I hear this question a lot from new engineers. Those who are learning how to mix music to eventually make a living from it. “Should I start out mixing for free?” In this video, I’m going to talk about three situations when you should consider mixing for free.
Starting out as an engineer is difficult, especially if you want to make money for your work. It takes time to get good. And there’s probably not going to be a specific point in time when your mixes suddenly get good enough to start getting customers. Once you start getting good feedback on your mixes you’ll hopefully feel confident enough to offer your skills as a service and charge for them.
But before you reach that point, should you ever give away your skills for free? The general consensus among established engineers is no… There’s a popular video from the legendary Tony Maserati on why you should never do free audio work. But I’m here to give you three situations in which I think it’s okay for you to mix for free.