The Real Costs Of Record Making
I've decided to use my new live recording project as a case study of the challenges facing middle class musicians. This ongoing project will document exactly what it's like to make a record in 2025.
This article is the beginning of an ongoing series that will document the inner workings of the preparation, recording, and eventual release of my upcoming live record with Wild Honey Collective.
In this series, I’ll walk you through the process of planning the show, and putting the pieces in place to record, film, and photograph the entire event on a shoestring budget. We’ll cover the costs of putting the show together, as well as diving into the ways in which we’re cutting every penny possible. The series will also investigate the costs of promotion, physical production, merch and more and then factor in how much revenue can be generated through pre-orders, physical merch, and streaming.
Settle in for an unvarnished peek into the sausage making of the record business.
If you have been paying much attention to these environs of late, you’ll know that I have announced an enormous show at The Robin Theatre in Lansing on December 3rd of this year. The event, with my friends The Wild Honey Collective acting as my all-star backing band for the night, will feature a host of new original songs as well as a variety of reinvented tunes from my time in The Stick Arounds, The Pantones, and Harborcoat.
This event is far more than just a typical show, however. We will be recording and filming the entire affair for release as a full length live recording in 2026. The plan for the record is to include a combination of brand new songs and some of my older material utilizing this very special one-time lineup that includes the members of Wild Honey Collective as well my longtime collaborator David Baldwin, who was an integral part of Harborcoat and The Pantones.
As I have begun to invest myself more deeply into the pre-production efforts for this undertaking, I have realized that this project affords us an amazing opportunity for an object lesson. Since we find ourselves at the beginning of the long process of making and releasing a record, this seemed as good a time as any to pull back the curtain and show you exactly what it’s like to release a record at this level in 2025.
Throughout this entire process, I will walk you through every step, from choosing the material to rehearsals, through the promotion machinations to the process of documenting of the event, as well as the eventual release of our finished album. You’ll get a window in to the rehearsal room and have a chance to a look under the financial hood to get a better understanding of jus how much it costs to release a record, and just what the possible financial rewards might be.
In addition to recording the show, I have hired a photographer who will be capturing the night one frame at a time. We’ll use these images to promote the release and as part of the artwork for the record. I am also working hard to get a video crew together to fully document the show visually. I am even toying with the idea of filming rehearsals, conducting interviews with the band and myself, and covering much of the necessary pre-production work to formulate the show and the process of making and releasing this record.
I believe there is the potential to form a documentary/concert film out of this project, but I will need to see just how much work that entails and how much help I might be able to wrangle. In the meantime, I will document as much of this journey as I possibly can, all while sharing the complete and unvarnished truth of this process with you along the way.
Cheap Ain’t Easy
I have written extensively here at WAIM about how little artists get paid for their work through digital streamers like Spotify. Since the beginning of this space, the issue of fair payment for artists has been central to my work. While I am proud of the light that I have helped to shine on the inequities for artists within the streaming universe, I have not spent very much time talking about the actual cost of recording and releasing records.
In recent years we have seen huge growth in affordable technologies for recording artists. For a few thousand dollars, a budding young musician can snag a laptop, a couple of microphones, and a bit of the other necessary gear all from the internet, and use those humble tools to make a full length record from the comfort of their bedroom or basement.
Without the old world costs of studio time, physical tape on which to record, and the expenditure of a paid engineer to run the recordings, artists now have many of the tools to make a good sounding record on a bare bones budget. These digital tools are now so powerful that a musician with a bit of technical savvy and some arrangement skills can make a record that sounds completely “professional” all with consumer level gear.
With the advent of digital streamers like Spotify and Apple Music, there is no longer any barrier of entry for artists to find distribution. Bands can easily go from writing a new song to releasing it digitally in the space of just a week if they choose to work that quickly. It is a veritable Wild West of content for users and its open season for ambitious and active musicians.
These reduced barriers of entry may make it easy to get on the most used musical platforms in the world, but it will not find you new listeners. Even if an artist makes an amazing record, there is an incredible amount of timing and luck as to whether any listeners will find her material. Certainly, the artist can tour, work the mines on social media, and network with other artists to try to build a following, but even with a great sounding record, regular touring patterns, and a consistent social media presence, the overwhelming majority of emerging artists struggle to find more than just a handful of listeners a month.
