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[Chris Polus]

Any new insights from you audio guys here?

New business models you tried, tricks you got some good gigs, something that's worth sharing? I'd love to hear it because long time no see. I see a few of you posting on twitter, so that's cool at least 

[Jasmine]

This is a real nice thread.

I hate to say it, but based on these "rates", I'm charging about a rock and a half.
For me, I get caught up in quality:

It doesn't sound very professional (vsts, virtual instruments, etc.), so I shouldn't ask for money that reflects music of a quality I don't have yet.

Personally, it takes me a bit of time to make a track. I'll start something and scrap it because it doesn't resonate with me or sound good; Completely re-mix everything because the balance isn't where I want it to be;

Not sure if that is everyone else's problem and I am simply inefficient, but I don't pump out tunes quickly. :/

When I couple those two faults together, with my novice sound library, I'm afraid to charge more than what I am!

I really do think I'm not half bad at writing compositions. Heck, I'd even go as far to say that I'm good at it! But...

I guess I am afraid to ask for a set amount and be turned down because it is outrageous or, better yet, I do not come off as "worthy" of pricing my work at that rate. Then, if I do set a price, I try and throw in a "if that is too much for you, then..." or "if that is a bit difficult...", for fear of losing a potential project.

I have gotten to the point where I am turning down particular projects. If I can't find at least one appeasing aspect, don't believe that it will challenge me, or looks like it would take a miracle and a shot of vodka to be anywhere close to finished, I won't bother.

[ZackParrish]

Quality doesn't have to be outstanding to land a mobile gig, and if your music(the music, not the samples) is up to snuff you could easily pull in about $800/minute.  Mobile meaning games made for iOS, Droid, etc...

Just sayin'.  Hard to get those gigs because those are usually passed around to composers that the developers know personally, but they're out there.

But this is also like... just a few minutes of music you would be writing, they'll be very picky, and you will be selling them the rights to the music in full, so you'll never be able to touch that music again outside of using it as a demo track.

[Gregg Williams]

As a dev something like 800+ a minute sounds insane unless its using a ton of live instruments/band or some sort of actual orchestra. That or you have a very established name and following which would help promote and market the game.

[ZackParrish]

Well, I'm speaking more in regards to "companies" regardless of how small they are at times that have a pretty solid foundation with the projects they release.  $800/min is actually cheap compared to AAA work, but like I said... it's also giving them the music, 100% of the rights.  In the mobile markets royalties can have a big payout, and flat rates can help alleviate the need to continuously pay someone after their job is done.  I'm not suggesting someone MAKE their rates that high, just hinting at the high probability of landing a gig like that if you do a bit of digging for one.  I get that a lot of indie developers lack the funding to invest that kind of money up front, but there are more that have the money than the ones that don't from what I've experienced.  That's part of why there are so many composers that do have "insane" rates.  

Still, I suppose you are probably right in regards to me saying "easily"... because it's not like you can just blink and have someone paying you that much.  Especially with so many people willing to accept much much less...

Edit - Oh... and just for the heck of it... all live instruments... you're asking at least $1000-$1200/min, just to cover the costs of the performers and still make money aftewards.  I know a few people that do session work and it is NOT cheap... takes a bite out of your wallet big time. o_o

[Gregg Williams]

Well, I'm speaking more in regards to "companies" regardless of how small they are at times that have a pretty solid foundation with the projects they release.  $800/min is actually cheap compared to AAA work, but like I said... it's also giving them the music, 100% of the rights.  In the mobile markets royalties can have a big payout, and flat rates can help alleviate the need to continuously pay someone after their job is done.  I'm not suggesting someone MAKE their rates that high, just hinting at the high probability of landing a gig like that if you do a bit of digging for one.  I get that a lot of indie developers lack the funding to invest that kind of money up front, but there are more that have the money than the ones that don't from what I've experienced.  That's part of why there are so many composers that do have "insane" rates. 

