Typical Studio Musician Rates -- late 60's / early 70's.

[jsmith]

From memory a typical studio musicians pay rate back in the late 60's / early 70's was around $10 to 15 / hour -- and lots of studios / producers tried to pay less than 'union rate'.
I may well be wrong with my quoted figure.

Today, things have moved on but not by that much. A typical studio musician [[not a 'name' session player) will get around $25 per hour or $50 per completed song. Backing singers getting around the same rate.

So, aside from the cost of hiring the studio, the arranger, the producer [[the cost of the engineer coming in with the studio hire cost), sessions can't have cost that much if we're just talking musician / backing singer costs.
A typical studio session would I guess have involved say 5 musicians & 2 backing singers, so that would run [[back in the day) at around $100 per hour.
I know some record guys would make use of a local 'cheap' resource -- seem to recall the likes of John Richbough / Shelby Singleton using the local music college's student band with very little cost involved [[& that could run to 20+ musicians; strings, brass, percussion, etc.).
So the cost of many sessions were kept quite low, which is probably why so many soul tracks were cut back in the 60's / 70's.
AT MOTOWN, they had their own dedicated studio band [[the Funk Bros), who were never too happy about how much they earned [[& so were always taking outside sessions on the quiet). The backing singers were usually other Motown acts [[or the Andantes).
. . . .So session costs were kept low-ish.
So how come most Motown acts owed BG & Motown loads of money for past sessions, so didn't get paid out much when they enjoyed a hit record. Was this due to a lot of 'creative accounting' ?

[jsmith]

EVD wouldn't have been paid for this session, as he was in the featured band & not an 'outside musician' working on the session.

[ralpht]

It is true, at one time musicians were paid about $25.00 per session in Detroit. Somewhere along the line the Musicians Union took hold and all dates became Union dates which at that time was about $125.00 per 3 hour date. Motown was one of the first to go union along with Golden World, so the income of session musicians improved greatly.

[jsmith]

Good to learn that Ralph.

[robb_k]

From memory a typical studio musicians pay rate back in the late 60's / early 70's was around $10 to 15 / hour -- and lots of studios / producers tried to pay less than 'union rate'.
I may well be wrong with my quoted figure.

Today, things have moved on but not by that much. A typical studio musician [[not a 'name' session player) will get around $25 per hour or $50 per completed song. Backing singers getting around the same rate.

So, aside from the cost of hiring the studio, the arranger, the producer [[the cost of the engineer coming in with the studio hire cost), sessions can't have cost that much if we're just talking musician / backing singer costs.
A typical studio session would I guess have involved say 5 musicians & 2 backing singers, so that would run [[back in the day) at around $100 per hour.
I know some record guys would make use of a local 'cheap' resource -- seem to recall the likes of John Richbough / Shelby Singleton using the local music college's student band with very little cost involved [[& that could run to 20+ musicians; strings, brass, percussion, etc.).
So the cost of many sessions were kept quite low, which is probably why so many soul tracks were cut back in the 60's / 70's.
AT MOTOWN, they had their own dedicated studio band [[the Funk Bros), who were never too happy about how much they earned [[& so were always taking outside sessions on the quiet). The backing singers were usually other Motown acts [[or the Andantes).
. . . .So session costs were kept low-ish.
So how come most Motown acts owed BG & Motown loads of money for past sessions, so didn't get paid out much when they enjoyed a hit record. Was this due to a lot of 'creative accounting' ?

WOW! That's VERY surprising that such well-known and visible producers as John Richbourg and Shelby Singleton would use non-union musicians during the mid '60s, when I thought the unions were already solid by then in Nashville.

[bob_olhsson]

At the time Motown went union, it was $60/ 3-hour session with a 4-song limit for masters and 6 for demos.

[jsmith]

Great info.
Robb, I read that detail in an interview about them cutting soul tracks back in the 60's ... they'd use the studio's usual band as well, paying them the going rate. But the student band input would be added to some tracks to 'sweeten' / 'fill out' the final mix.

[bob_olhsson]

Detroit and Chicago were the centers of radio production in the late 1940s. NBC and CBS were in Chicago while ABC was in Detroit. Between performing on live radio and recording for advertising, our musicians were very well paid. I used to joke that Motown was their hobby.

Musicians have always worked for less "off the card" on unsigned artists with the understanding they would get paid scale if the recording was ever released.

[ralpht]

In the 35 years I lived in Monterey, I got to know a local legend, sax player, Jake Stock. A real character if there ever is one. After I had known the guy for a number of years, he would tell me he got his start playing on Detroit radio.

[imnokid]

" So how come most Motown acts owed BG & Motown loads of money for past sessions, so didn't get paid out much when they enjoyed a hit record. Was this due to a lot of 'creative accounting' ?"

Artists were advanced money for cars, clothes, airfare, pocket money, etc. Bettye left every label that she was on back in the day owing them money. It had little to nothing to do with session fees.

[bob_olhsson]

Motown artists originally got a fixed weekly salary-like advance and were only charged for that plus session musicians because it was part of the A.F. of M's. national contract. They were not charged for studio time, promotion or the other stuff typical of most labels.

Mrs. Edwards told me it was patterned after how Chess contracts worked because she and Berry both believed them to be lots more fair than typical contracts. By the time an artist paid the session fees for songs that were not hits on top of what they'd received weekly, there wasn't a lot, if any money left. Still Motown's artists actually took home a lot more money than most labels ever paid their artists. When I've explained how that worked to contemporary artists and managers, it always puts their jaws on the floor.