The Real Wizard wrote: Is there no way to cut your costs? All you need is a basic studio setup and a few mics for your piano. The only real expense is the CDs and packaging, and you can definitely do a few hundred copies for less than 3 grand.
Best of luck to you, all the same !
Looking forward to hearing a sample of your work.
A "very basic studio setup" costs around 650 euros per day, plus the cost of hiring a piano and the tuner (around 1000 Euros for two days, but this recording is gonna take at least three days). For a commercial production we need just the best. I cannot just put some random mics on my own piano. We need good acoustics, a professional sound engineer, a perfect piano.
After the recording phase there is the mixing and the post-production. This is quite a long phase where the artist, together with one mixing technician, chooses the "final sound" of the products. Mixing an album costs around 50 Euros per hour.
Then there are the expenses for the graphics: production and design of the booklet.
Plus the expenses of paying the rights to Queen. And, finally, printing and distributing the album.
I have a recording label which I am working with for my classical projects. Make a search on youtube or iTunes or Amazon and you will see I have many products on the market, so you can imagine I know the productive process quite well, for that is my job. For this product I decided to go independent to have a better control of the whole process and let my audience participate. That is quite a common thing between musicians: the music band Marillion, which used to be quite popular back in the 80s (especially because they sounded like Genesis!) now produce all their album through preselling copies and merchandise with a crowd-funding campaign. Fans are happy because they feel part of it and they are happy to develop great products with their help.
I hope now the situation is clearer ;)