According to the Oxford English dictionary the noun pirate "is a person on a ship who attacks other ships at sea in order to steal from them". Although this might be a strong metaphor of the Pirate (Studios) operation it goes some way to explain how it is disrupting the established music rehearsal space world. Indeed, it's Facebook page states it's: "Creating the future of rehearsal and DJ studio”. So what is Pirate all about?
First, a little history.
BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
Starting in 2014 in Bristol in England as a single rehearsal studio in a converted police station, founders David Borrie and Mikey Hammerton hit on the idea of a self-service space after their studio reached maximum capacity hired out to local bands.
Not long after, they moved to Hackney in London. Taking their lead from self-service gymnasiums and car-sharing companies, Pirate’s mantra was to trust musicians to access a studio without anyone from the company in attendance.
By November 2018 it had become an independent corporate business securing $20m from Talis Capital, Eric Archambeau (Spotify investor) and Bart Swanson of Horizons Ventures to expand across the UK, Germany and the US As a corporate entity its shareholders were now electing a board of directors to oversee the organisation's activities.
In 2019 its revenues nearly doubled to £3.6m but recorded an operating loss of just under £9m. In 2022 Pirate secured a further undisclosed amount of funding from Edge Venture Capitalists to continue growing. At some point Pirate’s revenue should exceed its operating expenses and its shareholders see a return on investment.
By 2022 it had reached the milestone of 250k customers and one million bookings. In 2023 it managed 737 individual studios in the UK, Germany, US and Ireland employing between 101-250 people. The scale of such a music rehearsal space company has not be seen before.
DESCRIPTION
Pirate is one of, if not, the biggest providers of rehearsal studios and self-service recording studios for musicians, podcasters and dancers across the world. The company has grown quickly within only a few years to operate in 37 locations across four countries including seven facilities in London. The closest rival to the scale of Pirate’s network exists in the US where examples include Francisco Studios which has music rehearsal spaces in Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tucson.
Each of Pirate’s spaces is designed and fitted with soundproofing and acoustic treatments including bespoke steel frames separating corridors, rooms and ceilings, with double ply and rubber linings for increased sound proofing. All rooms have aircon and controllable LED lighting.
Pirate has partnered with Pioneer DJ and Professional Audio to fit-out rooms with its industry standard DJ equipment, loudspeakers and subwoofers found in most clubs around the world.
The music production suites are fitted with MIDI keyboards, audio interfaces, computer monitors and studio speakers. The scale of its operation enables it to negotiate prices with manufacturing partners.
Pirate's use of technology extends to automated recording/live streaming where in some rooms users can easily record and stream their performance using built-in mics and cameras. A room kitted out like this brings fans closer to their favourite artist at work.
Its success lies in the large quantity of rooms in each location available to hire by the hour, the ease by which they can be accessed, and their design for different uses. Lost is a friendly and helpful guy always available on reception in a characterful building, and in comes a space bristling with technology.
Pirate's Senior Area Manager, Dylan Hughes, explained: "We have Site Managers who are in charge of specific Pirate sites. They look after kit, make sure studios are clean and help artists out. We are currently recruiting Site Assistants to support the Site Managers and improve our studio experience further. Once a day we have a full clean and studio reset by cleaners and/or Site Managers. We ask artists to leave the rooms as they found them and respect their shared space.”
PIRATE THE BUILDER
Its model is based around renting industrial warehouses and building individual studios within them.
All Pirate spaces are built according to templates developed across its 700-odd rooms and its experience in servicing clients' needs - DJ booth, dance floor, podcast suite, recording or band rehearsal. Pirate's Senior Head of Marketing, Ira Krachanovskaya, estimated the split of different uses by its community across its sites:
38% DJ
37% band rehearsal
23% music production/recording
1% podcast
1% dance
Specifications for each type of room are standardised for economy of scale, including the equipment. Interviewed by The Music Ally website David Borrie said: “We design all the studios ourselves. It’s only through the fact that we do it in-house that we can make it so affordable for the artists.”
One of the challenges for those setting up a music rehearsal space is finding a landlord willing to sign a 10-15 year lease protecting a building from future development. This may mean looking to the fringes of an urban area some distance from a city's music scene. With the rising cost of property, future homes having a smaller footprint and limited soundproofing, demand is there for the hiring of affordable music spaces in urban areas (see Futurology: the new home in 2050).
Locating user demand for studio space is an issue too. Pirate has developed its own global demand index to determine where to place a facility.
"Our global demand index is based on various sources of data to help us choose new regions," said Owen Conway-Hughes, Pirate's Senior Head Of Development & Design. "Once a region has been chosen, we get to know the cities and their music scenes to understand where exactly we would best be located to meet the needs of local musicians. It’s a balance at the end of the day in terms of location, cost, buildings available and meeting the needs of artists.”
By building the physical spaces to create music and the technology to record it, Pirate is carving out a place and a price somewhere between hiring a music rehearsal space and recording studio. This makes recording the next killer track within easier reach of individual pockets primed for distribution across social media channels.
Pirate has found by locating its studios on the edge of town has unwittingly had other benefits. A local pub close to Pirate's studios in London's Earlsfield area has reported a significant shift in their passing trade.
REMOTE ACCESS
The rise of Pirate has meant it has pioneered a technology to provide remote access to its session-based studios. This includes online booking, 24 hour key-code access, and other Internet of Things' controls for managing facilities. Prices are kept to a minimum by offering 24-hour access charging as little as £4 per hour, depending on the studio and facilities.
Customers are able to let themselves in and out of the studio unaided. Unique codes can be sent for different locks, allowing a musician to access the front door, use a second code to open a personal locker and a third to enter their selected practice room.
Pirate's use of innovative door locks enables personalised codes to be created via an online portal and sent remotely via SMS or email. Users are sent a time-limited access code which expires after a set duration. This allows users to pay to hire a room at times that suit them. The online booking also applies to on-site storage lockers.
The access codes can also be used to create an audit trail, enabling Pirate staff to remotely view which users are using the rooms and at which times. A mobile app allows the locks to be opened remotely and monitored via a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone. Without staff on the premises and using this technology minimises costs allowing Pirate to pass on the savings to its users.
Its use of technology has also helped in its commitment to reduce its energy consumption by powering down its studios. “Each of our studios has a killswitch", said Dylan. "This is a custom bit of kit that links power to our booking system. This means that when a booking ends, the power is automatically turned off until another booking begins.”
WHO USES IT
The DIY ethic of sampling has come of age allowing DJs and music producers to blur genre boundaries with interesting mashes. Sampling is thriving in today's music world, used in many of our favourite tracks whether we know it or not. A recent study by Tracklib, a music platform that legally clears samples for producers, found one in five songs in the Billboard music charts contained samples (State of Sampling). And it is not going away. According to the report, there has been a 31% increase in samples compared to the three previous years.
Pirate is tapping in to the appetite for recording with plans to create further opportunities. Ira again: “The plan is to keep making space for artists, improve the studios we have, and create as many opportunities for our community beyond the studios as we can.”
Producing music no longer necessitates hiring a studio to compose a track. High quality tracks can be made in the privacy of your own home. As your skills improve, you will find the more you practice the easier it is to make great-sounding tracks. Access to the kit, and good kit at that, can be expensive. In steps Pirate.
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