Still, I suppose you are probably right in regards to me saying "easily"... because it's not like you can just blink and have someone paying you that much.  Especially with so many people willing to accept much much less...

Yeah it just seems a rather insane level of cost to me, when you have engineering rates often at around 50-100/hr and art rates lower than that, which include usually full rights to everything. I'm not saying it isn't possible to get it, as there are certainly programmers that can pull in 250+/hr for IOS development to the right companies, but its hardly the norm.

I could also be underestimating the hours involved in order to produce a decent quality piece of music, but from experience contracting out music, it rarely has seemed to take hours upon hours to produce a decent track. I mean a 4 minute track at 800/min works out to taking something like 32 hours to make if your billing essentially 100/hr.

[Daniel Pellicer]

I could also be underestimating the hours involved in order to produce a decent quality piece of music, but from experience contracting out music, it rarely has seemed to take hours upon hours to produce a decent track. I mean a 4 minute track at 800/min works out to taking something like 32 hours to make if your billing essentially 100/hr.

32 hours it's probably not enough for a 4 minute track if you plan to do it very well, at least in my humble and little experience. Sometimes for a 1 minute track I need around 15 hours of work

[Gregg Williams]

I suppose it probably varies greatly by type of music as well. I can certainly understand higher rates if significant amounts of time is needed, but I'm not sure this is true, or the common impression. (Clients that demand endless retakes, pitches, and tweaks aside)

That said though, the bulk  of my experience with contract music comes from contracting of custom chip tunes, ideally using original console restrictions/emulation/samples, which I suspect is quite a bit niche and may change things a fair bit as well.

[ZackParrish]

Ah... yeah... chip tunes don't often require a great deal of time to write(though they can be fun).  If you are talking something... like full blown digital orchestra with vocals and screaming guitars... that takes a while(usually).  It really does vary like you said though, I can compose really fast on a good day, and live in the middle of nowhere with a really low cost of living... so I can kick the prices down.  If someone lives in the heart of LA and composes at a slower than normal pace, they'll probably hike the prices.

Then there is the cost of equipment, software, samples, etc... and boy that stuff expensive sometimes. Composers that charge bottom end amounts and try to live off of it generally find themselves in sticky financial situations...

Too many variables... bleh.  That's why I keep a full time job and keep my rates relatively low...

[motorherp]

Does it really make sense to charge by the minute? 

For example as a game dev, if someone was to offer me the same amount of pay to produce either one game with two levels, or two games with one level each, I'd choose the former every time.  The reason being that there's a certain level of overhead in producing tech just to get out that first level, but each level after re-uses that tech and thus doesn't take as long to produce.

Now I'm no audio producer myself, I've only dabbled in it for personal lols, but I imagine a similar principle applies.  Surely a lot of hours spent producing the first minute of music will have been on experimentation and generating ideas and melodies.  The second minute of music however will re-use many of those elements, or at least play on an already established theme, and thus shouldn't take the same length of time again to produce. 

Shouldn't this be represented in your prices?

[ZackParrish]

Depends on how boring you want the music to be. If you feel like modulating the entire thing and just using copy/paste + transpose over and over again while barely changing anything... sure... that could be very feasible.

I don't compose that way, and prefer doing things one bar at a time, clicking every single note in with my mouse.  I also have to draw controllers in the piano roll view to alter the expression of a note, change velocity of the notes to alter their timbre based on the sample library, modify the level of vibrato for additional expression, apply various effects and modify them as needed throughout the track, run EQ over the track.

Just setting up a project takes a long time, then you still have to change things over and over again as you proceed to write the music.  Writing the music you might have a basis for the melody you want to use, maybe bases for the harmony, but you still have to write it out note for note(or at the very least play it in).

