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[sugarbeard]

Well, you could always do what the rest of us indie musicians do. Go to garage sales and find old kids toys and record our music playing toys. :D

Hell yea! Every weekend I go on a Garage Sale hunt!! Never know what you'll find. Plus making music with toys is actually pretty easy. You score brownie points off the bat for the novelty too!

[J.W. Hendricks]

I could make music for you (free of charge).

oh ya! Javet! I totally bookmarked you but I've been super busy. I saw your posts and all your music. They're really great! You'd totally be in the credits and all!

Haha I understand about business. Just let me know and I'll see what I can do

[KM]

Well, you could always do what the rest of us indie musicians do. Go to garage sales and find old kids toys and record our music playing toys. :D

Hell yea! Every weekend I go on a Garage Sale hunt!! Never know what you'll find. Plus making music with toys is actually pretty easy. You score brownie points off the bat for the novelty too!

I bought my first synth at a garage sale for $5. Nothing wrong with it either. Sounds like a Sega Genesis which is just plain awesome. Too bad it didn't have an easy way to record it minus booming a mic up to it. >_>;

[Nix]

You might also have some luck over at http://opengameart.org/
There is a decent audio section and most of the music is under a license that allows commercial use.

[Audiosprite]

:/

[KM]

:/

My thoughts exactly.

[medieval]

actually, a lot of the music there does allow commercial use (CC-BY 3.0 license.)

[KM]

actually, a lot of the music there does allow commercial use (CC-BY 3.0 license.)

Yeah, but you if you ever become rich/famous then your gonna get sued. Probably not for the music being used, but you're probably gonna get sued for being rich/famous.

[supershigi]

I don't really understand why you're against paying a musician a small royalty in exchange for music since you don't have money to give them upfront.  Craig is right, you don't really have to do anything except agree on an amount (like 10% for 5 years) and then make sure to pay the person.  You can even specify when you would pay them (monthly, every other month, every thousand dollars made, etc.) -- it's really not that difficult.  Plus, the composer is already doing you a favor at the point where they accept royalties as opposed to an upfront payment... it's very likely that they could do a ton of work for you and never ever get paid.  There's no guarantee that your game will be commercially succesful, and therefore no guarantee that they'll ever be properly compensated for the amount of time they spend creating music.

Another thing to think about: it's sort of frowned upon to say you're going to take someone's hard work, make money off of it, and then not pay them a dime.  It would be a different story if you were established and offering unpaid internships... at least in that case the composer could have something significant to put on their resume in exchange for the work they did.  My first job was unpaid, but the company I worked with is an established company... having that on my resume helped me get a ton of subsequent paid jobs (not to mention that the first company paid me for every project I did with them after the first).  And even if you get someone to make you free music, if your game becomes successful, it's very easy for the composer to come back and sue you claiming that they were never properly compensated.  You'd be surprised how often this happens when there's no formal contract in place to explain compensation.   

If you are however dead set on not compensating your composer, you could use music that's in the public domain.  I know a number of developers who use remixed classiscal music or even really old jazz.

[greekdude247]

No worries everyone. I actually just sucked it up and did my own music.

But on the side, just so you know, I have done work for commercial games and never gotten paid. I was happy just to be credited. I did it for the exposure and experience, not the profit. Its really not the end of the world to ask a composer to do some work for free. If you can find someone to agree to those terms, win win. They obviously wanted to be apart of a game and they get to! I've worked for free, other people have done it too. I don't think its really bad to just ask if someone is interested. There is tons of people on these forums (and some on this topic) that are willing.

[KM]

There's a difference between 'free' and free. If you are getting good exposure, and may be able to pull a few favours, then that's not exactly free. No money has been exchanged but the value is still there. The problem is when the 'exposure' tends to be so abysmal that even after you've done the work, no one still knows who you are and no one is knocking at your door to ask you to work for them. So I guess I should call it bartering and not free, because free is literally you did the work and got nothing to show for it but the experience of doing it. Do that for long enough and you won't have the time to keep doing it for free because life will catch up to you. Either it's bills, your family, or having to work day jobs, something will give.

