KVR Audio

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 8:29 pm

In the UK petrol just dropped in price to around £1 per litre. That's around £4.60 ($6.90) per gallon, after being as high as £1.45 per litre. Software seems relatively inexpensive by comparison

3ee · Post by **3ee** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 8:56 pm

in my country, for $50 you can buy benzine or diesel (they're about the same price) = 40 liters (10.5 gallons? )

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 8:59 pm

A (US) gallon is about 3.79 liters I believe, so yes that is a good estimate

surreal · Post by **surreal** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 9:09 pm

chk071 wrote:It really depends i would say. I don't think you mind paying what you have to pay, when you make or produce music for a living. All operating costs i guess. Not sure if i fully get the point of the thread though, so i don't know if my reply is valid.

I think everyones reply has been so interesting! ! No I don't mind buying the software that I need cause I make good use of it! E.g recently I had to buy Melodyne Assistant for a recording project and at $ 200 it was unaffordable considering the vocalist had only paid me $ 150 for the project including mixing mastering and recording. Well honestly it was my fault that I did not first do a voice "test" as she has major pitching problems.... well I managed to buy Melodyne Assistant here on Kvr Marketplace for $ 100 which in retrospect is the best software purchase i made as without it I would not be able to finish the project... but then all the man hours I spent pitch fixing 20 songs absolutely killed me... ( and my family's ears) But guess I was desperate to make ends meet thats why I felt compelled to take on this work assignment. Thats why this post came about as I thought that $ 100 in the USA would be like easy small change in everyones pocket.. clearly that is not the case... so now I realise that life financially is tough for many of you folks out there and especially doing music fulltime is a risky career for most of us..

That is why I wonderd what the cost of the software would be relative to your cost of living in your Country or Usa State... Thank you every one for your interesting answers as this has been a real eye opener for me!!!

Regards
Surreal

foosnark · Post by **foosnark** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 9:13 pm

valhallasound wrote:Gas is $2.89/gallon in my neighborhood. I've seen it in the low to mid 2 dollar range in other parts of Seattle. I didn't know gas would be so much cheaper in the Midwest.

$1.65 is lower than it has been; I think last time I filled up it was $1.80 and most of the summer it was $2 or more. But St. Louis often has some of the cheapest gas in the US.

UltimateOutsider wrote:Hmm, taking a look at some of my monthly expenses in the same range as common software purchases here in the Pacific Northwest USA...
Mobile phone plan: $99

Landscapers: $110

Electricity: $120

Cable/Internet: $177

Car payment: $180
Mortgage and groceries are wayyyy more.

In St. Louis:

$150 for two mobile phones
Landscapers: $40 per job (every 2 weeks in summer, less often in spring/fall, no need in winter)
Electricity: $60 in winter, $250 in summer
Natural gas: $10 in summer, $100 in winter
Cable/internet: $100 (basic digital cable TV, but fairly fast internet)
Car payment: for my car $250, for my spouse's $200. We also made a few car payments for a friend in trouble this past year, but she seems to be back on her feet now, yay
Mortgage: $750 for a 2000 square foot house, which is really good for a suburb so close to where I work. Unfortunately, we are within a couple of miles of an underground landfill fire that is a few hundred feet away from an old illegal nuclear waste dump, and the future of that is a bit... uncertain (The fire actually started after we bought the house so it wasn't a factor in the price or anything.)

Where I get burned is with medical stuff. I could go off onto a gigantic political rant about it but I'll summarize by saying that WITH insurance I spend about $10,000 a year on prescription drugs, plus paying into medicare/medicaid/etc.; without insurance it would cost over $20,000 a year; in the UK or a Scandanavian country my annual cost would be about $3500. (Also my insurance company is currently denying prior authorization of a drug my doctor wants to put me on, a practice that costs tens of billions of dollars a year and averages 13 hours a week of useless bureaucratic trivia from nursing staff. But I will stop my rant right here.)

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 9:26 pm

In the end it doesn't really matter that much about counting pennies

What matters: Do you feel you are living a good/adequate life ?

In the end, you can't take it with you, you gotta try and live it up now

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Wed Dec 09, 2015 9:36 pm

I couldn't spend all my time correcting someone's crappy material. Especially bad vocals. That wouldn't be a job for me. It just seems so... false. I respect the arts too much to treat it as nothing but business.

I never understood what drives people to think they can make a living on a thing they suck at. I've met multiple aspiring songwriter singers who just sucked at singing and timing (but they could play guitar, which I can't do). But then, there ARE the occasional rare lucky bastards that fit the image that recording companies want to sell, and their recording engineers get paid to smooth over the "artist's" lack of ability. But I'd think those engineers get paid more than $150 for the whole session... Or do they?

surreal · Post by **surreal** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 4:51 am

Jace-BeOS wrote:I couldn't spend all my time correcting someone's crappy material. Especially bad vocals. That wouldn't be a job for me. It just seems so... false. I respect the arts too much to treat it as nothing but business.

