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[Havok]

Hello! I'm looking to expand my music business and offer more services to the indie game community and am researching the idea of starting a game music library with tracks available for purchase and use in projects. The idea would be to offer a number of 1-2 minute looping tracks in orchestral, electronic, 8-bit styles and charge about $20 for non-exclusive use for each track. More for exclusive. Discounts for multiple tracks used.

Is this something that anyone would find useful? What about the price?

[LemonScented]

How much more for exclusive use? Would you consider tweaking tracks to better suit games, if asked (and presumably, for a fee)? Would you consider letting people commission specific pieces for exclusive or nonexclusive use?

It definitely sounds like an interesting idea, and something I might consider spending a bit of money on, but I guess the devil is in the details. I'd like to hear more, and if you go ahead with it, I wish you luck 

[Havok]

How much more for exclusive use? Would you consider tweaking tracks to better suit games, if asked (and presumably, for a fee)? Would you consider letting people commission specific pieces for exclusive or nonexclusive use?

It definitely sounds like an interesting idea, and something I might consider spending a bit of money on, but I guess the devil is in the details. I'd like to hear more, and if you go ahead with it, I wish you luck 

Rates for exclusive use would depend on the complexity and amount of time put in on a piece. I guess I'll stick my neck out and speculate around $100 though that may vary significantly. Tweaking would be a thought but then that starts to move away from a library and more into custom composed jobs. This library would augment my current service of custom composed music. Dev's would be welcome to purchase library music or contact me for custom work.

Any other thoughts?

[LemonScented]

I initially thought that (for me at least) $100 seemed a bit steep for an exclusive track (particularly if you were selling yourself as a one-stop-shop for the soundtrack to a whole game which might involve several tracks), but then I suppose that exclusive licensing would effectively mean that you'd have to remove the track from the library and compose something else to go in its place, so I can see where you're coming from with that. Presumably the intention with this is to try to steer people towards nonexclusive licenses so that the content can be reused in several games, which means that you get paid several times for the same song but each individual game developer doesn't need to have hugely deep pockets to fulfil the needs of their particular game.

Here's one: How do you propose to advertise your wares? If you've got an online "store front" where you can listen to tracks from the library, presumably you need to take some technical measures to make sure people don't just rip off the tunes and use them without paying? I'd hope that the indie crowd are a bit more honest than that, but you'd want to guard against it in some way which avoids you having to spend too much time sending out "Cease & Desist" letters whilst still being able to present the library in a good light for potential licensors.

I'm still very interested to see how this goes, and hear some of the library if/when it gets composed.

[Alex Vostrov]

$100 isn't too expensive at all.  Think about how long a competent composer would spend on one track and how much he'd be getting per hour.  Magnatune charges a couple of thousands for a non-excusive track license.  That seems kind of crazy to me, but that seems to be the market rate.

[Havok]

Yes, you are correct in your analysis of the exclusive/non-exclusive business model. I'm not really trying to steer people toward non-exclusive content specifically, my plan would be to simply offer more options to indie devs. Many (such as myself) already offer custom composition services for games but I realize that most indies can't necessarily afford to pay the rates needed to pay the bills. I'm really interested in expanding the options for developers to bring higher quality audio to the indie world while benefiting all those involved from a monetary standpoint.

Advertising hasn't been thought out yet as I am merely seeing what interest there is. Most likely tracks could be auditioned at a low track quality. Purchases would give you a high quality track.

And yes $100 isn't expensive at all. I most likely would need to go up from there for exclusive content. From my exposure to the professional industry custom composed music prices can easily range from $500-$1000 per minute of finished music.

[Alex Vostrov]

I would certainly be happy to have more options for music, but I wonder if you can sell game music non-exclusively at all.  Take Braid, for example.  Jon Blow used tracks from Magnatune - a lot of Jami Sieber's amazing cello songs.  Can anyone re-use those same tracks for something else?

I don't know if song re-cycling can really work.  Music is assiciated very strongly with concepts and feelings in out minds.  I will forever think of Braid's opening when I hear the slow cello buildup that it used, for example.  It would be the same as trying to re-use 3d models or sprites.