I've reused ideas within a track before, but I'm not copying and pasting it, and it's not always in the same key as I originally made it.  Not to mention I don't charge for any runover amount, so if the request was for 2 minutes and I write 2:45, I waive the 45 seconds at my own expense. Valdis Story devs requested around 80-90 minutes of music(can't remember the exact number anymore) and I ended up writing over 120 total.  I didn't charge them for that extra time added on there, and believe me... I spent a LOT of time working on this soundtrack.

Complexity of the music does play it's part though.  If a developer asks for 5 second ditties for like... treasure discovery.  I don't charge for that because I think it's stupid.  And these little ditties can take up 1-2 hours of time, just for 5 seconds.

It's a hard life.

[Zoe Coleman Music]

This is a great thread!!

For me the amount I charge depends on lots of things - if its a dev's first game or perhaps I look at their past work and don't feel inspired (this particular option hasn't happened yet fortunately) all the money is upfront. The amount I charge per minute has shot up surprisingly a lot since I started out, considering I only properly started out in May. However the amount per minute I charge is still totally not a livable wage unless I have guaranteed about 3 projects going on at the same time. I also live in Brighton in the UK, which is expensive (nearly as much so as London) so my living costs are high.

As someone's already said on here, if I really like a project I drop the up-front rate and go for some profit share. It important to work out whether the game will sell before doing this so you need to ask some questions. Would I play this game? How did the dev's last few games sell? Is the dev good at marketing/social network tarting/promotion? Those are just some examples but the last one I find really important. Devs that do lots of twittering/devlogging on multiple sites and attend conventions where you can showcase the game attract more people which equals more sales.

One thing that maybe is irrelevant to this topic (and I'm not even sure if it applies in the USA like it does here) but some people may find useful is to remember that you can write off 'business expenses' against your tax for purchases spanning up to about four years ago. Remember that expensive-ass sound library? Midi keyboard? Business Cards? website Domain? That ALL counts - so keep a tidy spreadsheet of all your in and outgoings and you can keep more of your money!

I'm really enjoying the whole freelance process at the moment though - I'm finding that I'm getting around one enquiry every week from devs - and although I have to turn he majority down due to money not being right or not having enough time this is a good indicator to me that things are picking up!

Again great topic - it's really good to get everyones experiences and learn from them!

[moi]

$800/min

At this rate you would have to create just 5 minutes of music every month to receive a gross monthly revenue of $4000. I know that there are associated production costs, but let's suppose that's purely digital music (I'd expect more than $800/min for studio recording anyway), so in the case of digital music the cost must be low I suppose and most of that revenu would be yours.
As for the time required, for 5 minutes,I'd expect an intense week of work by a seasoned musician. That sounds reasonable to me.
If the 5 minutes are divided (let's say into 3 songs), that should still leaves some idle time.

While $800/min is acceptable if the indie dev has funding (like a kickstarter), most indies can't afford that. So what's a good price?
In my own estimation I think that $100/minutes seems like a fair entry indie rate for both parties.

Now I have seen many musicians offering $50/minutes (and sometimes much less) which is lower than my estimated "fair rate", but I can understand their logic. Because at $50/minutes it becomes almost an "impulse price". At this price it's difficult to justify NOT PAYING for a few minutes of music to kick your game prototype off the ground. Even if you have a low/no income, you can justify a couple hundred dollars of game music if you are serious about being a develloper.

As for copyright, I know that giving copyrights is a big thing, but devs need all the rights to protect their games. It would be unacceptable to ship a game on which you have licensing insecurities.
That said I would be perfectly fine with leaving the composer the option to sell the song by himself as a music album, for example in a compilation, as long as the name of the game is mentioned. That sounds like a good compromise IMO. They could also negociate a small percentage on the sales of the game, why not.


I have also seen musicians selling non-exclusive music at cheap rates and I think that this is also a good way to start earning money as a musician. I don't know how well this really works but I have heard that some of these guys do ship a lot of non-exclusive music for small games, cinematics (a cinematic should not require original music) or even TV/video production,etc...


