What Does a Recording Studio Do?

Recording Studio Stuff

If you ask what a recording studio does, the short answer is “records music”. The longer answer is a menu of services, and it helps to know what is on it before you ask for a quote. A studio that lists “recording, mixing and mastering” may mean three different jobs done by three different people.

For hard numbers I’m using the Music Studio Market Assessment that Sound Diplomacy prepared for the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, published in 2021. The numbers cover recording studios, production rooms and rehearsal studios in England, mostly in 2020 and 2021, so treat them as a snapshot of one country in an unusual year. I have added Wikipedia and Berklee for the definitions.

The core services

The report says studios depend on traditional core services such as recording, mixing, production and studio rental. In its mapping of 1,858 open studios, 78% offered recording, 56% production services and 42% rehearsal. In the separate survey, 86% of studios reported recording services, 81% mixing and 78% production. The report notes that mixing and production are complementary to recording and that these jobs are hard to separate.

A studio room with a desk and computer screens in the middle, speakers on stands and equipment on both sides

Image: A studio room, filed on Commons as “Studio Mastering” by Giuliano Radiciotti, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Here is what each one means, in my own plain wording:

  • Recording (tracking). Capturing the performance, which usually means a room, microphones and an engineer.
  • Mixing. Balancing the recorded tracks into a finished stereo version.
  • Production. Guiding the music and the performances. Berklee describes producers as creative partners working with musicians from pre-production through to final mastering.
  • Mastering. Wikipedia describes it as preparing and transferring audio from the final mix to a master recording from which all copies are made. The report found that 82% of surveyed production rooms offered mastering.

Rehearsal and rental

The report treats rehearsal rooms as a separate studio type and says they were the most profitable studios before COVID-19, with an average annual gross income of £132.4K compared with £109.7K for the market overall, according to its focus groups. For a band this matters because renting a rehearsal room is often the cheapest way to prepare for a recording. It also names equipment and instrument rental, at 21%, among the most popular extra services beyond traditional recording.

Creative audio and post-production

Some studios work on sound for pictures and games. The report calls these “creative audio” services and says custom music composition (40%) and sound design (26%) were the most common. Wikipedia’s recording studio article also mentions studios recording voice-over artists, dialogue replacement for film, television and animation, and Foley.

Education and coaching

Education and training were the most common ancillary service in the mapping, offered by 18% of open studios (340), and the report says 85% of open studios offered some ancillary service. In its survey, consulting and coaching, often called artist development, was offered by 19% of studios and was usually informal. The report counts these as differentiating factors from home studios. If you are new, it is worth asking whether a studio will talk you through your first session. (That last point is my own suggestion.)

Two large tape reels on a reel-to-reel machine with level meters and record knobs above them

Image: A quarter-inch analog tape being played back on a reel-to-reel machine for digitization by Sauerkrautrock, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Working with old recordings

Wikipedia says analog tape machines are still used in some cases for their unique sonic characteristics. As my own observation, the same kind of machine is what you would need to play back old tape recordings, so it is worth asking a studio whether it has the right equipment and experience if you have tapes to transfer. I have not found a source that measures how many studios offer this, so please ask rather than assume.

Questions to ask before you book

This is my own suggestion for turning the menu into a quote:

  1. Which services are in the price? Recording, mixing and mastering may be priced separately.
  2. Who does each job? One person or several?
  3. What counts as setup time? Ask whether it comes out of your booked hours.
  4. What extras can I add? Instrument hire, rehearsal time and coaching are all listed as services in the report.

The series post Careers in Audio, and When to Book a Studio Instead of Recording at Home looks at when it makes sense to book.

Sources