[get away with it]

People actually buy your stuff.

otherwise as composers we're teaching developers that music is cheap.

You have some very good points, but I must beg to differ with this last one.

Price is not driven by the suppliers (e.g. composers), but the market.

So far I have not seen any actual data on the average price for music, so I don't know if we just got the short end of the stick, or if the whole industry is undervalued.

Say that "Johnny" finds out nobody buys his stuff at $300/min. He changes it to $10. Then it's not Johnny who sets the price, but the market.

And effectively good ol' Johnny is devaluing the market. He's practically telling people to value his original creations the same as a carparking spot. More games have shitty music, more people wrongly think, "wow, music doesn't really add much to games...", less value people see in music, less people pay for music.*

At the very least, charge a reduced rate (but for the love of god not $10) and have and increased back-end, non-exclusivity. You should be licensing your stuff at this rate anyway, $300 ain't a buyout rate. But let them know it's a discounted rate, and that your work has value.

10 years later Johnny got better, and prices himself at $300/min, and finds himself able to get away with it, because people are thinking now that he's worth that $300/min. Again, Johnny doesn't set the price, the market does, the ones who pay him does.

Dear god, I hope in 10 years he getting paid more than $300! His poor kids...

And "get away with it"? If he's actually had 10 solid years in the industry he deserves to get paid well. That's the outlook we need - we're not fairy-dust sprinkling "creatives", we're business people hired to create solutions to problems the client can't fix.

I do think we set the price. Nobody is born with the ability to be a great client, we've got to educate devs as to what good music is, and how much that good music costs.
And if you're not a Johnny, and you've got skillz, but you're charging a pittance, you are conditioning that client to how much music is going to cost. We are setting the market.

End of the day, I know if you're anything like me, you've got shit to pay, and a deep, unrelenting desire, to pour illogical sums of money into music and music related gear. So let's get paid.


*now I'm probably being over dystopic. and rambly, so sorry for that!

What an unsatisfying life both of those parties must lead....


On a lighter note that's actually contributing to the thread, I really enjoyed my time with this book, http://www.abookapart.com/products/design-is-a-job
It's aimed at designers, but the words are applicable to any freelance endeavour.

Maybe not fixing the whole "over-saturation" portion, as those who think that $10/min is the way to go probably won't be listening. But hey, fun read nonetheless.

People actually buy your stuff.

I'm not sure if that's optimistic, or horribly depressing. While I don't know if I necessarily agree, I feel you man.

Getting fairly compensated for doing something you're passionate about shouldn't be some mythical fairy tale. We've gotta stop looking at it that way. We've gotta stop saying "well this is this, and that is that", and start fixing it ourselves. Nobody's gonna pay "johnny just-bought-logic" $300/min. Start setting a precedent of how much good music costs, otherwise as composers we're teaching developers that music is cheap.

That said, it's late and I'm probably being over utopic.

Maybe games are undervalued.

I'm sure everything and everyone (maybe bar some politicians) is undervalued. Doesn't mean we shouldn't respect ourselves and create a healthier environment.

I just don't understand what's so goddamn appealing about a race to the bottom.

My 2 cents is that if we all stop under valuing ourselves and lowballing/undercutting each other, we'd be in a better place.

Congrats Superjoebob! And Eernstrom too!

Looking forward to see what you've got planned SJB!

Thanks Mono, was kind of a gag entry, glad it conjured up such interesting imagery for you...

And again, great challenge!

215 minutes....

Lovely music Zac!

Well start up a discussion you want to have! I'll try and join in!

And I do wish people would take the extra 30sec it takes to find the portfolios subforum.

Thanks Mono, and I really want to play Hotline Miami Kart now. That would be brutally awesome,

This is the coolest theme, ever. And plenty of potential for future themes, the rescore possibilties are endless!

Rainbow Road (Straight Into Hell)

My re-score of Rainbow Road aims to show the track for what it really is. An agressive LSD trip, where floating multicolored heads, positive reinforcement of mushroom ingestion, and constantly falling to your temporary death is the norm. Open your eyes people....

Mentioned it another thread but I'd definitely throw the soundtrack for Remember Me into the list. (Haven't played the game, and doubt I ever will, but damn does it sound good...)

The one thing I think I miss about video game music is its uniqueness.

You've got to look for the positives man! 

The Last of Us - Loving this right now... that little ronroco is so powerful...
DmC - Fantastically grungy electro-house with some orchestra in the mix.
MG Revengeance - Metal/Hybrid/Electronic gnarliness.
Sly Cooper - Sneaky jazz, no "Zimmer" here.
Bioshock Infinite - Brilliant orchestral score...boom, bam, original.
Remember Me - Seriously, listen to this and tell me it's unoriginal. Seriously. (I'm on my phone right now, but when I get the chance I'll get a link to the soundtrack, it's that good. Like "suffocates SMB before it has a chance to fight" good.)