I know that the prices I'm suggesting are not guaranteeing a living, and are far from what some profeszsional musicians are charging, but everybody is in the same sinking boat here and most indie games can't feed their devellopers.
As a dev, I'd prefer to pay a musician than to use free music, but the price should be affordable.
If every dev starts using some music in their game, maybe the industry will take off and solidify.

[ZackParrish]

Note - Before you argue against something I said... please read the last paragraph of this post.

Again... I'm not suggesting anybody hike their rates to $800/minute.  I clearly said you COULD pull in that much, not try to. That's one reason I tier my rates for the exact reasons you said... different people have different needs and budgets... so I try to scale things to fit.

Base rate - Basic distribution rights(one year grace period from date of release given to upgrade to 2nd level)

2nd level - Basic disbribution + Exclusivity to your project, with option to repurchase rights for additional projects at stock rates

3rd level - Full rights, you own the music

That's the vague way of putting it... because IE closed the tab I was replying in and I really don't feel like typing it again.

Everything about music production has a lot of costs involved, and they are never cheap.  A good chunk of the money we make is spent to upgrade, maintain, expand, recouperate, etc.  I think this past year I probably put about $3000 into my production... which is painful financially.  The past ... 15 years, I've probably spent over $15,000. Totally guestimating that number since I don't feel like pulling out my tax records and adding all that crap up... but it wouldn't surprise me if that number was actually a lot higher in reality.  I have gone through 5 computers since I started writing music, about 10 monitors(these things sure suck sometimes), lots of speakers, mixers, headphones, harddrives, different guitars, pedals, DSPs, keyboards, sample libraries, software, performance costs, god... guitar strings... -_-, blah blah blah etc.  

All that and I'm merely doing this as a hobby outside of my real job.  I can afford to be a cheap whore in comparison to most because my job doesn't suck and sustains me rather well.  BUT, the couple of times I did decide to do music full time... boy it was rough, and it didn't matter how many low end gigs I had or how few big gigs I had... I was constantly having to work to keep my feet on the ground and it was not fun at all.  If you remove the one thing that compells us to write music by putting us in a situation where we feel we HAVE to write in order to survive, it's crippling.  My productivity not doing it full time is 100x what it was when it was all I was doing for money. I would take on any gig I could find regardless of the connection I'd have with the project just to make ends meet, and could go a month or two without making a dime.  And that 5 minute gig you mentioned might very well have been the nectar that kept me going until the next one.

I need to stop typing now... IE is about to crash again and I think I've rambled on enough.

Please understand yet again, I'm not suggesting $800/minute, that's just a number I have been offered before and a few friends of mine have been offered by indie companies(not individual persons).  They are usually a lot pickier than an individual would be, and will request the full rights of the music every single time...

Of course, maybe one day we'll all get lucky like Hans Zimmer and make it big and can get paid $150,000 to have blaring brass for 2 hours with the occasional subtle violin solo to express sincere drama or tension within a scene between two characters that we can hardly relate to. :]

Quick recap(I'm using notepad to type this now) before I go:

$800/min - Great to get but not to ask for in most indie situations

$100/min - I've heard a lot of people bark this number out as their rate so it seems as though you are in agreement with the lot of them. Though I have heard other developers say that price might be a tad high for them depending on the rights they get.

In the end, what's it really matter?  The developers will choose the composers they like the most, figure out how much they'll cost and how much music they want/need... and then make a choice from that.  If they love Calum Bowen's music over the rest with no contest, and are willing to pay him $500/minute... by God they are most likely going to do it.

In that scenario, we're getting into economics and I would rather sleep than get into that like my senior year of highschool.  

To that end... once again, I'm going to repeat myself... I AM NOT RECOMMENDING PEOPLE CHARGE $800/MINUTE TO INDIE DEVELOPERS, PARTICULARLY INDIVIDUALS.  Never opening my mouth again about the potential to be found when one goes on the hunt...

