Opening a studio is one thing. Keeping it established is another, and the evidence is that studios rarely survive on one kind of work. This post looks at the ways studios build more than one income stream, drawing mostly on the DCMS’s 2021 market assessment of studios in England, with Wikipedia accounts of Sun Studio and remote recording for history. The DCMS survey was small, and its authors say not to generalize from it, so treat it as an illustration.
The core is still recording and mixing
The DCMS says studios depend on traditional core services such as recording, mixing, production and studio rental, which make up the greatest share of revenue both before and since the pandemic. Diversifying is on top of that, not instead of it.
Ancillary services are common
According to the DCMS mapping, 85% of open studios offer ancillary services, with education and training the most common (18%). The report also says that consulting and coaching is the most common form of “360º” service, offered by 19% of surveyed studios. It describes these as artist-oriented services beyond recording, such as publishing, rights management, songwriting and label services, and calls education and consulting key differentiating factors from home studios.
Image: A caravan used as an ABC mobile studio by Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Education is the growth area
Focus group participants called education and training the biggest growth area for studios and studio staff, both before and since the pandemic. The examples include in-house music schools, after-school programmes, and partnerships with colleges and universities. The report notes that many studios adapted to online teaching, and that rehearsal studios are often music exam centres.
Work outside music
The survey found that 31% of studios plan to seek revenue from industries unrelated to music. Focus group participants said some recording studios had added audio project work, and that production rooms were more likely to have done so. According to the mapping, the most common audio service is voiceover, particularly audiobooks (16% of all open studios), followed by radio and podcasts (6%). The series post on Careers in Audio, and When to Book a Studio Instead of Recording at Home mentions some of this work.
Remote work
The DCMS says remote services have been the most significant change to studio operating models since COVID-19. Clients have become used to the idea, and one participant described hosting live sessions and streams over video calls so clients could hear studio-quality sound. Most focus group participants said they’d keep some remote work long-term but did not want to build their whole business on it, citing the satisfaction of a live room and the value of being in a physical studio.
Wikipedia’s article on remote recording describes the older version of the same idea: taking studio-quality equipment to a concert venue or another space such as a church or ballroom, and recording there. It says that in 1958 engineer Wally Heider mounted recording equipment in a truck, reportedly the first to do so.
The old lesson from Sun
Wikipedia’s account of Sun Studio says that when Sam Phillips opened his Memphis studio in January 1950, he recorded conventions, weddings, choirs and funerals to create revenue in the early days, and allowed anyone to walk in and make their own record for a small fee. His slogan was “We Record Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.” Later, the account says, he found it increasingly difficult to keep his Sun Records label’s profits up even as artists recorded for it, so variety did not make the business easy. The caravan photo above shows a mobile studio used by the ABC, according to its Commons description. I include it only to illustrate taking a studio on the road.
Rent is why this matters
The DCMS says rent and business rates make up the largest share of surveyed studios’ operating costs, on average 34%, and that this is seen as the primary cause of studio closures. A studio with a single stream of income and rising rent has little room to adjust, which is why extra streams are attractive.
A checklist (my own suggestion)
- Do you have at least one stream that doesn’t depend on the live room, such as teaching or remote mixing?
- Do you know which of your clients would pay for more than recording?
- Could a second stream use the same room and gear?
- Are you spreading yourself too thin? The sources say studios kept recording and mixing at the core.
Sources
- DCMS / Sound Diplomacy: Music Studio Market Assessment (June 2021, England)
- Wikipedia: Sun Studio
- Wikipedia: Remote recording