How to make yourself a more attractive studio partner

Renting a studio on a dry hire rate is cool for bigger budget projects, but it’s expensive as hell and in my experience, it’s much more rewarding to move into an already established studio, sharing the space with other engineers and contributing to the rent and bills. How do you convince someone that you’re worth taking on?

Gear, clients and the willingness to contribute.

Can you fill a gap in the studio’s equipment locker? I know I bang on about gear, but having a solid set up for tracking electric guitars has helped me out a lot in these kind of situations, and I’m more than happy to share everything I use with the other engineers at the studio. What can you provide?

Clients! It’s a tricky thing when moving into an established studio, you definitely don’t want there to be an overlap in the sort of clients you have, but you do want the studio to be set up in a way that’s mutually beneficial (Ie a big live room if you both record bands). This is where having a niche market comes back in, have your own niche clients and you won’t need to worry about accidental poaching.

Can you contribute in other ways? Are you awesome at building websites, or good with trouble shooting gear problems (I wish I was either). Any of that would be insanely useful to a prospective studio partner.