Building a music studio business
- Gavin Hyatt
- May 5, 2021
- 8 min read
Updated: Mar 1
Gavin Hyatt at Green Room Studios walks us through how to build a music rehearsal space business.
I played music from a very young age and was always interested in all things musical. My grandparents said I was ‘gifted’. In truth, it was more enjoyable to sit for hours on end with headphones in, playing tunes, than to go and play football. It was more interesting. I enjoyed it, and played for hours every day. That’s not a gift, it’s dedication, it’s hard work and anyone who can make a career out of something like music has probably put in 10,000 hours of hard work before they see their first financial reward. And probably several years more before they begin to break even.
I was in several bands when growing up and this led to the formation of my band 'Longweekend’. I was the front man, Richard Kibbey played bass, Andy Pugh on guitar and Jon Sawyers on drums. We were pretty good and popular in pubs, weddings and all sorts of events.
We rehearsed one or two nights a week, played pretty much every weekend, sometimes several nights back-to-back. I was often sleeping on Richard's sofa throughout this time as well as spending time at my grandparents’ house and sleeping in my van. Richard and I had several business ventures, all successful in their own way. WitneyTV and Oxbox both took off and we launched our business (Oxford Television) to bid for the new local TV channel for Oxfordshire.
Our research and gut feelings held us back from making a bid and in the end, we let the opportunity pass us by, concentrating instead on making business web videos to promote on our Oxbox Platform. After making a handful of videos, it was obvious a green screen studio would be an advantage. A space was available and all I had to do was make a few videos for the guy I was sub-letting from instead of paying rent.
It was just one, sub-let room in an industrial unit and I built it myself over the summer. It needed to be as sound sterile as possible and as a result, gave us a rehearsal room for my band, who were at the time gigging most weekends.
I managed to build a small office/control room which was a kind of airlock between the studio and the rest of the building. Word got out very quickly, other bands started using the room in the evenings, taking over as a core business activity. Less than 9 months later, our landlord was locked out of the building for not paying the rent and we were out.
That could have been the end of the story, but thanks to a helping hand from the owner of the building, we managed to salvage lots of materials from the first studio. We moved over the road into Burnham House, a 1970’s builders’ workshop, warehouse and offices. We were offered a choice of two small office rooms at the front of the building and took both, which I converted into a live room and a control room/office. The landlord was supportive and intrigued as to what I would do to the space. We moved in to Burnham House in September 2013.
As time went on, it made sense for Oxford Television to take control of the studio. Other businesses moved out of Burnham House, so we took on their space and pluralised our name to reflect our sprawling empire.
Like all growing businesses, we had painful times. Both myself and my business partner, Richard Kibbey (Directors) agreed we would not draw any money out of the business, instead reinvesting all profits into building a music studio business. We ploughed vast sums into the project, our life savings, pensions, hearts and souls.
We had both played music professionally. We had shared the indignity of rehearsing in practice rooms that smelt like a sports changing room, lit by a single 25w bulb, with rusty microphones and wonky stands. We knew we wanted to offer something different, something better: decent equipment, cutting edge tech and inspirational surroundings. This was to be a gymnasium for musicians.
Although we had taken on a large chunk of space, we had no capital to fund the construction of the new rooms. Even doing the work ourselves and using reclaimed materials, still made the process painfully slow. Once we built the first new room, we moved on to the next, the increase in turnover provided more momentum and our knowledge for building, insulating and ventilating grew.
The slow, snowballing expansion allowed us to grow our client base and we managed to stay a step ahead of demand. We added vending machines to our lobby with snacks, fizzy pop and hot drinks. We had something different to our competition and another revenue stream.
Once we had completed three rooms on the ground floor we had the mammoth task of creating studios four and five upstairs. We had started building these earlier but had put them on hold until we had the ground floor rooms constantly booked out.
When we realised five rooms may not meet demand, we took some radical steps and redesigned the low-ceiling storage space in the eaves into an office. Our office was now a fifth rehearsal room and our stunning, grandiose live room Studio 6.
In the centre of the building was an area of warehouse space which, due to the way we had expanded, had become cut off from the rest of the building. It served no practical use storing cardboard for recycling and part worn tyres belonging to another business. I came up with the idea of an indoor Music Festival to raise funds to complete the studios.
In a short 10-week period, we turned the warehouse in to a live performance area with a stage, sound system, lighting and even a Bar.
The GreenRoomFestival made a loss of £3000. It exhausted us, but brought massive excitement. It proved we could put on a show, do impossible things and finish building what we called Studio Se7en before studios four, five and six had been completed. We managed to complete the three upstairs rooms and bookings boomed.
