Buisness slow for anyone else?

Holly {censored} are things slow right now. I have 3 projects between now and the end of April and that's it. Normally that would okay since this is just side stuff anyhow, but one is a 1 song, the second is a 2, and the third is 4.

The studio where I interned is pretty much saying the same thing. Hopefully tax return season will help out.

Yeah, it's been slow, but starting to see signs of things picking up again. I've been using the downtime to do some renovations that have been on the back burner for a while. (My studio's in a barn; I'm tearing down a couple walls, installing new lighting, relocating the mixing desk and building gobos.)

It's been slowing down in Cali for well over a year. I'm a cork bobbing on the economic waters and I felt it coming... things are not slow. They're downright rugged... No one is doing anything 'discretionary' right now... no new projects. No business makeovers. No promotions except bottom-feeder promotions (one day cheap breakfast type stuff). About the only clients I have who are starting anything new are those whose resources are not tied directly to the economy. And nothing is completely unrelated. At a certain point, even organizations funded by endowments and trusts start slowing down their expenditures.

I work for a large marketing firm. Guess who our biggest client is?

GM.

Strangely, it's not slow. GM very much needs to continue to project image on the marketplace so we are working. But it's like those slim trails heading up the Himalayas or the Sierras in the movies... Bogey turns back and says, "Keep your eyes focused on the trail upwards and don't for a second forget where you end up if you stop paying attention. He then tosses a stone over the edge and we never hear it hit bottom.

It's like that. Do I still have a gig on Monday?

Then there's the 2nd gig. Album production. My terms. Half up front, 2nd half on delivery. "So, we're done. We're OK with the last payment, yeah?"

It's been 6 weeks and I'm waiting. He didn't realize that he wouldn't actually get the final without paying the final. He's behind on mortgage and prop tax. Do we have a Smilie of a guy whistling and looking at his watch?

Yeah, I had that kind of experience a few times and switched over to pay-as-you-go billing. The studio always gets paid, and by studio I mean me.

It has been slow for me for a year now.

I am a multi-purpose writer/editor/English teacher. I just lost my full time job--remarkable that it lasted as long as it did actually. I have some steady freelance work to fall back on in the transition, as well as a touch of the NYS UI. I look at the prospect of pursuing another "corporate type" gig (I say "type" 'cause on this last salaried job, I worked at home for 3 1/2 years, in my underwear, metaphorically and only very rarely literally speaking...

And the prospects are so bleak that I am inspired to develop new paths for a lean time. I hate corporate jobs anyway. I will go back to a cobble of teaching, freelancing, gigging, composing, etc. I am still in the first blush of transition here, when things are always rosiest, but I figure if I can scale lifestlye appropriately, this could be a fine time for me, you know?

Look I am as blessed as anyone can be to have a wife who is tenured school teacher (and a really really good one you would be thrilled for your kids to have, in case that helps pre-empt the bizarre vitriol of the folk who blame everything including cholera, black ice and The Jonas Brothers on the teacher's unions...)

Cheque.

Some things are slower, some things are faster. HC is doing really well, but hey, it's free and the user reviews draw a lot of people in during times like this when every dollar counts. EQ is a mixed bag; our readership actually grew last year (which really bucks a trend) but advertisers are tight with the pursestrings, which is to be expected.

The studio business has been slowing for quite some time now. There was an editorial in EM magazine by Nathan Kunkel in which he laments the slow time for studios and engineers, and he wrote that before the recent crash.

The studio biz has been in transition for a long time now; at least since ADAT"s came out. The biggest and best studio in the metro Detroit area has been spending as much time teaching Pro Tools as it has been being used for actual recording. More and more big studios are going out of business because the work just isn't there like it used to be.

Obviously, at my reg'lar job as a Special Education teacher, it's business as usual.

At my studio, Blueberry Buddha, I've bizarrely seen an upswing in inquiries. Whether these pan out, only time will tell. If everyone who says that they are going to record here actually do, I'm going to be booked solid through June.

Remember that since I do that, my version of "booked solid" is far different from someone who does this full-time for a living. "Booked solid" to me means that most or all of my weekends and the occasional weekday are busy with recording clients.

Oh, quit being such a sissy, Ken. An apple a day, keeps the doctor away.

It was just an unconscious reaction. I'm okay now.

I think you mean subconscious. Throwing up in your mouth while unconscious is very dangerous. Don't make me come over there to clear your airway and give you mouth-to-mouth.

Thanks, but really, I'm okay now!!

See?

Slower than last year.

I've found the US has slowed, my current work is in Europe, the mid East and locally.

Yes it has.

I know five, count 'em five, well-regarded, experienced people in the pro audio industry who have lost their jobs within the last month for various reasons (not me).

It's actually picked up for me a little bit.

I have to say, as I work in a hospital, business hasn't changed at all.... it has picked up a bit in fact. Besides.... I'll be "retirement eligible" in about 4 1/2 more months. I probably won't retire exactly on time, but I do think I'll be able to last that long before something terrible happens to my job.