I live in Peterborough, a modest little city with a reasonably vibrant live music scene - a dozen pubs or more that have music every week.
Recently, a decent sized rehearsal space closed down because the landlord wanted the building back. That leaves us with a small facility with only 3 rooms. There's not much else in nearby towns either. The remaining place is fully booked October and November and I expect will be oversubscribed for the foreseeable.
So, where are people rehearsing? I guess some people are good enough that they can practise at home alone and pull it off at gigs.
I'd be tempted to set up a facility, off only to have a space for myself and my own band. I see brand new, small, industrial units for £10k /yr but then all the extra on top would make it quite a tight business to succeed.
If anybody here runs a rehearsal space I'd be interested in business tips.
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Each room had an HK PA, air con and various amps that could be used for free as well as 2 Pear Export kits
The bills were pretty savage.
Rent 2K a month
Rates 1K a month
Then you got electric, gas, 2 lots of water, alarm monitoring fee, waste collection fee, insurance ... it just goes on and on. Basically a large money pit.
To tun a facility successfully it needs to be the right kind of building in the right place. Preferably a brick building (not tin clad) in an area with few neighbours and plenty of space for parking .... 2 bands can mean 10 cars outside.
Most commercial spaces will require a lease, mine was 10 years but we built in a break clause at 5 which we were able to use to stop losing money. There's normally also a largish deposit ... 5K I think was ours.
You need a budget for equipment that breaks or goes missing. Amps will go wrong and hi hat clutches will disappear.
Selling tea and coffee will be a good earner
We lost loads of money on the venture, about 100K but it was a great time and I met so many people doing it who became great friends and band members.
I used to play with a band who had a permanent room which they could use 24/7 and leave their kit there. It was on a farm not far from where I live. That would be ideal if the price was right.
That said, it was fun at the time, I met some cool people and it meant I got to rehearse pretty much whenever I wanted. But as a going concern? Nope.
If your players can control their volume or you can DI modellers and bass & keys through a desk, it can be compact.
To get the required isolation between the 2 rooms I built the 2nd room 1.2M away from the first room and filled the void completely full with a whole trucks worth of Rockwool acoustic insulation .. laid on the ground like paving slabs and built up layer by layer unit it reached the 5M height.
This was the Live room 1, completely built by me and 2 mates from scratch.
You can see about 2 thirds of it in that picture.
And this is Desolated using Live room 2 for their video
Here in Portsmouth we have a great place called Casemates, run by a mate of mine. He has taken on a basic rehearsal facility and expanded it with more rooms, licensed bar, kitchen with hot pizza's, pasties, cakes etc. He sells's cables, strings, accessories, records ... it's a great example of how to make a profitable rehearsal studio.
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The first 2 minutes of the video for Run DMC and Aerosmith's single Walk This Way is an excellent showcase for adjacent rehearsal rooms and the crosstalk @Danny1969 describes. The rest of the video is on stage so outside of this topic.