How much does it cost to record a studio album?

Answer

Recording an album is based on hours. Usually someone can make an entire well put together album anywhere between 60-300 hrs. Most people fall into the 90-150 hr range. The part that is tough to figure out is how much an hour. You can get time for $30 to $200 an hour, depending on the studio. Keep in mind the studio and equipment dont really make the record sound good, its the artist and the engineer working on it.

If you want to record at a good studio, you can do that for 80 - 100 an hour. That is about average, depending on your location. LA and NY seem to be more expensive.

You can also hire a free lance engineer to do it on per song or per album basis. It can go from $50+ a song or maybe $500+ for an album. But I would expect to pay more like 200+ a song and 2,000+ per album. It just all depends on the engineer, how good they are and what kind of equipment they have. Some people dish out hundreds of thousands of dollars. The most money usually should go into marketing and duplication though.

Don't forget to get it mastered! That means you go from the engineer to the master engineer, and that is easier to guess at price, and that would be $500 per album , or $100 per song. Thats usually standard.

First answer by ID1657100756. Last edit by ID1657100756. Question popularity: 20 [recommend question]