Great songs, terrific players, beautiful artwork, a busy touring schedule, and a cinematic video are no guarantee that your work will be seen and appreciated by anyone outside of your family and friends. Releasing a record with a fully DIY approach is a glorious, messy process that has brought me more joy and more credit card debt than I could possibly fit into these pages.
Recording, releasing, mixing, mastering, designing, producing, promoting, and touring your own work is a lot even for the most ambitious of artists. It’s also a bit like playing darts blindfolded - while you’re very drunk. Sure, you might get lucky and hit the bullseye, but you’re more likely to hit the bartender. Bringing a publicist in for the release cycle of a record is a pricey, but very effective way to increase your chances with the dart board. A PR firm working on your behalf will get you sobered up, take off that blindfold, and then hand the dart to a ringer who knows where the bullseye is and how to hit it.
Not only is it a sound mental health practice for artists to have help in some of these areas, there is also work that you likely cannot perform for yourself at a professional level. Maybe you’re a great songwriter and singer, but you aren’t a very good mixing engineer. Sure, you could learn to mix and get great at it over years, but you could also pay a professional to do that and you could spend your time working on new songs. Plus, the professional mixing engineer is likely to have networking connections that could help you.
The tools I have mentioned above are marvelous records for artists, but they come with a hefty price tag. With all of this in mind we now get to the nitty gritty of what this little endeavor of ours is going to cost even at the most humble of budgets. We’ve got costs for crew, musicians, gear, venue rental, promotion, production, merch and more. We’re going to make this happen in the most professional, but spendthrift way feasible. I am about to show you the most cost-effective way that I know how to make and release a great sounding record. Plus, we might even get a film out of it.
Take that Blair Witch Project.
The $16,000 Question
Reading that headline you likely fall into one of two camps. Many of you read the figure $16,000 and thought, “Matty, you are nuts! You can’t spend another $16,000 on something like this.”
Another group of you, mostly the creatives in the room, looked at that figure and thought, “Matty, there is no way that you cannot do everything you have envisioned for just $16,000.”
The truth is that you are both correct. Let me explain.
The budget that I have put together for this project does indeed come in at around $15,000, but it should be much, much higher to cover everything that I want to accomplish with this project. Let’s walk through the costs of putting this together, while taking a deeper look at the people who are investing in this project with me, and why each of these pieces are so crucial to the project.
Venue/Crew
I negotiated bargain basement rates, called in favors, and offered to do work in trade to keep the costs for crew as low as possible. The Robin Theatre is asking a very reasonable $350 total for production costs and rental for the space for the whole night. Even if I had found another suitable venue in the area that offered a split of the door in lieu of a rental fee, costs would likely have remained the same assuming there were decent ticket sales. The Robin is the perfect spot for us to hold this event in Lansing and they offer a very affordable rate.
The Wild Honey Collective and David Baldwin, who will comprise my backing band for the night, will be making a paltry $100 per person. This fee is shamefully low, but these are longtime friends who are investing their time and talents in this project with me. For the Wild Honey gang it also affords us an opportunity for touring together in the future, and the finished will give the band another record to showcase in their quickly growing canon.
My dear friend Jena Hovey has agreed to work for a ridiculously low fee on the night of the show. I have also made sure Jena is welcome to take advantage of my design chops anytime she might need them to help offset these costs. Additionally, she will be welcome to use any of the images from the show as a part her portfolio and gallery work. Once again, it is artists stepping up to help each other in the hopes of making something worthwhile.
I have an engineer in place for the modest sum of $200 for the full day. Again, it’s a ridiculously low rate for someone with professional skills, but I am lucky enough to have a network of extremely talented friends willing to invest their artistry into my work for only a few dollars of compensation.
