Anybody ever think about...

Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 8:13 am

Opening a recording studio in a mall?

It sounds like a crazy idea, but around here, mall real estate is about as cheap as any other commercial real estate.

You'd generate an a$$load of foot traffic and visibility (not to mention, our particular mall has a Guitar Center in it).

During "normal" business hours (think teenie-bopper hours - so, 4-9PM) you could record Daddy's little princesses singing over karaoke tracks of their favorite Pop princesses in the front of the store (think a Mackie mixer, a CD player and a 2 track CD burner) all the while, in the back of the store, have a legitimate recording studio...

It's just a thought...I don't personally have the balls to do it myself here...just curious if anyone else has.

Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 1:57 pm

I've had some similar thoughts...not in a mall, but the karaoke thing. My wife used to host karaoke at a place in her home town - that spurred thought of recording karaoke anyways...

Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:36 pm

I do my best singing on karaoke night, just ask me!

Live karaoke recording cd burning in a bar, now that would be wild as heck Wink

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 10:15 am

yeah it could work, all you would need to do is make sure that its all sound proffed etc, which may create a high start up cost, also would have to look at laws on recording minors i dont know if there is a law, but say a 11 kid walked in and wanted to record could you do that with out the parents consent, etc....

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 11:39 am

Usually I only feel the need to quote this when I walk past people staking shelves at my local supermarket under the worst florescent light and with the worst music playing over tinny speakers...

"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time."

A girl working in a tanning salon that had shop frontage looking into an underground car park saw me mouth those words. And you would too from the desk inside your karaoke recording studio if I walked past.

That being said, if you have mouths to feed...

Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 11:53 am

There's a lot of potential for good singers to be "found" like this.

If you marketed it properly with an emphasis on groups (like recording 4 people for one track)...how many people are going to bring a group and sing along to "Now That's What [The Entertainment Industry] Calls Music!"

You'd be looking at a fairly big setup though, if you want a whole studio in the back. Maybe a main vocal booth, a karaoke room, a main room and then a shop front. The karaoke room would have a glass wall so you could see in from reception...
I have too much of this planned.

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 8:40 am

Codemonkey wrote:

I have too much of this planned.

I'm with you...
Every time I go into our local mall and see the shop *right next to* the Guitar Center sitting vacant, my mind races with ideas...

I don't think it would actually be that much of a start up cost - no more than retro-fitting any other existing structure into a recording studio. I suppose it could be done VERY easily within a $20K budget...

I thought of the idea first when I saw something similar at a local amusement park (King's Dominion). They record kids with a green screen behind them and put all sorts of music-video-esque things behind them while they sing along with Britney and other no-talent hacks.

I imagine they would have more of a legal issue on their hands...just imagine what could be done if a raw green screen footage were to be released of teenagers singing... :-O

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 12:53 pm

haha true..
it could work, got the unqiue factor and def an edge on other people..
suppose no reason why someones studio cant be in a mall compare to in a basment or where ever you want a studio to be..
at least they can go shopping while they waiting for the track to be mixed down lol.

Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 9:30 pm

If I was older, richer and had a bit more cred in the business world, I'd go do this right now. Seriously. However...

Actually I thought of a problem - isolation (obviously it's not gonna be a major one)? You're gonna get a lot of noise from shoppers.

What would you call it?
Store Recordings?

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 9:37 am

A Room Without A View Productions?

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 1:52 pm

TheUkProducer wrote:

......say a 11 kid walked in and wanted to record could you do that with out the parents consent, etc....

I would say probably not. Not if you want the kid to sign any kind of confidentiality agreement or if you want to maintain any kind of rights in regards to mechanical or if say he needed back up instrumentation. Maybe if it were merely a Karaoke recording(which is a available in one of the malls here), it would be ok. But if we're talking originals, it could be an issue.

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:11 pm

This is the case with any studio - mall or otherwise.

When a minor comes in to do anything (rare - usually violinists/etc. for taped auditions) we have the parents present and sign.

For a "mall" situation - it would be a Karaoke kind of thing only. If they want to book real studio time...bring the parents.

Regarding isolation -
It would be far less of a problem than you'd think. Shopping malls in the US are built quite well with significant isolation from one store to the next (fear of a fire spreading and getting out of hand in a crowded, large environment.)

Many of the stores in the local mall have a solid front (usually glass but some other materials as well.) I'm certain one could build an isolating wall of glass, then perhaps a small waiting area/lobby/information/viewing area and then the studio. This would actually be quite easy and cost less than about $500.

Bear in mind, the goal of the front-facing studio wouldn't be perfect isolation and EXTREME quality -
it would be for daddy's princesses or some punk to come lay down his/her voice over bad backing tracks...to pay the rent so to say. (Oh...and have a local GC flunky man the recording up front - pay him/her $8 an hour and crank them out all day... Kids pay $25 a track to lay their voices down - pitch corrected all to hell...you could squeeze in 6 or so an hour.)

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:23 pm

So, if you did 60 kids a day at $25 a pop, that's only $1500 gross per day.

When you start adding up your investment and operating costs, that's not a lot of money. And that's assuming that you will have 6 kids an hour for 10 hours each day. Maybe in the right market, but I doubt you could fly it in this city of 1 million.

I suppose people make a living with a lot less though. Like the GC guy that you will hire. And, if you like recording bad singers in front of bad muzak for a living it would not be so bad.

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:45 pm

Well...you're making a few assumptions here.

If we're assuming we're talking about me and my studio doing this:
1 - I already clear a pretty decent amount on top of this already (quite into the black for the past several years)
2 - Our population is far greater than 1 million. The city of Fredericksburg and counties of Stafford, Spotsylvania and King George (the areas serviced by this mall - not to mention Caroline county and Prince William county (PW county is huge BTW)) is over 3 million.

Also, I wouldn't be the one recording the kids so I could care less about listening to the music. I'm talking about a "front business" - the purpose of which would be to "pay the rent" on the facility solely. This being done, the remainder of the studio could operate in the black at all times with no worries of sustainment.

BTW - $1500 gross daily is a LOT of money for a "project" studio. Even if it only cleared $200 a day during the week and $1000 a day on the weekends, I could pay the kids' wages (button pushers), keep the lights on, maintain all equipment (computers, phones, internet, utilities, etc.), pay the rent and still pocket a bit. (And throw a nice Xmas party for the GC dropouts.)

Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 3:01 pm

Cucco,

this actully was done quite a few years (maybe even a couple of decades) ago in a mall in Indianapolis. It offered prerecorded tracks of Top 40 songs. Kind of a precursor to karaoke.

It lasted about 18 mos, IIRC.

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