[moi]

Please understand yet again, I'm not suggesting $800/minute, that's just a number I have been offered before and a few friends of mine have been offered by indie companies(not individual persons).  They are usually a lot pickier than an individual would be, and will request the full rights of the music every single time...

Of course, maybe one day we'll all get lucky like Hans Zimmer and make it big and can get paid $150,000 to have blaring brass for 2 hours with the occasional subtle violin solo to express sincere drama or tension within a scene between two characters that we can hardly relate to. :]

I understood that, we are in agreement here.
I know that $100/minute is low for good music, Ideally I'd like to be able drop phat money like a boss and get great music in return, but most starting indies can't do that.

[Calum Bowen]

If they love Calum Bowen's music over the rest with no contest, and are willing to pay him $500/minute... by God they are most likely going to do it.

  don't make me blushhh zack!

I'd just like to throw my hat into the ring [disclaimer: this is all based on my experience which is by no means definitive!]. Initially I was a little shocked at the $800 p/min but if that's to completely sell the rights then I personally would shoot for that kind of price. That said, I've never worked with a deal where i've sold the rights to my music, only the use. It might just be a personal preference or being a big ego who never wants to lose control of his music. I've pretty much only ever done exclusive use deals. I would think that's the most common set-up that devs and composers are after. That said, I have a feeling the higher up you go and the bigger companies you work for, the more they expect to own the music completely - and, as big companies, they generally have the money to pay you more in order to completely own it.

I'd probably throw in the number $350 p/min for someone who's living off just music (indie games) and is doing really well and is pretty well known (NOTE: THIS IS NOT ME!). In the past I've worked for a variety of prices and deals. I think, as people have said before, until you have the demand and recognition from people who are making real money from games, you have to take each person as they come, see what they can offer and decide whether it's something that would work for you or not. Generally, from the start of my career, with each commission or project i'd try to increase my rate even if just by $10 p/min, but it really just depends on the project - I've worked for free on something because it was a small amount of work and was with a friend, only to find out that it would get sponsored and I was receiving 30% of that money which, in the end, led to more money than if i had charged for it in the first place. That was kinda luck and I was happy to do it for free but it goes to show that there are definitely worthwhile things to be done even if your rate can't be matched. Right now I don't really have a fixed rate but i strive for $350 p/min and probably work down from there given that, in all honesty, I don't yet have demand enough to refuse something just because it's below what I want to be paid. Also, I might give a different answer in a few weeks because tomorrow i'm finally moving out of my parents' house  and having to rely on game music to pay the rent.

I think the sad thing is that, for the first year or two of your career, quality doesn't make a huge difference to how much you can charge, only attention/recognition/demand matters. The upside is that quality leads to attention and as zack said before your fellow composers are your best friends, definitely not your competition. Fellow composers can recommend you to people they've worked with before or get you on board on a game they're currently working on or get their fans to be fans of you! I've had a bunch of work come from fellow composers! Give it time, always enjoy yourself and keep a clear head when deciding which projects to go with and not to go with!

[Majestic]

Damn so much wall of text lol.

I really prefer to keep it simple. I know most indie devs are not rich and Im not going to beat them in the head on the rates.

I usually charge by the track. Usually $60 - $100 per non-exclusive track seems fair on both ends for the small indie dev. Where I'm from getting paid close to $100 for composing one track is damn good

I think to be charging $800 a minute  you really need to have your brand established.

Like i said, I don't want to be rich. If i can make enough to pay rent, food, travel, etc. Im nice and content

[Calum Bowen]

Damn so much wall of text lol.

I really prefer to keep it simple. I know most indie devs are not rich and Im not going to beat them in the head on the rates.

I usually charge by the track. Usually $60 - $100 per non-exclusive track seems fair on both ends for the small indie dev. Where I'm from getting paid close to $100 for composing one track is damn good

I think to be charging $800 a minute  you really need to have your brand established.

