We're using only SmartMusic solo accompaniment this year for S&E. The SmartMusic library is lacking lots of our solos, however, so I'm looking at having an live player record the piano accompaniment for us and, I guess put it in dropbox or something.
What do you feel is a fair fee to pay for this service? Obviously we aren't getting in-person rehearsals and a live performance at the contest. Also, many of these are Class 3 and 2 solos where the accompaniment is practically sightreadable.
Do you think $10 for Class 3, $15 for Class 2 and maybe $20 for Class I?
I paid mine $50 per solo to do this. Knowing I can use it in the future and build the library is well worth it. He felt that $50 per solo was more than fair.
Seeing as you'll be able to use those recorded accompaniments literally forever, you should probably bump up those fees a bit. I'd at least double them, because you're taking away future income. If you have a recording of a solo, are you going to go out of your way to hire someone to play it in the future?
Also, consider: you're not paying for the 5 minutes it takes to record a solo, you're paying the player for the 20, 30, or 40 years of practice it took to get good enough to record those solos in 5 minutes too.
That being said, there are people who can get you piano recordings of many of these solos. Ask around a bit - I know there's a Google Drive/Dropbox on here that a guy can provide you with that has hundreds of solos pre-recorded.
