7 things nobody tells you about music studio hiring and training

What to take away

The roles a studio actually needs

Most small studios collapse the first four into one or two people. That can work, but it should be a plan rather than a habit. The role that gets dropped first is almost always the assistant, and the effect is immediate: changeovers lengthen, the daily workflow stops being followed, and the engineer's day extends by two unpaid hours.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics description of broadcast, sound, and video technicians is a useful reference point for what the technical role involves, including the setup, monitoring, maintenance, and troubleshooting that surround the recorded hours. Read it before writing a job description, because the work outside the session is the part people forget to hire for.

Staff or freelance, and why the law has a say

Many studios run on freelance engineers and many of those arrangements have never been examined.

Status depends on how the relationship works. Key factors: who sets hours, directs work, supplies tools, bears risk, and whether the person works for others.

The Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division compliance assistance for new and small businesses is the starting point for wage and hour obligations in the United States.

A labor attorney is where to finish if your arrangement is not obviously one thing or the other.

The correction, if you have it wrong, is retrospective. That is what makes an hour of advice now worth more than a year of assuming.

Cost makes the choice concrete. A freelance engineer in a mid-size US market typically bills $300 to $600 for a ten-hour day. A staff engineer at the same level typically costs a comparable weekly figure, plus roughly 15 to 30 percent for payroll taxes, benefits, and slow weeks.

A practical difference exists apart from law: a staff engineer can be trained to your standard and scheduled around your calendar. You can also hold that engineer to your session policy.

A freelancer brings their own standard, own hours, and often own clients. That is sometimes exactly what you want, and sometimes why your room is used at a rate you did not set.

Who owns the client relationship

This is the question studios avoid until it costs them.

Clients bond with people. An artist who has recorded three albums with the same engineer is that engineer's client in every sense that matters, and when the engineer leaves, the booking usually leaves too.

There are two honest positions: if the studio is the product, the room, process, and delivery standard must be strong enough that clients book them.

If the engineer is the product, you are renting your room to someone with a following. Price and contract accordingly.

A written clause should do four things. It should attach the client list as of the start date. It should set a non-solicit period, typically six to twelve months. It should state the notice period. It should say who keeps the booking when the client calls both parties.

Name the model you are selling, and let it shape the pricing structure. A studio that behaves as if it owns relationships it has never invested in is heading for an unpleasant conversation.

Hiring: what to test and how

Interviews reward people who are comfortable talking about recording. Sessions reward people who can build a headphone mix quickly while five musicians wait.

Test the second thing.

Four tests cover most of what a session reveals. Score each on a written sheet.

Keep the process consistent across candidates and keep the criteria job-related and written down before you start. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's small business resource center sets out what small employers are expected to understand about selection, and a consistent, documented process is the practical form of that.

Training in the order risk arrives

Do not begin with taste. Begin with what can hurt somebody or lose somebody's work.

A sample checklist, in risk order, with sign-off items:

Sign each item off by observation rather than by conversation. The written standards for most of this already exist in your compliance file and your equipment and setup documentation; training is the act of making them real in the room.

Hearing, and the duty that comes with a loud room

This is the occupational injury of the trade and it is permanent.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration publishes standards and guidance on recognizing, evaluating, and controlling occupational noise exposure, including hearing conservation obligations where they apply.

The governing standard is 29 CFR 1910.95, Occupational Noise Exposure. Check whether it reaches your operation, and follow it where it does.

Determine what applies to your operation. Put controls in place whether or not a rule reaches you. Set a working level, make protection available and normal to use, and schedule work so one person does not run several loud sessions back to back.

Owners who came up in loud rooms sometimes treat this as squeamishness. It is the single most avoidable harm in a studio, and the people it happens to are usually the ones with the fewest years in the job.

Keeping people when the calendar is uneven

Studio demand is lumpy. A good month is exhausting and a quiet month is worrying, and both are hard on the people who work for you.

Give as much schedule notice as the booking system allows. Protect a maintenance window that is also a recovery window. Label hours core or occasional so nobody is quietly on call.

Where permitted building hours limit what you offer, say so plainly so it does not look arbitrary. site constraints are real; people accept a constraint they understand.

Most of all, do not let the studio depend on one person's stamina. The wider startup framing is about building something that runs, and a room that only works while the owner never sleeps is not that.

Common questions

Do I need to hire an engineer at all?

Not at first, if you engineer yourself. You do need to decide when that stops being true, because the point at which the owner is the bottleneck arrives before the calendar looks full.

Is an assistant worth the cost?

Measure your changeovers for a month, then compare the recovered hours against the cost. In most busy studios the assistant pays for themselves in reclaimed session time.

Should engineers bring their own clients?

It is common and it can work well. Agree in advance what happens to those clients if the arrangement ends, and put it in writing while everyone is on good terms.

How do I train someone with no studio experience?

By the risk order above, with an experienced person in the room. The technical craft can be learned slowly; the safety and backup habits cannot be learned late.