shared-space model
By the end of step 1, you’ll want to have a short list written down of potential products and services that you’d enjoy offering to your ideal client on an ongoing basis.
2. Define your ideal client
What’s the specific audience your business will serve, and what’s the specific outcome you will provide for that audience?
Try to answer this question using this format:
“I help [specific audience] achieve [specific outcome].”
Examples:
“I help local punk bands with limited experience make their very first professionally recorded albums.”
“I help established professional musicians make radio-ready tracks that are internationally competitive.”
“I help classical and acoustic musicians record their work in a pristine acoustic setting.”
“I help DIY artists write and record their first singles inside of a location studio with a beautiful setting in nature.”
The closer you can dial in the specifics of your ideal customer, the more effective your efforts in marketing to that customer can be. Trying to appeal to everyone means you appeal to no one.
3. Consider your market
Once you’ve come up with some potential products/services to offer and have defined your ideal client, consider the market. This doesn’t need to be a detailed professional economic analysis, or the perfect Internet search. At this stage, we’re simply looking for large groups of potential customers with a rough estimate.
Write down your specific audience from Step 2: “I help ____ achieve ____.” Estimate how many of those people exist globally, and in your local/regional area.
A simple Internet search works great for this. Here’s some examples.
“How many independent artists are there in the US?”
“Number of musicians in [my local area]”
“How many new bands in [specific genre] are formed each year in the US?”
You can multiply any of your US-specific results by three to get a rough estimate of the global results for that same query.
For an estimate of your local market for recording local bands, find the number of monthly local band bookings at a few of the music venues in your area, then multiply by 12.
This research will help form your global audience estimate. Write this number down.
4. Do the math
Now, take your global audience estimate and do the math on your offers. Ask:
“If just 0.1% of my global audience estimate paid $200 for one recording session or product, what would my potential earnings be?”
Here’s the formula to answer that question:
____ (global audience estimate) X 0.001 X $200 = $_____ (potential earnings)
Next, try out some different scenarios using this formula:
0.5% for a $150 educational workshop
1% for a $500 one-time songwriting session
0.1% for a $3500 album recording week with a full band
Once you’ve completed Steps 1-4, you should have a much clearer sense of the audience your business will serve, what products and services it makes sense to offer that audience, and whether it’s likely that a viable amount of revenue can be generated from those offers at both a local and a global scale.
Don’t be afraid to go global on at least one of your offers. Even if your aim is to offer recording services primarily to bands in your local area, it might make sense to also have at least one additional offering that could be sold to a larger global audience, using the Internet.
5. Attain necessary education and training
In the recording studio space, the quality of your work is going to be extremely important. Doing mediocre work isn’t going to help you stand out from the massive crowd of other audio engineers who are all trying to do the same thing. There is a lot of competition in recording studios, and your competitors will all likely have much more experience and better gear than you, especially when you’re just starting out.
So, it’s time to take an honest look at your current level of experience, and see if there’s any supplementary education you might need to take on to help make the quality of your audio work truly world-class.
Remember: credentials will reassure people who have already found you, but they won’t draw new customers to you on their own. So, you might not need to enroll in an expensive recording degree program when you’re just getting started. A degree won’t automatically bring well-paying clients to your studio. Only skills and a proven reputation will do that.
Here’s some alternative ideas for attaining your initial training in pro audio, at a more affordable price than a recording degree program.
Video coursework from engineers/producers you admire
In-person mentorship/internships with local engineers in your area
A recording bootcamp
Taking just a few recording courses at your local community college
Amazing Audio at Home - it’s a fantastic, affordable video course made to help you get started with audio at the professional level
6. Plan your marketing
You’ve run the numbers, come up with some compelling offers and pricing, confirmed you’re offering your products/services to a specific group of people who actually need them, and are confident in your ability to offer a world-class level of service to your clients.
Now, it’s time to get visible, and start marketing to the ideal client we defined back in Step 2.
This can take many forms, from social media to YouTube to websites/email lists (my personal favorite). I’d pick just one or two marketing channels to start with, making sure to start with at least one owned channel from the very beginning.
An owned channel means you’re marketing to an audience whose direct contact information you own in the form of an email address and/or phone number. A website with a simple email list signup plus an Instagram account are two common channels to start out with in the recording industry. But, it really depends on where your specific ideal client likes to hang out.
Random marketing leads to random results. Bring consistency to your marketing efforts by using a content calendar to plan your regular, seasonal, and special promotions well in advance of posting them. Notion is my preferred free tool for content calendars and marketing organization, but even a simple Google Sheet will work for this. Understand that by choosing to start a business, you are also committing to marketing that business on a regular and ongoing basis, for as long as your doors stay open.
Whichever tools you choose to plan your marketing efforts, try to get at least 2 months of your marketing content written, outlined, and 100% completed before you make your very first post. This will take some of the creative pressure off, and make your marketing much easier to keep up with over the long term.
You don’t need to start out by posting 7 days a week. Posting once a month to your email list, combined with once a week posting to just one social media channel is fine at the beginning.
Here’s some of the biggest mistakes I see from those starting out their marketing journey:
Focusing on rented channels exclusively, with no owned channel presence at all. Building a business solely on social media is building on rented land: the algorithm can change at any time, reducing your visibility and affecting your revenue. Do social media as it makes sense, but also make sure you’re building a marketing list of direct contacts at the same time.
Posting too much too soon, and then burning out. Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint: the most important thing at the beginning is to make sure your marketing efforts are sustainable for you over the long term. That may mean posting less.
Only posting randomly, whenever you feel like it. Your marketing efforts should be both planned and predictable. Random, off-the-cuff posting is great, especially for your social media channels. But, random posting should be done in addition to a formal marketing plan, not in place of it.
Posting off-brand content. Absolutely be sure to make your marketing content genuine, human, and personal at all times. But, random pictures of your cat made to your recording studio channels too often will confuse your audience as to what you have to offer them. Save the personal posting for your personal accounts.
My series Release Time covers marketing efforts as applied to bands and creative groups, but many of the lessons can be applied to recording studios as well.
7. Get your first client
After all of this planning, you’re finally ready to get started building your recording studio business in an informed, intentional manner, with your eyes wide open and the best chance for success!
Don’t wait for the perfect plan to start executing. The best time to start your business was five years ago, the next best time is today.
Here’s how to get your very first client. Write down a list of ten friends and colleagues who might know your ideal client, and send them this simple message, customized with your details:
“Hey [name], I’m starting to offer [your expertise] sessions for [your audience]. If you know anyone who might benefit, I’d appreciate you passing along my info.”
No big asks for money, coffee meetings, or any in-person time, just a simple and short request to think of you. There’s no need to over-customize this message. Keep it simple and short.
If you message ten people, expect at least five to not respond at all, and maybe one or two to result in a referral to a potential client. 1 in 10 is a great result when it comes to any type of marketing activity.
After you’ve messaged your ten people, continue your ongoing marketing efforts according to your plan, and see how it goes. From here, you can use analytics and (even better) personal feedback from your audience to adjust over time, and dial in your marketing and business operations further.
Be resourceful, and don’t be afraid to experiment outside of the bounds of your initial plans. There’s tons of creativity involved in running any business that helps keep everything fresh and exciting, whether you’ve been doing this for 4 weeks or 40 years. Every business has to pivot at times, and where you end up in a few years might not match your initial plans perfectly. That’s all part of the fun.
The great part about the recording studio industry is that there’s always room for your unique ideas, opinions, and creativity, both inside the studio sessions and outside in the business world.
Welcome to the club!