I have yet to lock down a videographer for the night, but I am working to find a friend or acquaintance willing to work on the cheap without having to provide their own gear. Whoever takes on the task will be in charge of running a mobile camera rig on a gimbal and checking to ensure that the other cameras are properly positioned and rolling while the show is happening. Is there a secret auteur or budding young filmmaker in our midst who might like a crack at this for a scant amount of cash?
The final crew position we need for the evening is a guitar tech. Again, we’ve yet to lock this down, but I am sure we can find a taker in the local scene. The modest budget of $100 will remunerate some lucky soul who is willing to keep our instruments tune and in playing shape on the day of and during the show.
This brings the total budget for our venue and crew to $1,550. Maximum capacity at The Robin Theatre is around 70 people, which means that if we sold out the show at the listed ticket price of $22, we’d clear $1540, basically covering my costs for the evening. While that might seem like a bad business decision, it essentially means that by playing one show I am able to pay for the recording, filming and photographing of my next album all while spending only about $10 out of pocket, assuming that we can move enough tickets. I did sell out a solo show at a Robin last summer as I began my 2024 tour, and I’m confident with Wild Honey on the bill we’ll be able to fill the place.
Venue/Crew Budget - $1550
Video Gear
Although we have a woefully small budget for a videographer, we did build in some money for a bit of humble camera gear. I am willing to have a friend or eager young filmmaker invest their time for just a $200 payout if I know that they will not also need to bring thousands of dollars of their own equipment to film the show. It’s one thing to ask for a favor and another to ask someone to bring tens of thousands of dollars of gear to a severely discounted job.
The proposed $2000 budget for video gear would cover the cost of two used Sony camera bodies and a trio of cinema lenses. This investment would allow me to incorporate these new cameras and lenses with my modest current setup to give us three quality cameras on a shoestring budget to cover most of the necessary angles for the show. I will also supplement these three primary cameras with my iPhone 13 fitted with a mounted lens for use on a gimbal, as well as a GoPro style action camera focused on the drums. This five camera setup should give us full coverage of the whole show, all while looking incredibly professional on a threadbare budget.
The video footage from the show will be an enormous asset whether end up with a documentary or not. With high-quality, multi-camera clips we can take to TikTok, YouTube and the rest of social media with a barrage of video content to improve the chances of this record finding an audience.
I compared the costs of buying gear and hiring a friend to run the rig the night of the show versus hiring a professional firm to film the show. The costs for hiring a crew to come in with all of their gear was more than this proposed budget to buy a bit of equipment. The crew is a more secure option, but it’s not only several hundred dollars more in the budget, if we play our cards right, I could wind up with great looking footage and the makings of a small video production unit.
In addition to capturing this show, these new cameras and lenses would be a huge asset to the video production capabilities of the Sheddio. As I have shared with you before, I am working to incorporate more video into the work I do here at WAIM, including regular sessions with other bands visiting the Sheddio. All of these new tools would be a huge help to that endeavor. This video budget will be a huge benefit far beyond the scope of this live album and possible subsequent film release.
Video Gear Budget - $2000
Post Production
The costs for mixing and mastering a record have always been a tough hurdle for DIY artists. The mixing and mastering engineers doing this at the top of the game are working on gear worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions. They are often working in rooms that cost several thousands of dollars per day in rental fees. And perhaps most importantly, these experts have been honing their craft for years or even decades.
This combination of experience, reputation, and workflow means that if you want to hire an outside mixing or mastering engineer it is almost impossible to do it on the cheap. Many bands will do some or even all of this work themselves. I myself have done this in varying degrees with mixed results. The records that I have made that I ended up most pleased with, at least sonically speaking, were mixed by someone outside of the personnel making the record. If we’re going to make a real go of this project we need to invest in a professional mixing engineer.
For this project, I’d like to use a known commodity. I don’t want to name my mixer of choice here because we have not made final arrangements to work together as yet, but I will say that he has engineered and mixed a bunch of indie rock records in the last thirty years that might just be sitting on your record shelf. This person does amazing work, and offers it at a very competitive rate.
Looking at rates and workflows, it looks like we could get mixing done in something like three days if we work efficiently. At that pace, we would be looking at approximately $2,000 for mixing. I have also looked at having this mixed by someone without the same name caché who would be willing to work for a lower rate. This move would likely save us somewhere between $500 and $1000 in total.