GreenRoomFestival had lost money but, we had introduced 2,000 new people to our space. We had lots of bands wanting to rehearse on the stage, to use the rooms we had built to rehearse and record, and perform in our ‘venue’ with two parachutes drapped across the ceiling.
Throughout the rest of 2019, we put on 21 nights of musical entertainment. Many sold out. We had no complaints from neighbours and on the whole, they were a roaring success. The only learning points being things we could change with a bit of budget and creative thinking.
We had already started a major overhaul of Studio Se7en in January 2020. Phase 1 was to include a new permanent stage to replace the modular one so we could reopen in April for a repeat of the GreenRoomFestival. Rich was doing most of the work on his own, I popped in during the evenings and weekends to help with the heavy stuff. We managed to obtain reclaimed timber to build the stage which saved us a small fortune.
Bookings were busier than ever, and we were now regularly selling out our six available rooms every evening. In February 2020, we recorded our highest ever turnover. We looked through the figures, previous year’s sales and projections. We were set to move in to profit in around 6 months and finally be able to pay ourselves a wage and take a return on the investments we had made.
And then... bands started to cancel when members, their friends or family members were receiving word they should shield themselves from contact with others. Two weeks later, the nation was locked down with the greatest worldwide pandemic in living memory. Rich had been living off his savings since giving up his day job. I had an income, but the studio was immediately plunged into uncertainty. We watched with bated breath at every announcement about business grants, rate relief and bounce-back loans. Sleepless nights followed trying to figure out what we could do.
Thankfully, we were able to access some grants and a bounce back loan. Rather than sitting at home, we decided to make use of the down time to undertake some building work which we hadn’t been able to consider. We had to make do in the early days but the refurb meant removing every fixture, fitting and cable and going completely back to the drawing board.
We fitted a hard-wired smoke alarm system with heat and smoke sensors throughout the building. We also had time to install flashing beacons, sirens, a control panel near the front door, and even a device which mutes the PA system to alert users to evacuate. In normal times, this would have taken weeks and involved making areas out of bounds for a few days at a time. Lockdown meant we could do the whole lot in one go. Emergency lighting was uprated at the same time, hand dryers fitted to the toilets and lots of little jobs completed.
Several customers asked if there was anything they could do to help. Some helped move equipment, filled skips and painted walls. Our lighting gantries were taken away, stripped and powder coated in glorious black. Some were willing to pay upfront for future rehearsals and recordings so we launched a crowd-funder ‘Rock Out To Help Out’. This was a spin on the government's efforts to get us all going out to restaurants in August and September (resulting in Lockdown number 2). We made a spoof video based on a charity appeal with sad music and a tongue in cheek vibe and raised almost £3000.
We looked at our future plans for Studio Se7en and decided to bring forward phases 2, 3 and 4. This meant fitting a new suspended ceiling, PA system and a new lighting system. We received a grant from OxMAT to provide a live streaming capability in Studio Se7en and set about removing our existing staff kitchen to create a lighting gallery. We also built two workstations for video mixers/producers to edit, add graphics and overlays to a live video stream. With no sign of lockdown lifting, we moved ahead with the completion of our brand-new Main Control Room adjacent to Studio 6. We had around 1500 solder connections to make good before it was ready to go, but it looks stunning.
Although during the pandemic professional musicians could rehearse, most of our clients had nothing to rehearse for. There was just no demand and the 1% who needed our services wouldn’t provide sufficient revenue to justify opening. It was a great relief when we were finally able to announce our reopening on 12th April for professional bands, those working towards recordings, performance or examination.
As of May 2021 our customers have flooded back. There has been a huge influx of new interest in what we do, thanks in part to our constant social media updates and photos of what we have going on. Amateur rehearsals and jam sessions will recommence on 17th May and we are really looking forward to the return to ‘normality’. We have big plans for the studios. Once we have finished the main control room, we will be fitting a dedicated vocal booth. We will refit our ground control room. This will provide us with three individual production spaces and various pricing tiers for self-service or working with our producers. We are looking at providing work experience and internships for music technology students as well as offering short courses, instrument and vocal tuition and other specialisms such as theatrical lighting and video editing.
If you have managed to read this far, thank you. There’s a heap more chapters to the story, some of it probably more interesting than what I have detailed above, such as:
Rich and Gav play a live gig to 28,000 people
We almost launch a TV channel
I accidentally become the voice of two premium automotive brands
Rich has lunch with Newton Faulkner, Jeremy Irons and Rick Wakeman
Our first ever work experience student gets nominated for a Brit Award
A list of the well-known artists and producers who have graced our hallways
If I had the chance to do it all again, of course I would. I would maybe do things a bit differently, but I probably wouldn’t have had half the fun.
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