And these are just the AAA's of 2013 off the top of my head.

I find "cold calling" to be great. For one I'm going after the projects I actually want to work on. Secondly, I'm putting myself out of the way of the mass cattle calls that come with the "Composer Wanted" ads on forums. Normally those kinds of jobs aren't going to get you anywhere anyway.

On getting work, here is a good post from V.I. Control by Matthazar (He wrote the music for Star Command)

Re: How to break into media composing and make a good living from it?      
I put together a blog post a year or two ago summarizing my answer to this question since it crops up quite frequently. Here's what I wrote:

1. Learn your tools. Mas­ter them so they’re never in your way, learn their tricks, per­son­al­it­ies, and best practices.

2. Learn to work fast. Then learn to work faster.

3. Make an excel­lent demo reel show­cas­ing a vari­ety of styles.

4. Make an excel­lent web pres­ence to host that demo reel and inform­a­tion about your­self. Make it easy for people to Google you and find your music. Make it easy to listen to and share.

5. Send out sev­eral emails per day to young dir­ect­ors whose work you admire on You­Tube, to game design­ers whose work you admire, to folks you’ve read about in art­icles, to people you’ve found on for­ums ded­ic­ated to film mak­ing, gam­ing etc. Do not write a form let­ter and change just a few words for each — set aside some time and do your due dili­gence. And don’t stop until you start get­ting answers. For every 50 emails you send, you’ll likely get between 5 – 10 responses, of which 3 will be a polite no, one of which will be a “we’ll keep you on file”, and the other which might be a “maybe, let’s talk about it.”

6. While you’re writ­ing so many emails, learn to write well. Be con­cise, affable, pro­fes­sional, and cour­teous. The bet­ter your emails, the more responses you’ll get. Remem­ber: no form letters.

7. Respect your work; just because you’re new doesn’t mean you’re not worth money. You may not be worth $500/minute yet, but you sure are worth some­thing. Find a num­ber and try to get paid for your work, even if only an hon­or­arium. If you teach people that you think your work is worth noth­ing, then don’t be sur­prised when they keep com­ing back expect­ing you to work for free even when they get big­ger budgets.

8. Watch a lot of films, study a lot of film scores, and learn about the pro­cess of mak­ing films. Not your part, theirs. Find out about cine­ma­to­graphy, learn to recog­nize good edit­ing, refine your eye for good dir­ec­tion and good writ­ing. If you can hold a con­ver­sa­tion on their pas­sion with them, you’re already a more attract­ive pro­spect than the ignor­ant com­poser too caught up in his work to real­ize that other people exist and con­trib­ute to a film. Learn to under­stand the con­text within which you’ll be work­ing, in other words.

9. Learn about audio from other per­spect­ives: learn the phys­ics, learn the psy­cho­logy of musical influ­ence, learn the biases of cul­tural iden­tity. Learn about audio formats, about com­pres­sion, about deliv­ery formats, and about the pro­cess of imple­ment­ing music in a project.

10. Learn to man­age your time well. Fig­ure out how many pro­jects you can have on the go at once (if it’s just one then you’re in the wrong line of work), fig­ure out how many minutes of music you can con­sist­ently write per day in vari­ous styles (again, if it’s just one then you’re not going to be par­tic­u­larly com­pet­it­ive), and be dili­gent about stick­ing within the zone of com­fort that allows you to max­im­ize the qual­ity of your work on each pro­ject. But don’t stag­nate: let that com­fort zone expand as you get more experienced.

It's a very broad question to answer, but hopefully some of the advice you're getting on this thread will point you in the right direction!

Nice challenge! Looking foward to working on something.

In the meantime here's a little inspiration!
http://vimeo.com/diegostocco

Woah, woah, woah. Devi Ever as in Devi Ever?

From fuzz to video games. You are my hero.

Regarding the Bandcamp, how do we go about that?

This album needs to see the light of day!

Awwww! Looking foward to hearing these!

[chord is an alternative way to write that]

Enharmonic equivalence is something different altogether, e.g. when an F-sharp and a G-flat result in the same note, making them different spellings for the same thing.

In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note, interval, or key signature that is equivalent to some other note, interval, or key signature but "spelled", or named differently. Thus, the enharmonic spelling of a written note, interval, or chord is an alternative way to write that note, interval, or chord.

Maybe the chord version of it is more of a jazz thing. You know those coked up cats can be a little loose with the specifics! 

The different interpretations of "CFG" are more likely to serve a functional differentiation, e.g. assuming we're in the key of C: Csus4 is probably a "true" suspension on the tonic, while Fsus2 would be a "colored" subdominant chord.

Sure we're in the key of C, but I'm implying the 4th, the F more than anything. Also sus4 gets way to much love, we don't want to hurt sus2's feelings!