The truth is that I have only ever worked with mixers that are regional, and had no notable clients in their portfolio. They have done amazing work for me, but I have reached a point where I need to consider that spending some money on a mixer who might be able to help me network my record more effectively is a wise investment. Furthermore, working with someone who does this solely as their full-time work means that I am more likely to be collaborating with someone who will adhere to deadlines, follow my notes, and intuit things from the mix that I might not have otherwise emphasized. It’s not just about spending as little money as possible, it’s about investing the dollars as judiciously as I can.
Mastering holds a few of the same principles that mixing does. For those not familiar with the process, mastering essentially takes all of the disparate songs on an album and tightens them together to make them sound like a cohesive set of tunes, instead of a ramshackle set of songs recorded in different studios over the course of several months. It is a pseudo-science involving compression, equalization, and volume leveling to give it the final sheen of a finished record. It is an often misunderstood, but crucial part of the record making process.
I tend to believe that the mixer of the record should not be the mastering engineer. In my mind, mastering, much like mixing, requires a fresh set of ears. Once again I have a preferred person in mind for this task, but as we have yet to agree to any terms, I won’t divulge any names. The gent that I have in mind to master this record has worked with some of my heroes, but he is still within the realm of affordability. In fact, his rates are so competitive that folks in the area without anywhere near the same name recognition are just $100 to $200 less. Let’s make the small additional investment and see if we can garner a bit more attention by using a known commodity for mixing and mastering.
Post Production Budget - $3000
Promotion
I mentioned earlier that releasing a record by yourself, even with a plan of action is a bit like throwing darts at a board while blindfolded and drunk. It is a bit like yelling into an abyss to put a record out and wait for the world to respond. The truth is that an artist needs help finding a platform. That is a what a publicist does.
For this record to get any reviews, to garner any press coverage, or to generate any buzz at all about me or Wild Honey we need a champion who is connected to these circles. Like everything else in life, that costs money.
I have been able to negotiate a deeply discounted rate with a reputable PR firm to work the record through the release cycle. This means that for the few months leading up to the release of the album and for a few weeks after its launch, the record would be pushed to various press outlets, podcasts, magazines, blogs, and YouTube channels that regularly cover this sort of music.
A press campaign like this would also normally include a push to college and community radio stations around the country. While that will certainly be a part of this campaign as well, it is almost impossible to know how much the college and community radio market its going to change in the wake of the Trump administration ending funding for public media outlets. Part of this story may be the dwindling number of viable stations left standing by the time this record hits the streets next year.
Lastly, promo campaigns like this are used to help secure artists slots in the all-important world of curated playlists. Millions of listeners discover new music primarily through playlists that are thematically built around a genre, a decade, a vibe, or even a regional movement. Finding space on these playlists is the modern day equivalent to have your song spun on Top 40 radio. While I have long eschewed Spotify and their ilk, I plan to make a full throated effort to maximize streaming revenues. Let’s see if there is a viable for lesser known and independent artists to make a living in this new musical economy.
The ultimate goal with a campaign like this is that every drop of water adds to a tide of momentum for a record, and for my prospects as an independent musician. This investment gives us the best chance to have our record seen and heard by a wide audience.
Promotion Budget - $2500
Merch
Even the most casual music fan is aware how little artists are making from streaming revenues. What was once an industry secret is now a well-known fact. Many music fans, alarmed by the financial hardship facing artists are often the first to purchase vinyl records, CDs, t-shirts, and posters at the merch table. The sale of these physical items is very often the only lifeline that an artist has left to make a living.
In my own experience touring, I can attest to how much I replied upon the sale of physical merch every night as a way of keeping the show on the road. With inflated touring costs and pitifully low streaming rates, merch has become something of a financial crutch for musicians. It can be a marvelous way to earn money at shows and even online, but it can also be a money pit from which a working artist might never recover.
T-shirts and vinyl are the two most popular items at the merch table these days. As a lifelong fan, I love these artifacts and I’m often guilty of spending money on them after a great gig. These purchases are a great way to support the acts we love, but they are a huge up-front investment, and it can be very tough for independent artists to recoup those costs.
