The answer is it depends. A lot of pre-production early recording can be done outside of the studio or at a home studio these days. Certain styles of music have

The answer is it depends. A lot of pre-production early recording can be done outside of the studio or at a home studio these days. Certain styles of music have little need for a 'professional' studio anymore. Unless you are an established and or well funded musician that depends on good playing and acoustics for your sound most records can be made on the cheap. In the Houston area where I live there are few studios that can and do record professional and big names. Most of those have rates around 150-250 bucks per hour. Recording to tape is rarely done anymore but these days 2" tape will run between 100-300 a reel. Depending on tape speed that will capture around 10-15 minutes of multi track music. If the band is tight and arrangements are worked out you can fit 2 songs on that. Big name producers can range from a percentage of pre-recoup sales, to a flat fee to a mix of both. In the early 2000s I think Dr Dre quoted a friends and family price as a flat fee of 50k per song. I think that would balloon to 150k for those outside his circle. Also note- this receipt for the Rolling Stones is only for studio time and materials. That may include engineering time and producer fees, but I would hazard a guess that it does not. I would also bet that Jimmy Miller(the producer of Sticky Fingers) had a separate fee so the 1000 bucks was not really the all in cost.