It's tempting to set your price by looking at the studio down the road. That tells you what bands will pay, not whether the price covers your costs. Work out what each hour you actually sell costs you first, then check the market, then decide evening and daytime prices, minimum lengths and what the room includes.
What each hour you sell costs you
Add up a normal month: rent, business rates, electricity and heating, insurance, cleaning, and the wear on your gear. Wear is the easy one to forget: drum heads, cymbals, cables, a PA that won't last for ever. Put a monthly figure on replacing them.
Say two rooms cost you £3,000 a month all in. Open 10am to 11pm every day, that's 780 room-hours a month, and £3,000 over 780 looks like less than £4 an hour. But you won't sell 780. If evenings (6 to 11pm) sell 70% and daytime (10am to 6pm) 15%, you sell 210 evening hours and 72 daytime hours: 282 in all. Each one costs you about £10.60, before you've paid yourself.
So is a rehearsal studio profitable?
It can be, and the evenings decide it. Carry the example on at £20 an hour in the evening and £14 in the day: 210 × £20 plus 72 × £14 is £5,208 a month. Take off £3,000 and £2,208 is left to pay you, before tax. If evenings slip from 70% to 55%, you sell 165 evening hours, take £4,308, and £1,308 is left. Daytime adds to the result; the evenings make it.
If you're VAT-registered, run these sums on prices without VAT: £24 including VAT at the standard 20% is £20 to you.
What studios near you charge
Then look outwards. Check five studios near you and note, for each, the hourly price, any daytime rate, minimum lengths, whether VAT is included and what comes with the room. A room with a PA and a kit isn't the same product as an empty one, so note what's in the price before you compare.
Evenings and daytime
Bands with day jobs rehearse in the evening, so evenings and weekends are your product. Daytime is a different market: solo players practising, teachers, theatre and dance groups, bands preparing for a tour, students. Price it lower: in the example above, £14 against £20.
Keep the gap sensible. If daytime is half the evening price, bands with flexible hours move to 3pm, and unless someone else takes their evening slot, you've simply cut your price.
Minimum lengths and group size
In the evening, a two-hour minimum, or fixed blocks such as 7 to 9 and 9 to 11, stops single hours leaving gaps nobody else can use. In the daytime, sell single hours: a drummer practising from 2 to 3 is money from an hour that would have sat empty.
Price the room, not the people, for bands. But a lower rate for one or two players brings in musicians who would never pay a band's price.
Backline: in the price or extra
Include what nearly every band needs: a PA, mics and cables, a kit's shells, a bass amp. Charge for what only some want: guitar heads and cabs, cymbals and other breakables, keyboards. Say £3 an hour for a guitar amp. Extras keep your headline price low and earn from the gear that wears out fastest.
When to change the price
Read occupancy for evenings and daytime separately each month. If evening rooms are above 85% two months running and you're turning bands away, put the evening price up by a pound or two. If daytime stays under 15%, don't cut deeper: look for a weekly regular, such as a teacher or a theatre group.
Doing it with Tuora
Tuora gives your studio its own booking page showing only the hours really free. Each room can have an evening price and a daytime price, a price that changes with how many are coming, and a shortest booking that differs by time of day. Backline is offered as extras while booking, or included in the price. Payment is online, in full or as a deposit, into your own Stripe account, and the metrics show occupancy and quiet hours for the monthly look. More for rehearsal and recording studios.
Try it before talking to anyone: book a room at our demo studio and look at it from the back office.