Let’s take a look at the costs behind the merch we’ll be including during the recording and release of this project. There is the potential for big financial rewards, but the up front costs are prohibitive.
Vinyl Budget - $5000
People love vinyl. They always have. Many fans now see it as a possible savior of the music industry in the days of low streaming rates. Certainly, vinyl LPs have been a terrific way for bands to make some extra cash at the merch table, but the costly and time intensive process behind vinyl production is often misunderstood by the general public.
For this project, we’ll be budgeting a vinyl run, but it takes up one third of our entire budget just for the production of the physical pieces. The figure for vinyl production does not include any of the production or promotion costs, it solely covers the production and shipment of the finished records.
Vinyl records are also a way to appear like a professional outfit at your gigs. A band without vinyl is often seen these days as less than. There is now a cultural expectation that if you are in a band with any momentum at all, you need to have vinyl out on your merch table to be taken seriously. This leaves artists shelling out thousands of dollars to produce a limited amount of records on just one format.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a gorgeous format, one with which I am still deeply in love. But, we must understand that while the gatekeeping to get digital distribution is at an all-time low, the gate for pressing vinyl soars ever higher with each passing year.
The expected set for the show at The Robin is something like 16 songs. While we have yet to fully choose that material and figure out set sequences, I already know that to get this entire show, or even the vast majority of it on to vinyl is going to require a double album, which is going to increase costs.
Sure, we could release a truncated version of the show that would fit on a single album, but it would be a flawed document at best. Frankly, I would rather not put this out on vinyl than release a compromised version as a record, only to have more tracks available digitally or on CD. To me that defeats the entire purpose of pressing the record.
In the spirit of full transparency, if I were not releasing this record as a way to demonstrate the entire process, I would likely not even pursue the idea of pressing vinyl for this. However, in an effort to fully explore the way records are made, paid for, and distributed, I am budgeting for a run of 500 double albums with a sleeve made to accommodate two albums. As much as I would love to order a gatefold cover for this two record set, that is absolutely a financial bridge too far.
I have spent years digging around for the best deals on vinyl pressing and artwork production. My experience in this area, having released a trio of albums on vinyl, is that this is about as cheaply as we can make this happen. We can put together a beautiful two record set with a sleeve and insert at a cost of approximately $10 per finished album. A fair market rate of $35 for the two LP set would mean that we’d have to sell 200 of these to make our investment back.
T-Shirts - $900
T-shirts have long been a boon at the merch table for bands of all stripes. On my tours last year I was able to move a bunch of t-shirts at $25 each with a cost of around $10 a shirt. At a gig in South Carolina last summer, I had a group of five kids buy t-shirts in the space of fifteen minutes. I took in $125, nearly matching the small but necessary $175 fee I’d get for playing my set that night. Those t-shirt sales and a handful of vinyl purchases turned a decent show into a profitable night.
As much as I rely on those sales from show to show, there are loads of costs that pile up before I ever roll out of the Sheddio. For my last tour, I made roughly 80 t-shirts at a total cost of about $800. Those shirts along with my pre-existing inventory are a nice backlog of merch for my shows through the summer and fall. But, to generate some revenue and have a bit of merch to tour on in 2026, we need to order some shirts for this special collaboration.
This number may ever so slightly fluctuate based on actual orders, but I have budgeted for 100 total shirts at a cost of $9 each. I’ve got a great local screen printer that I work with who does a fantastic job using the most comfortable shirts we can find. I get compliments on my tees regularly from the folks who wear them. I am proud of the way that they look and feel. These new Wild Honey & Matty C tees will be no different. I’ll even walk you through the process of designing the finished product as we chronicle this project from nascent idea to fruition. If we move these at $25 each at the merch table, we’ll need to sell 36 tees to cover costs.
CDs - $400
Yes, people still buy CDs. They are not as ubiquitous as they might have been in the late 90s but they are still a thriving format for many listeners. I have several fans who have worked to fully eschew streaming, at least when listening at home, that have gravitated back to the compact disc as their format of choice. The CD allows consumers to get a beautiful, physical product in the palm of their hands for a very low cost.