Like i said, I don't want to be rich. If i can make enough to pay rent, food, travel, etc. Im nice and content

non-exclusivity is a whole different matter in my mind. Seems on your site you charge $19.95 for non-exclusive tracks. Is $60-100 for a specific commission which is used non-exclusively rather than something form your library? This is from my very limited knowledge of library-music but, places like audiojungle tend to price non-exclusive tracks at around $10-20.

I guess there's a difference between non-exclusive commissions and music libraries.

Do you find doing mostly non-exclusive stuff to be fairly lucrative? I guess it all depends on volume! I've often considered doing non-exclusive stuff but mostly for money reasons, never got round to setting anything up though.

[Majestic]

Yea non-exclusive licensing ( same thing libraries like audiojungle are doing ) is a different matter. I never really got into composing stuff exclusive cause it just wasn't worth it for the average person's budget.

With non-exclusive licensing you can sell the same track over and over unlimited amount of times..and to different markets at that so its a good deal.

The $60-$100 a track I charge is for custom tracks tailored for your game project. I usually drop the track into my library after that.

I hear some guys are really eating good off of the licensing tip though. For me the income from licensing is really passive right now, but I think it will speed up especially this upcoming year.

Here's the testimonials from audiojungle

I get full creative freedom to release the type of work that I’m passionate about; there are no deadlines to meet, no client meetings, and no mandates to create work that I’m not interested in. Put simply, I get to share my own creative ideas with an entire marketplace of buyers who respect and appreciate my work.” – Epicera

“I’ve gained more exposure and clients in the past year than I have in the previous six years of my professional career. I’m making enough passive income a month to cover my mortgage and it’s afforded me to buy a new BMW M3. This is only the tip of the iceberg, the skies the limit to how much you can make!” – Contempoinc

“Joining the Envato community was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Being able to earn money with what I love most is awesome of course, but having complete creative control over my projects makes it even better.” – Kriesi

I'll probably compose free of charge for projects that I'm interested if I can survive off licensing.

[Level-Up-Audio]

Hello, here's my 2 cents, from the perspective of a music composer and sound designer with about 1 year of experience specifically doing music/sound for games.

I landed a nice LITTLE contract after about 5 months of VIGOROUS job searching. It does not pay a lot of money (I have a day job besides music, these days, unfortunately, sigh), but it pays about $1000 per game, with about 1 game per month. The requirements for the game are usually 3 or 4 music tracks around 30 seconds each, and usually between 30-60 sound effects per game. Genres/styles include orchestral, historical, ethnic/world, rock, etc.

Make no mistake, I feel VERY LUCKY to have landed this contract. Even though it doesn't pay all my bills, it does pay a nice chunk of bills, and it's stead MONTHLY. I am extremely grateful to have this, especially starting out, as my first game composing gig.

I can complete a 30 second track/loop with moderate-complex orchestration in about 5 hours. This usually includes: 1 hour of research/noodling/rough composition, 3 hours of sequencing the virtual instruments and/or recording live instruments, 1 hour of editing, mixing, mastering, bouncing it down, making sure it loops properly, etc (very tedious stuff!). For sound effects, it usually takes me 10 to 30 minutes for 1 single sound effect. Multiply that by 30 or 40 or 50+ sound effects, and that adds up to a lot of time. Keep in mind, I do not have to implement any of these assets. I just create the assets.

I value my time at $35 per hour (this is quite low, but reasonable for someone just starting out, in my opinion. I have actually seen many people charging this rate). Each project usually takes me 25-30 hours to complete. Usually that equals out to around $800-$1000 per game, if I'm lucky.

I have been pushing hard to attach myself to indie projects, looking for that next good gig. After 10 months of building my portfolio up with somewhat legit credits (not really that legit), I feel somewhat optimistic about trying to get more contracts. It's tough, and it helps to have people around you that support you while you pursue your pipe dream!