So when only one side gets everything and the other side gets nothing out of the deal, that's a win lose situation, not a win win. And these people aren't getting anymore experience making music for the game than if they just made the music without the game, it's not like anyone is showing them the ropes or teaching them like an apprentice in a trade. Getting people to think that the only way they'll get their music 'heard' is by devaluing their expertise is a pretty underhanded method. And the fact that someone would say up front that they would get money from the music being used but the composer would not get anything in return is just plain arrogance.

Perpetuating the thought that an artist has to slave away and starve themselves to move up even an inch in this world is not helping anyone but the greedy people taking advantage of artists. At least offer them something for their trouble, anything of value, not some cop-outs like 'experience' and 'think of the exposure' unless you can deliver that exposure.

You might be inexperienced with the indie games community but that damn well sure isn't how it works. Unless you're willing to give, don't expect anyone to give back.

...

That was probably a little too angry...

[supershigi]

I completely agree with you KM -- you're totally right that there's a huge difference between unpaid work that actually benefits the composer, and unpaid work that amounts to getting taken advantage of.  I didn't mind doing my first job for free because being able to write a legitimate published game from an established company on my resume really helped out a lot.  But it's pretty audacious when someone with basically no experience expects people to jump at the chance to make free music for their commercial game.  At that point, they aren't really offering them anything, and therefore shouldn't expect them to work for free.

[Montoli]

Ok, I know you said you were just going to suck it up and make your own music.  But the whole question kind of hits a nerve for me.  I have to say - if you're looking for music for a game that you're going to try to make money on why would you not pay the artist?  I mean, if you don't think the game would be selling if it weren't for their contribution, then don't they deserve a cut?  Haven't they earned it at that point?

Either pay them up front up-front or percentage-wise but definitely pay them.  (Percentage based deals are even fairly risk-friendly, since if the game flops, you're not out a bunch of cash for music.)

Think of it this way:  if you finished your game, and it was awesome, how would you feel about someone saying "hey, I'm including your game in this 'fun games bundle CD' that I sell?  You don't get a cut though."

Full disclosure:  I'm a programmer, and can't write music to save my life.  So I feel your pain in going and trying to find people willing to make cool music.  But it really feels kind of hard to defend trying to make money using someone else's work, and not being willing to pay them some of said money...

</rant>

[Audiosprite]

I'd like to hear your soundtrack, actually

[greekdude247]

cool! Well then according to KM it actually wasn't 'free'. Accreditation was going to follow anyone who helped.

[greekdude247]

Think of it this way:  if you finished your game, and it was awesome, how would you feel about someone saying "hey, I'm including your game in this 'fun games bundle CD' that I sell?  You don't get a cut though."

That depends on the situation. Did I agree to that? If you think that I was taking someone's music without their approval and providing accreditation you have this topic waaaaay wrong. THAT IS NOT WHAT I WAS ASKING! I would never take something from someone without their permission. That is disgusting and I for one, would hate if that happened to me.

And btw, if someone considered my games were good enough to be in a bundle CD, I would be so thrilled. I would actually agree to that as long as I got credit for making the game.

[greekdude247]

I did not intend for this post to be created in an attempt to take advantage of composers. I really do apologize to anyone I somehow might of upset or made angry. I'm not the type to make someone slave for nothing.

[Audiosprite]

You're obviously pretty guilty about it, so I'm sure you actually did intend to take advantage of someone, whether you knew that or not.

[greekdude247]

So, do you guys think that the Unpaid Collaborations is something that should be removed?

[pgil]

Wow. You're completely missing the point. Pretty much all the requests in Unpaid Collaborations are for freeware games. It's extremely rare for someone to ask for help on a commercial game without offering pay of any kind. That's why people are offended by your request.