Recording in a pro studio - the customer matters, not your gear

Last week I was talking to a young musician about an experience she had recording her band's song in a professional studio. She paid a significant amount of money upfront for a set of amount time to record. This is a fairly stock standard packaged offered to bands who wish to record in a pro studio. When the time to record came, she explained to me how she felt rushed as the studio charged per hour and the band had only one session to get the song done. Not only that, but one engineer spent hours with microphone placement to get the right electric guitar sound! (engineers - it probably sounded right the first time!) Whilst important, this took time away from the other recording activities that were also needed to make the song great.

As I think about this story I wonder if the producer and the engineer who were managing the session were thinking about the customer - the musician - and what they wanted to achieve with their time. Clearly not. The studio folks were getting paid by the hour. That's all they were concerned about.

I did some research on other local studios and not surprisingly they too follow a similar model with their product. In my current marketing studies we've been discussing business products and customers. It seems many studios simply put the product (the recording studio time) out to the market in the hope they get bites, without actually assessing what customer need they are trying to satisfy. I see plenty of studio websites trumping the cool equipment and fancy technology they have. But I fail to see anything that says we will work with you to make your musical idea a reality. The 'pay, come in, record, get out' process really is a stinker for a young band who just want to record music at a decent price supported by a producer who cares about their desired outcome. For a musician, sometimes your art can't be captured in a pre-defined amount of time - as much as this would be nice for studio owners.

This story isn't the first I have heard about recording projects reaching dismal outcomes for the artist. It really seems that these businesses are just trying to recoup costs for their expensive studios by overcharging poor young musicians for their time. I ask the questions, are these studios really servicing a customer need? How are they building a relationship with the customer through this process? The business in question that recorded this band, didn't get any repeat work from this artist. I suspect this is the case with a lot of their clients. Once off recording sessions and no repeat business.

I am not saying I have the answer to this dilemma, but clearly there is a gap here. A missed opportunity for the studio and a mediocre experience for the band. I can only hope this doesn't characterise many of the other studio recording businesses out there where the customer does matter, and the relationship between band and producer is at the centre of the project and the product the studio is offering.