Regardless of your background in music, you may have reached a point where you feel legitimate to provide music mixing services to new clients. But just knowing how to mix is not enough to get a minimum number of clients. So how do you go about it the right way to consider mixing music for a living? I give you all the steps to follow in this article.
To start providing music mixing services, you have to…:
- Make sure you have the required skills
- Build a brand around your services
- Make a top-quality portfolio
- Build your website
- Have a presence on social media
- Start with the people around you
Need a professional sound engineer specializing in pop and hip-hop mixing ? Great! Take a look at our services and let’s blow up your career together!
Let’s start now!
1. Make sure you have the required skills
It may seem rather silly and obvious to point out that you need a minimum of skills to start providing any service. But at a time when it has become extremely easy to provide online services, it is still worth remembering this.
If you want to hope to grow your services, your client list and therefore also your monthly income, the general quality of your mixes must be at least comparable to pro mixes. Before you make the decision to start your own business, it is essential to have enough humility to judge your own mixing skills.
Estimating the general quality of your mixes is far from easy. Because you have to be able to compare yourself to the professionals while being aware that you are starting from scratch.
If you have the opportunity, don’t hesitate to ask an experienced mixing engineer for advice on your mixes. This will allow you to place your mixing skills on a precise scale and through an external and objective opinion.
If you don’t have that opportunity, trust your instincts, with humility as a top priority.
2. Build a brand around your services
The music business is not an easy field to get into, and it can be very cruel. That’s why you have to realize that if you want to start offering mixing services in this field, you become a brand.
And this brand that you become, it doesn’t just have to have a logo and a brand image. It is imperative that you develop values and an identity that will be reflected in your work.
This is not to dehumanize the service you create, but rather to stand out against the competition that is likely to be very advanced and difficult to compete with. Without identity and value to put forward to your potential customers, you will never be a priority and you will never be able to make your services evolve.
Now you could ask yourself this question: As a (future) mixing engineer, what exactly do the terms identity and values mean?
- Your identity as a sound engineer refers to who you are in relation to what you offer as a service. For example: “I am a rap music mixing engineer, specializing in instrumental mixing.” This inspires invaluable confidence in the entire community that would like to enjoy this exact type of service.
- Your values determine all your motivations behind simply mixing music. If they align with a potential client, the values you choose allow you to create an indirect friendship with him/her early in the sales process. The values can, for example, touch on the relationship you have with the musical genre in which you specialize. They can also be related to turnaround time or prices (e.g. “low prices for amazing audio quality”).
If the client feels that he/she belongs to the same community as you, he/she will trust you very quickly.
3. Make a top-quality portfolio
In the field of art, having a portfolio of impeccable quality is essential to hope to obtain new clients on a regular basis.
To build the portfolio that will attract the most clients, you will need to take several criteria into account when choosing your projects. Here are the criteria:
A. Audio quality
Obviously, it is the audio quality that will be the first criterion to take into account. The projects you include in your portfolio should be ones that you are particularly proud of for the quality of your processing.
These are generally projects where the initial quality of the recording is impeccable and therefore facilitates the work of mixing.
B. In line with the target community
Remember that the purpose of a portfolio is to attract your target audience to become your client. Your portfolio should be built accordingly.
If you advertise that you work in hip-hop and your portfolio has no hip-hop projects, you will miss out on a lot of clients.
C. Reputation of the artist
Also keep in mind that Shazam is now part of everyone’s daily life. Your potential clients won’t hesitate to Shazam your portfolio to find out more about the artists you’ve already worked for.
If they find out that most of the artists you work for are amateurs with no reputation, they will move on. On the other hand, if they find out about serious artists, active in the music business, they will want to find out more about your services!
If you are able to build a portfolio that meets these 3 criteria, it will be super beneficial for your conversion rate!
Once you have completed this portfolio (which you can of course evolve over time), you can:
- Make a 2 or 3 minute compilation of it as an mp3 file. You will then be able to send this file by email or have it played in appropriate situations.
- Introduce it in your website as players through a before/after treatment. This always gives the client a lot of indication about the quality of your music mixes.
4. Build Your website
If you really want to take this music mixing business seriously, it is essential to have a website. A good website!
Nowadays, literally everyone goes through the internet to find out more about a person or a service. If they don’t find a site they can relate to, they will most likely pass on by.
Whether it’s with WordPress, Wix, SquareSpace or any other website building company, it can be done easily and without any coding knowledge. All that will be needed is a few hours of your time and a few dozen dollars to have a quality web hoster.
I advise you to start with something very simplistic. There is no point in doing something too complex. I myself fell into this trap when I started designing my website. And I left hours of useless work there.
If you have a friend or an acquaintance who has knowledge in this field, I advise you to go to them to avoid spending extra dollars in site building services (not always very qualitative).
If not, then I advise you to watch this super complete video on how to create and set up a new website:
I personally made my first site on Wix, and I found this builder very limited on many levels. So I switched to WordPress to build this website, and I’m more than happy with it. It is in my opinion the best website builder nowadays.
