There is nothing cheap about the music business. Everything costs money: Instruments, amps, gear and other accessories, lights, studio time, filming music videos, travel, marketing and promotions, accountants, managers and lawyers and the list goes on. If you’re like the average musician, you probably don’t have a lot of extra money to burn, so you’re constantly looking for the most bang for your buck. In other words you want excellent value for the cost of what you are purchasing, whether its a service (like studio time) or a tangible good (like a new guitar).
The following definitions came from merriam-webster.com:
Cost: the price of something : the amount of money that is needed to pay for or buy something
Value: the amount of money that something is worth : the price or cost of something
So how do we measure value? To answer that we need to ask ourselves a few of questions:
1) What is the cost of the service or good?
2) What are we getting for that cost?
3) Is what you are getting worth the price you would pay?
In life, we all want to believe that we get what we pay for, but we also know that’s not always the truth. Sometimes we do get more than we pay for (and it feels so great when that happens) but often we get far less. I had two different clients come to me over the last couple of months. Each had been to a different studio in the Cleveland area. The studios (we’ll call them X and Y) were some of the bigger and more expensive studios in Cleveland and each one offered excellent gear and knowledgeable staff. One client went to studio X and one to studio Y. Both clients ended up unhappy and frustrated with their experience at these studios.
But why did these clients feel so negatively about their time at these studios? When I asked, they both gave a similar answer. They felt as if the staff didn’t care about them or their music and that the studio was only looking to make a quick buck. In turn, the quality of the recordings suffered. In short, they had paid what they felt was a lot of money (Cost) and not gotten what they wanted (Value). Another way to look at it is expectation vs. result. The clients both expected great service and quality recordings for the money they were spending. When their expectations weren’t met, they felt cheated by the studios.
I know it sounds clichéd but at RCR Recording Studios we place a high value on our clients. We care about them and their music and we want them to be blown away with the results they can achieve by working with us. We want to ensure the best possible experience and highest possible quality and we want to do this at the lowest possible cost. We do this by focusing on giving our clients what they want: Great service and quality recordings for less. Let us prove it to you.
Click here to find out why us.
Cary Crichlow, Senior Producer and Engineer
RCR Recording Studios
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