The Cost of an Album: Part II

After some feedback, I'm going to elaborate a little more on "commercial" albums and their costs. Here is a general breakdown of an album.

Session Musicians- Anywhere between $100-$300 per song, per musician. If you're just a singer/songwriter and need full band backing (Drums, Bass, Piano/Organ, Electric/Lead Guitar), figure around $10,000 just for the pro musicians to back you up on your album.

Producer- These guys don't really charge on a per-song basis. And like many other aspects, they have a lot to do with where you are located. They also take a cut from sales. Big name Producers like P-Diddy make over $30 million a year just producing. I've heard of staff record label producers making around $600/day. You can look at probably spending around $5,000 for your album being produced by an industry professional.

Renting a Studio- Let's assume since it's a commercial release, you're in a one of the big cities, like LA for example. $1,000/day for their facilities. They sometimes come with house engineers, sometimes not. Figure between $10,000 and $14,000 for the studio total.

Hiring a Big Name Mix Engineer- $1000/per song.

Mastering by a Big Name Mastering Engineer- $300/hr.

If you're putting out a 12 song album, you're grand total is:
$39,000!!!!

This is NOT the typical price. Most top acts don't need an entire backing band for the whole of their album. And they don't all use the $1,000/day studios, and they don't all take 2 weeks to record. Not every big name mixer does every song for $1,000. But the point of this wasn't to exactly show you "typical", but a more informed view on how and why these albums cost what they do.

Ever hear of Bar Scott? Me neither, but she has a great article here about how one of her albums cost around $15,000 to make, and that's not including the tracking or mastering. Nor is she a house hold name, which is exactly why I mentioned her (aside from also writing an excellent article). It's an expensive world out there, folks. I know your $2,000 album seems like a lot, but count your blessings it didn't cost you 40 grand!