Scottish Podcasters: Look For Transparency Before Booking a Studio
We Don't Poach Clients. Here's What We Do Instead.
The 10-second version
A few other Glasgow studios have tried to win our clients over with free sessions and long tie-in "strategy" contracts. It's worked, some of the time. We're not going to copy it. Our pricing is public, studio hire is pay-as-you-go, and our full-service terms are on the website before you ever speak to us. That's the whole strategy.
01What's actually been happening
Podcast production in Glasgow is a small market, and it's growing fast enough that a few studios have worked out a shortcut: instead of building an audience of their own, go after someone else's client list. We know this happens because it's happened to us. A handful of our regulars have been approached directly, offered a free first session or pitched a "strategy package" as the thing their podcast was supposedly missing. A few took it.
We're not writing this to complain about that, or to shame anyone who left. A free session is a reasonable thing to try if someone offers it to you. We're writing it because we'd rather tell you plainly how we operate than let you find out by comparison.
02Why we don't do "free sessions"
A free session is cheap to offer when it's the only one being given away. It costs a studio nothing but an hour of time, and it gets a decision-maker through the door. What it doesn't tell you is what your tenth session costs, or your fiftieth, or whether the standard holds up once you're not being pitched anymore.
We don't do that. Every client pays the same published rate, first session or fiftieth:
- Audio only, from £40/hour
- Single camera, from £75/hour
- Two cameras, from £95/hour
- Three cameras, from £120/hour
Those numbers aren't quoted on request, they're sat on our FAQ page and our booking page, same for everyone, whether it's your first visit or your fiftieth. If a studio's price only appears after a sales call, that's worth noticing.
03Why we don't sell tie-in "strategy" plans
The other version is longer term: a monthly "strategy" retainer sold on a call, tying a client in for six or twelve months before a single episode's been recorded.
We do offer full-service, retainer-based production for organisations who want a podcast built and run for them, and it does carry a minimum term, three months. The difference is that the price, the deliverables and the term are all published on our full-service production page before you ever book a discovery call. Starter, Growth and Enterprise packages, with what's included and what each costs, are all sitting there in black and white. Nobody needs to get you on the phone to find out what something costs or how long you're committing to.
04Glasgow's a village, and word gets back
We don't watch what other studios are doing. We don't need to, clients tell us. Glasgow's podcast and marketing scene is small enough that word gets back within days, sometimes from the client themselves, sometimes secondhand from someone in their business who mentions it in passing.
A few of the clients who did leave for what looked like a better deal have since told us how it actually went: the free session turned out to be the opening pitch of a longer sales process, or the "strategy plan" came with an exit clause nobody had walked them through properly at signing. We're not going to guess at why other studios operate that way. You've got the information now, draw your own conclusions.
05Two guys, one studio, no poaching quota
Podcast Studio Glasgow is Mark and Cam, father and son, and that's the whole operation. There's no sales team working through a target list, no franchise growth number to hit, no investor asking why acquisition is slower than the studio down the road. We grow because people recommend us, and that only keeps working if the people we already work with are happy enough to do it.
06What our transparency actually looks like
None of the above is a promise we're asking you to take on trust, it's just how the pricing and terms are already set up, publicly, whether you book with us or not:
- Studio hire rates, in full, on our FAQ page
- Full-service retainer pricing and minimum terms on our production page
- Guides and advice in our free eBooks, no email capture, no paywall
Giving away what we know, before anyone's paid us a penny, is a fairly direct way to prove we understand the subject. It's also a much slower way to grow than poaching someone else's clients. We're fine with slower.
You're welcome to shop around. We'd genuinely rather earn the booking than lock you into one.
Further reading
More on how we work, what things cost, and why we think trust matters more than reach.
