Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

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Re: Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

Post by Dr Huge Longjohns »

I couldn't agree more.

Me too. For people who love music it's always been about the material and the performance, not the equipment you listen to it on. Or the equipment you record it on, for that matter.
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Re: Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

Post by Studio Support Gnome »

There's reason I now have a day job .... Indeed I have done so for about 3 years now.... (it's actually been two jobs, one after the other.... the first in hard core electronics , working for manufacturer of high end electronics component test equipment, for 18 months, building their tech support and sales support , from nothing but me, to a team of people in three offices around the globe, and now, for the last 18 months, quite a left field unexpected departure into ventilation and heat recovery design engineering.... as a senior engineer in the technical support and design department.

amazing what one can do with a bit of skill , experience, and knowledge, (and having studied Engineering and Physics )

finally, people actually want to pay me..... decent(ish) money, regularly, and without fuss.... I even get performance related bonuses.... and they're worth having..... coz I perform well....

I doubt anyone would argue that I didn't know what i was doing in audio, or that there was any lack of quality in any of my work... or that i didn't have a seriously over active work ethic.....

but after nigh on 30 years , i just had enough of having to work my nuts off, and compete with the blokes who read my own damn forum posts, and then undercut me on jobs.... and did a poor job.... which occasionally I found myself having to kludge up a fix for... which was never fun...

and of musicians who don't like paying their bills.

or production companies and labels who expect you to work all hours, and deliver the impossible, for no money, a week last tuesday, all gift wrapped and delivered with the moon on a stick thrown in as a good will gesture, and then take 90 days to pay, assuming they ever do...

I still consult , for existing (good) customers, friends and relatives, .... or on personal recommendation/request for their close contacts ../... but do this for a living ?? no.... I actually want to make a living...

and you know what.... I am, and I'm enjoying it....
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Re: Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

Post by Arpangel »

Studio Support Gnome wrote:There's reason I now have a day job .... Indeed I have done so for about 3 years now.... (it's actually been two jobs, one after the other.... the first in hard core electronics , working for manufacturer of high end electronics component test equipment, for 18 months, building their tech support and sales support , from nothing but me, to a team of people in three offices around the globe, and now, for the last 18 months, quite a left field unexpected departure into ventilation and heat recovery design engineering.... as a senior engineer in the technical support and design department.

amazing what one can do with a bit of skill , experience, and knowledge, (and having studied Engineering and Physics )

finally, people actually want to pay me..... decent(ish) money, regularly, and without fuss.... I even get performance related bonuses.... and they're worth having..... coz I perform well....

I doubt anyone would argue that I didn't know what i was doing in audio, or that there was any lack of quality in any of my work... or that i didn't have a seriously over active work ethic.....

but after nigh on 30 years , i just had enough of having to work my nuts off, and compete with the blokes who read my own damn forum posts, and then undercut me on jobs.... and did a poor job.... which occasionally I found myself having to kludge up a fix for... which was never fun...

and of musicians who don't like paying their bills.

or production companies and labels who expect you to work all hours, and deliver the impossible, for no money, a week last tuesday, all gift wrapped and delivered with the moon on a stick thrown in as a good will gesture, and then take 90 days to pay, assuming they ever do...

I still consult , for existing (good) customers, friends and relatives, .... or on personal recommendation/request for their close contacts ../... but do this for a living ?? no.... I actually want to make a living...

and you know what.... I am, and I'm enjoying it....

Interesting what you say here, I do feel, from hearing other people's comments, and attitudes, that there is a feeling that anything to do with creative pursuits, in audio/recording or any other artistic field is somehow not of any real "value" anymore and therefore you should be grateful I'm giving you something to do, let alone pay you.
It's not a healthy climate, for the arts in general, there is so much activity that they've become devalued, and that goes for audio hardware and engineering too, high end equipment is facing stiff competition from Chinese made copies, not only in hi-fI, but it's been happening in recording for decades now.
Once upon a time a career path in engineering was quite easy, and obvious providing you had the ability, go to university, a good one, study maths and physics, get a good degree ad look for a job! I can rember when a friend did exactly this in the 70's, he was offered a few jobs on graduation, Ferranti, BBC, he went abroad and had a series of good well paid jobs in the USA, but he just followed a formula, just like lots of others did. Maybe it's a lot more complicated now though.
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Re: Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

Post by Drew Stephenson »

The music industry, like a lot of others, is going through a massive disruption at the moment. Old models are failing and new ones are still developing. It'll take a while but a raft of new models will emerge and for a certain audience there will be people who value quality and are willing to pay for it.
The industry will need to recognise that it is no longer the biggest fish in the pond though and adapt accordingly.
It'll take a while but i'm fairly positive that new approaches will arise once we stop trying to fix everything with outdated solutions.
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Re: Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

Post by Arpangel »

blinddrew wrote:It'll take a while but i'm fairly positive that new approaches will arise once we stop trying to fix everything with outdated solutions.

