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How much will my album cost to record? Part 1 of 3
The most direct answer to this question is another question.
How much do you want your album to cost?
Let's say you want to buy a mp3 player. You'd say to yourself, "I have X amount of money. What kind of player can I get for that?" You would look at the options and choose the best possible player, taking into consideration what you want versus what it will cost. If you can afford it, you buy the best, if you're on a really tight budget, you may have to settle for something that barely works.
Albums are the same. There are different "makes and models" of albums, all varying in cost and quality. Obviously we all want to sound as professional as possible, but you can't buy an i-pod for the price of a JVC. Similarly, you will not be able to create something that sounds just like a big studio production for peanuts and chump change. Make sense?
This is why its confusing. If you ask a studio, "What will my album cost?", one may tell you R15000, while another says R50000, and another still is saying R250000. In reality, they're all studios, but you're not comparing the cost of the same thing.
So, if you don't really have an idea of a budget yet, or are just trying to figure out how much you'll need, let's look at what your options are.
Every song is a customised project, and albums have differing numbers of songs, so putting an exact figure on a whole album will require you to nail down exactly what you want. For that reason we're going to do this on a song by song basis.
There are 3 factors that contribute to the cost of recording each song. They are:
- The quality of the recording wanted
- The level of your experience
- The size of the production
In part 2 of this article, we're going to look at each one and then put them all together.
© Urban Mix Recording Studios 2008