While this is a double album on vinyl, it will easily fit on to one CD. We are able to get 200 of these priced at just $2 each for a whopping total of just $400. Because it’s a longer album and a double album on vinyl, we’ll likely charge $12 for the CD instead of the normal $10 I would charge for a regular album on compact disc. Still, it’s a huge value for a high-quality, beautifully packaged product that is a physical, tangible thing. It is an especially great deal when compared to the costs of vinyl. With a $10 profit on these, we’ll need to sell 40 of them to recoup costs.
Posters - $200
My design work for show posters, album art, and video work has become a central part of my persona as a musician. I consider the visual element of the record just as important as the sonic elements of the record. The entire thing exists as a single entity, and my style, personality, and voice should be a part of every fabric of it. This extends to the way the record looks, the way the CDs are packaged, the colors that are used on the t-shirts, and the posters we will use to promote the show and the release.
These posters are going to primarily be used to promote the Robin Theatre show and any subsequent touring that Wild Honey and I undertake together, but they will also be distributed out to record shops that carry the album. Additionally, these posters will be available for sale to fans as an individual item or as a part of pre-order bundles. This budget will get us 200 posters for use as promo and merch items. The first 20 posters we sell at $10 each will cover our costs.
Total Merch Budget - $6500
Where In The Hell Am I Gonna Get $16,000?
Now that I know the full price tag, I need to figure out where in the world I am going to find sixteen grand.
To begin with, I will be mounting a fundraising/pre-order campaign through a host site like IndieGogo. It will take a bit of time to get the necessary pieces together, but the campaign will give fans the chance to pre-order and invest in the project.
The truth is that I am terrified to begin this journey because it might end as soon as it begins. While I have the necessary funds to mount the show at the Robin on December 3, we’ll never be able to release this record or even film the show if we cannot meet our goals on the fundraising campaign.
Not only am I riddled with anxiety that I can make this vision a reality, I am worried about what happens if we make all of this vision a reality and we still can’t get anyone to pay attention to my work? This is perhaps my greatest fear, and could serve as the center of this narrative moving forward.
This is probably the last time I will mount something like this unless it is enough of a success to turn around and do it again without having to fundraise. If this project, in all of its various forms, comes into the world and fails to make a splash, I may ease my way out of releasing new music altogether.
After my hugely successful Eastern US tour last summer and my financially dreadful Western US tour last Fall, I found myself at a bit of a crossroads in my path as an independent musician. This project, this record, and this moment feel like something of a fulcrum on which the future of my path as a musician will be determined.
To say that there is a lot riding on this project would be an understatement.
What’s Next?
I’ve already begun plotting out the details for the fundraising/pre-order campaign. I’m hoping to launch that within the next week or two. Additionally I will be releasing some videos in the near future to help broadcast the message about this project and the campaign to fund it.
Although there is a ton of camera gear that we’ll need to film the show, I have already begun using my phone and my humble camera rig to document some of the early work on this project. While it’s impossible to know what this “documentary” footage will end up looking like or being used for is all up in the air, but we’re just going to hit record and capture what happens.
Thanks so much for your attention and support. This is going to be an incredible, and likely harrowing ride. I hope will be sure to join me every step of the way. While it’s hard to know how much we’ll have to report, the plan right now is to post one update a week about this massive undertaking. Please make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss a thing.
See you next week with more.
Cheers,
Matty C
Wow! That is one detailed account of what it takes to produce something like this. Crowdfunding definitely seems like the way to go these days - although I know it's hard asking people for money. Perks are always a key to a successful crowdfunding campaign.
What a great way to expose the real work and expenses behind a project like this to fans and other artists. It’s all kind of scary, isn’t it? $16k is a huge up front cost and ROI can be estimated but not guaranteed.
You are so talented and organized with a smart approach. I know you’ll knock it out of the park. I’m ready to order a women’s large tee and vinyl! I also know a fantastic, small run pressing plant with environmentally-friendly production if you want to shop album pressing/packaging fees.