Very true, and be prepared to have everything you've learned turned on its head as those who achieve great things do so in ways we never imagined.
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Re: Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

Post by Drew Stephenson »

Absolutely! :)
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Re: Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

Post by CS70 »

Arpangel wrote:Interesting what you say here, I do feel, from hearing other people's comments, and attitudes, that there is a feeling that anything to do with creative pursuits, in audio/recording or any other artistic field is somehow not of any real "value" anymore

A good point. But nothing really has changed from that point of view. We're talking economic value here (as Gnome's post): value that can be exchanged for food and a roof to sleep under.

Creative pursuits do not have an intrinsic value of that kind. They never had. There's no economic value in having fun yourself. :-)

There is quite a lot of economic value, tough, in making others have fun.

Unlocking that value requires either that there is a demand/offer ratio is big enough (as Gnome discovered, it's very likely that the demand for studio building is vastly smaller than the offer) or skew that ratio by creating artificial scarcity (which is what branding is all about).

This latter is by far the most reasonable strategy in most cases. But it's far from easy - and it's never been. It requires complementary skills from the creative or engineering ones (and skills that not so often are present in the same person), focused activity and economic investment, and a fair bit of luck (i.e. random factors).

Nobody wants music: especially now, there's a lot of it around, way too much. But people may decide to want your music, of which there's only a limited amount, controlled by you.

All the rest is just tools to get there - they change, but the basic mechanism does not.
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Re: Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

Post by Studio Support Gnome »

fair points most....

I would add that the studio building gig was only part of the service range I offered.... I can evidence a small amount of the other stuff, from the several Million views on youtube for broadcast mixes and live sound etc....

The primary issue, in all avenues seemed to be one of the gulf between what people wanted, and what they thought it should cost.

I was not, ever, a charitable trust , set up to fund the difference between those two positions.

if it takes 4 months to build , you are damn well paying for 4 months of labour.... Plus materials....

I i work on location for your project, be it recording, or building, or any other application of my fairly extensive skill set, then you are paying me for it..... I'm not here to do it for fun, or entertainment,..,.. I'd rather be home with my very beautiful wife, ..... I don't care how famous you are, how rich you are, or aren't, or how good you are on the hurdygurdy ... or even how much beer or cider is available, I committed to spending the rest of my life with my wife a long time ago, and I haven't changed my mind yet....
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Re: Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

Post by Arpangel »

CS70 wrote:All the rest is just tools to get there - they change, but the basic mechanism does not.

I'm not sure, I think the basic mechanism has changed, a lot, along with the tools.
But, contrary to popular belief, you can stop progress, in the face of "you can't stop progress" maybe the envelope is the right size, and doesn't need pushing.
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!

Post by CS70 »

Arpangel wrote:
CS70 wrote:All the rest is just tools to get there - they change, but the basic mechanism does not.

I'm not sure, I think the basic mechanism has changed, a lot, along with the tools.
But, contrary to popular belief, you can stop progress, in the face of "you can't stop progress" maybe the envelope is the right size, and doesn't need pushing.

And how so?

To make a living of something you need customers. If the something is fairly common, or can be copied easily (even badly), the mechanism is to create scarcity, the easiest way is creating a brand. Hence the Kardashians.
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Re: Equipment hire, business idea advice needed.

Post by Drew Stephenson »

Studio Support Gnome wrote: The primary issue, in all avenues seemed to be one of the gulf between what people wanted, and what they thought it should cost.

We're not alone in that though. Almost every project i've run has started with a hard discussion with the sponsor along the lines of "cheap, quick, good - pick two." And whilst they've all played along 90% have never really got it and somehow believed that their project was special in some way.
And then they start spouting buzzwords at you, like, 'Agile' or 'object oriented' or whatever other jargon they've picked up from the latest tech rag.

All of which is a long way round of saying, "it was ever thus." :)
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Re: !

Post by Drew Stephenson »

CS70 wrote:Hence the Kardashians.

Please let this be the only time i read that name in these pages!

;)
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