5. Have a presence on social media
When used wisely, social networks can bring you a ton of new customers. Using social media to get more customers can actually be more effective and faster than you think. It’s super powerful!
But don’t think that just having an account linked to your services is enough to attract potential clients. You have to be active. Both on your own account (videos, reels, photos,…) and within the community (comments, likes, shares,…).
If you are consistent and post content consistently, social networks such as Instagram or TikTok will eventually put you in front through the algorithm. But this obviously doesn’t happen in a few weeks, it’s work that extends over months.
The important thing on social networks is to showcase your identity. Just like with your brand image, the stronger your identity is, the more you will be able to stand out and retain a certain audience. But what kind of content to post on social networks?
It depends a lot on what you want to showcase through your services. For example, videos and Instagram Reels with humor can be extremely effective. But if your brand image advocates something serious, it won’t work.
Social networks should actually represent the same identity and values as your website and your brand image. And whatever your strategy is, the human side must absolutely be put forward.
6. Start with the people around you
If you are planning to start music mixing services, you probably have big ambitions, which is a very good thing! But at the beginning of the process, you need to be able to aim smaller.
Indeed, it is useless to want to mix for artists you don’t know from the beginning. Because, at the beginning, your chances to work with artists you don’t know are tiny.
What you must absolutely privilege is word of mouth. Start by telling your family and friends about your music mixing services. And ask them to spread the word! This step is really crucial.
This is how you will get your first serious client, who will bring in a third. And then he will bring in more. That’s how it works in the beginning.
It may sound simple enough when you say it like that. In reality, it takes a lot of work: you have to be constantly on the lookout for new customers in your environment. The first clients may not be the best ones, but you have to work hard to build your reputation with the biggest artists.
The beginning is not easy. But these first clients are crucial for your future. Because the more you satisfy them with your music mixing services, the more they will talk about it.
My best advice: act like a pro, from the beginning.
Need a professional sound engineer specializing in pop and hip-hop mixing ? Great! Take a look at our services and let’s blow up your career together!
Let’s start now!
How much should you charge for your services?
If you want to start a music mixing service, you need to know how much money you will charge your first clients. Then in the medium and long term.
Finding the right amount to charge to each client is not easy, it requires, at the beginning, a lot of trial and error to find the ideal figure for you and your future clients.
The average price you charge will generally depend on 6 factors:
- Experience
- Reputation
- Time spent per mix
- Workload
- Turnaround time
- Client’s budget
To this list can also be added the genre in which you work. Indeed, the musical genre can vary a lot some factors such as the workload, the turnaround time or directly the budget of the client.
For example, mixing rap music is totally incomparable to mixing soul music. The recording and production process is much more complex in the second genre.
ℹ️ If you work in hip-hop music and don’t know how much to charge your clients, then I advise you to read this super complete article about How Much You Should Charge For Mixing Vocals To a Beat
But no matter what genre of music you plan to offer services in, the key factor will always be the experience. Because it is this factor that allows you, first of all, to assure your future clients of a quality product. But also to adapt to all the problems that you could potentially encounter in future projects.
The second general parameter to take into account is the working time. Do you spend one day per project? An hour? Three hours? This must be a priority in the way you bill your clients.
But never forget to be efficient! In this business, people like to get their material quickly and without delay.
Conclusion
If you follow all these tips scrupulously, you will see that your first serious clients will come your way quite quickly. But what you need to keep in mind before you start is that in the beginning, finding a client requires a lot of effort and work. Don’t think that because your service, your brand image, your website, your social networks are created that customers will come instantly.
Be serious in your work, active in your community and talk about your services around you, and then you will see quick results in the evolution of your services!
If you have any questions about this topic or about anything in the field of music mixing, please contact me, I’m always very happy to answer!
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My favorite tools for mixing pop and hip-hop music:
Plugins
In the field of auto-tune, I’m convinced that nothing’s better and more efficient than Antares Auto-Tune Pro. As for the EQ’s, FabFilter Pro-Q3 and Slate Digital Infinity EQ are, in my opinion, the best tools. For compression, I have 2 favorites plugins: Waves RComp and UAD EL8 Distressor.
As for reverb, I’m a big fan of the Soundtoys Little Plate, but generally, I go for the Valhalla VintageVerb for its versatility. I also love the Arturia Rev PLATE-140 and the UAD Pure Plate for its organic side.
Headphones
The closed headphones I love and will always love using for mixing pop and hip-hop music are the Beyerdynamic DT-770. As for the best open-back headphones, I use the Sennheiser HD600 headphones, and I’m really happy of them!
Monitors
Having a pair of Yamaha HS7 in its studio or home studio is always cool for more excitement while listening to your mixes. The Adam Audio T7V monitors are also super accurate. In my studio, I also have a pair of Genelec 8030 for their reliability.
Hardware gear
For anyone who wants to start using hardware in their mixes, I always recommend these 2 units from Klark Teknik: the EQP-KT and the 76-KT. Don’t forget to use good converters, such as the Apollo interfaces. This is essential for a good rendering.