I never understood what drives people to think they can make a living on a thing they suck at. I've met multiple aspiring songwriter singers who just sucked at singing and timing (but they could play guitar, which I can't do). But then, there ARE the occasional rare lucky bastards that fit the image that recording companies want to sell, and their recording engineers get paid to smooth over the "artist's" lack of ability. But I'd think those engineers get paid more than $150 for the whole session... Or do they?

I agree totally with what you're saying here! Usually the clients that I got in the past are people that could sing very well and are accomplished Muso'S so the recording, mixing process and ultimately the mastering went fairly quick and painless... but oooh boy not this one.... I feel more like a vocal panel beater than a Recording and Mixing Engineer on this project. Ja well in this country work is scarce or rather instinct lol.... my Momma used to say ....desperate times calls for desperate Measures....

I am also qualified Horticulturist or Nurseryman Grower here but in that line I cannot get work at all and so I had to do with other musical skills and qualifications I could so I started a recording studio..

surreal · Post by **surreal** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 4:55 am

Numanoid wrote:In the end it doesn't really matter that much about counting pennies

What matters: Do you feel you are living a good/adequate life ?

In the end, you can't take it with you, you gotta try and live it up now

I like the way you think Numanoid

Aleatoriac · Post by **Aleatoriac** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 5:37 am

Numanoid wrote:In the end it doesn't really matter that much about counting pennies

What matters: Do you feel you are living a good/adequate life ?

In the end, you can't take it with you, you gotta try and live it up now

Pretty much exactly what and why I do this... Any job I have is so I can survive and get back to the noise making. It's... it's all I live for anymore.

DJ Warmonger · Post by **DJ Warmonger** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 2:12 pm

Depends where in the world you live. In Poland median of incomes is about 800 USD / 700 Euro, which means half of people have less than that for a month.
The gear / software prices, however, are similiar all over the world

provoc · Post by **provoc** » Thu Dec 10, 2015 10:41 pm

I think music software is generally quite expensive everywhere in terms of price/performance since it doesn’t have the economy of scale of many other manufactured goods. Even compared to other software such as productivity, operating systems, A list games etc. it is still quite expensive.

Also in Australia the dollar has dropped about 40% from its peak a few years ago so that doesn’t help either. That said there are packages like Komplete that have a pretty impressive price/performance ratio. Reaper is another good one.

Personally as a hobbyist I don’t buy a lot of music software (only a few bargains here and there) and mainly stick to free stuff since I like tweaking and actually have more fun achieving something on the cheap. This is even though spending a few hundred here or there is not really an issue for me.

Of the paid software I have Pianoteq Stage is the only one I have that I feel isn’t at all replaceable for free. This came with my Keylab 88 which is the most expensive music purchase I have made but again there is no substitute for a hammer action keyboard if you want to play piano.

I am also the sort of person who prefers to fix my own car, mow my own lawns etc. so I guess it is just what I do!

In terms of making music teaching yourself to sing could be the best $0 dollar investment unless you have access to hand me down or borrowed instruments

robotmonkey · Post by **robotmonkey** » Fri Dec 11, 2015 2:47 pm

I think it's a bit relative. Generally it is expensive enough here that majority of the people tend to prefer pirated software, or a mix of legal and pirated software. This of course is also down to a fact that most of the people see software as something they can avoid buying and so it's not among their priority purchases. This is especially the case for people who do not earn a dime from their music.

But then again with all the sales going on, some of the professional software seems rather affordable if you have some spare cash. There's been quite a bit of no-brainer deals, so I'd say it would be inexcusable to use only pirated software as some of the deals have made software affordable to even the less earning people.

Fortunately my setup is rather complete so I haven't bought much for several years. I have got some rather cheapish things, usually below 20$- But even the no-brainer deals these days have to meet my two criteria: be affordable enough and be immediately useful eg add something I need or that would help me make a qualitative leap. Another EQ or Compressor I would not rock my boat even at very low price. Actually I don't bother getting something even for free just because it's free.

surreal · Post by **surreal** » Fri Dec 11, 2015 4:01 pm

True, one must use discretion these days and not succumb to the GAS attack. I would just like to get Hive though when I can afford it...

Anyway everyones inputs and answers here has been highly appreciated by me

Thank you very much!

recursive one · Post by **recursive one** » Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:36 pm

An average monthly salary in my town allows one to buy one Falcon license, one Zebra license and you'll still have as much as 30 bucks left.

How expensive is Music Software relative to Living Expenses?