Case study
From negotiating against himself to his first $300 master.
Edsel Holden had mastered records for more than eight years and trusted his ears. He didn’t trust himself as a business owner, so he kept undercharging. In eight weeks he built clear service tiers and started running the business like an owner.
The numbers
- 8+ years
- mastering records, three of them paying all his bills
- $90 → $125
- his per-song rate for years before coaching
- 4 tiers
- Indie, Artist, Label and All-in, with turnaround and alts built in
- $300
- his first master at that rate, booked by holding the tier
Trusted as an engineer, not as an owner
Edsel masters records at Redact Studios in Nashville. His rate sat at $90 a song for years before he moved it to $125, and he often felt like the cheap option. When someone asked what he charged, he gave a number and added that he could work with a budget.
The mastering was never the problem. The decisions around it were.
“I came into coaching primarily because I turned 35, and I trusted myself as a mastering engineer but not as a business owner. My business always felt unstable despite paying my bills fully with mastering for 3 years and actually mastering for 8+. I would always undercharge, and never really knew what I was doing when it came time for a real business decision.”
Owner, not operator
The first shift was separating the work from the business. Edsel started tracking the time he spent running the company, which he called CEO time, and realized a lot of what he had thought of as owning the business was really studio maintenance.
They built a financial model, organized his network, and set up an outreach process. Reaching back out to past clients surprised him: people were excited to hear from him, and some of the releases he saw announced were already his.
“The biggest transformation was learning to operate like an owner instead of only an operator. Owner vs operator is worth the price alone.”
Tiers that answer the question
“125 a song” told a client a number, not what they got for it. So Edsel built four tiers, from Indie to All-in, each with a clear turnaround and alternate versions included, and a plain price for rush jobs.
Budget conversations stopped being something to get through before the real work. He started asking what the artist needed and pointing to the tier that fit.
“…it’s just feels really different now when people are like, ‘Hey, I’m going to have a record for you.’ … It just I just feel so much more equipped now to just be like, ‘Yeah, here’s the rate. Here’s the service here. Here’s what you get.’”
The $300 master
Near the end of the program an A&R asked to move a release up. In the past Edsel would have panicked and done it for less. This time he pointed to his tiers: that turnaround was $300. They approved it straight away.
It was one booking, and moving people up to the Artist tier is, in his words, “going well. It’s just not instantaneous.” But it was proof the new way works.
“I’ve never made $300 mastering a song. That’s a … lifetime high point. … And the reason it worked is because of the services and tiers being so clear on my side that I felt really it was really simple.”
In Edsel’s words
What surprised me is how much work it was on the level of organizing my network and outreach systems, but also a ton of internal work to create the conditions inside of myself to trust these processes.
Who should take it? An engineer who is already making money and exists within a real network of clients, who needs help refining the systems that actually get them paid more money.
Edsel Holden Mastering Engineer, Redact Studios, NashvilleMore client stories
Jaspreet Singh From discounting to hold the sale to a rate he stands behind. Read the story 
David Maria Trapp From busy and reactive to clear rates and a business other people can help him run. Read the story 
Josh Bowman From avoiding the business side to reaching out to A&Rs and labels. Read the story These are real clients’ results, in their own words. Figures are self-reported by each client. Results vary with each engineer’s work, market and follow-through; nothing here is a promise of income.