How to release an album, part 2: What’s in a budget?
NOTE: This is part of an ongoing series. For more pieces to the album release puzzle, visit WordPlay T. Jay’s Blog or YouTube page.
While this is part 2 of the “How to make an album” series, one of the first things you should do before starting a project is to sit down and do the thing most people dread — budget.
The cost of making an album ranges by needs, wants and necessities, and WordPlay T. Jay has a sample budget for you ready to go that addresses everything you’ll need and maybe some things you won’t.
When starting a budget, The first thing you need to look at is living expenses. Will you be working throughout the duration of creating the album, or will you take time off? Of course, living expenses range greatly depending on where you live, if you have a family, etc., but for the sake of argument, T. Jay has budgeted $2,000 per month for a duration of 9 months on the project. That totals $18,000 in living expenses.
With that settled, the next part of the budget is business expenses. That may be nothing if you are just getting started, but for T. Jay, it costs about $500 for equipment, software, employees and other business items.
Getting more into the actual cost of making an album, the next section of the budget is producing. There are costs associated with pre-production, which in the hip-hop realm includes buying beats, recording and mixing, and mastering.
In the studio, pre-production and recording and mixing is budgeted at $50 per hour for 30 hours each, which comes out to $1,500. Add in the mastering at $100 per hour for 10 hours and you have $1,000 for a total production cost of about $4,000.
This can fluctuate based on a number of factors. What do your beats cost? How many hours will you be spending in a studio? Or, do you have a home studio that will only cost the equipment and electricity to use? Each scenario is different, and you have to plan for what fits you.
Once you have an album produced, the next expense is distribution. T. Jay recommends doing and dirty and clean version (unless your music is already clean), and sticking to digital distribution at the start. Pro accounts at CDBaby are about $100 per album, and you can add more distribution costs if needed.
With the album made and sent out, people need to find and listen to it, and that’s where marketing comes into play. You should budget for things like music videos (about $2,000 each), Facebook ads, video distribution (this can be done mostly for free on YouTube), artwork and public relations.
Artwork includes album packaging and posters, the cost of which can range depending on who you are using. Public relations is a hit or miss. In the digital age, you can do quite a bit of your own marketing on Facebook and Instagram for about $5 per day. But, if you have access to press runs or interviews, costs for those can be added into the budget.
The final piece of the budget is merchandise. A basic merch package includes things like T-shirts, hoodies, pins, posters, packaging and promotional copies. T. Jay suggests doing them in a box and selling to as many people as you can. For a box with each of those items going to about 100 people, it will run about $3,300. Set you selling price a bit higher than what you’ve spent, say $35 per box, and that will cover your shipping. If there is more demand, you can go higher and start bringing in actual merch income.
All told, T. Jay’s example budget comes out to a little over $36,000 to produce an album. Not everyone will spend this much, nor should they, but this is an example of all the costs involved and gives perspective on what a whole album may cost if you take the time away to produce, distribute and market it.
For a more precise look at the expenses, check out the video below. You can also download the sample budget if you’re looking to create your own!