[AngelCityOutlaw]

Today, I was reading about various different composers after I found an alphabetical list of people who have wrote music for games. What I discovered is that most people who are known or remembered as "video game composers" have actually only composed music for just a few games. Like, 3 - 5 average.

I've heard that these people make lots of money, but personally, I very much doubt that doing just that many games is enough to live on and last you your entire career...I know that guys like Tommy Tallarico have made many game soundtracks, but very few people are Tallarico or Inon Zur.

How much does the average professional composer get paid, and how many titles would they have to score to make a living at creating only game music?

[Rozovian]

I thought this thread was gonna be "The Fat Man has a guitar made of horse bones" or "Motoi Sakuraba did a little dance before sitting down to write or mix".

I am disappoint.

[jnWake]

Originally Posted by Rozovian

I thought this thread was gonna be "The Fat Man has a guitar made of horse bones" or "Motoi Sakuraba did a little dance before sitting down to write or mix".

I am disappoint.

Lol I was expecting the same thing.

The questions asked are interesting though

[Garpocalypse]

Here is a popular myth that i'm going to debunk right now.

Back in the 90's Yuzo Koshiro supposedly copied out some of his favorite dance rhythms from American and European pop music while working on the Streets of Rage soundtrack then copyrighted the music as his own.

See? Complete myth. Next topic.

[Neblix]

You're not really looking at this correctly.

Being a professional composer means you compose to sustain yourself from the income. You're not a professional when you score a certain number of titles, you're a professional when your composing is sustaining you financially.

A video game composer is someone who's done music for a video game, whether it be a free, indie or AAA game.

You're looking at it as a number of titles, but it's not that at all.

It depends on how much each developer pays you for the project. For instance: I was taking to an OCR game composer once, and he hasn't done many titles, but a recent title he did sustained him financially for about half a year. If you continually do projects, you can keep going with that as your sole income. It's not a set wage for a lot of people.

It's a contract thing more than an "I hire you to do game music" thing. If I do a AAA game that lands me tons of money, I'm not going to need to be doing as many games as another guy who hasn't gotten that much for his projects.

[Phonetic Hero]

Also, most "game composers" might be remembered for their game music, but in all likelihood, they're composing for other mediums as well. Commercials, TV shows, film projects, solo work, live shows, etc... That doesn't have to be their only source of income

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Originally Posted by Neblix

You're not really looking at this correctly.

Being a professional composer means you compose to sustain yourself from the income. You're not a professional when you score a certain number of titles, you're a professional when your composing is sustaining you financially.

I disagree completely. Just as one does not need to draw for a living to draw at a professional level, one does not need to make music for a living to be just as good as a professional musician.

Professional is the quality of your work, not the paycheck you receive for it. OCR has many professional level tracks being given away for free by people who are only into music as a hobby. Obviously, a professional game company isn't going to hire a composer who they don't feel can make pro-grade music.

[Phonetic Hero]

Originally Posted by AngelCityOutlaw

I disagree completely. Just as one does not need to draw for a living to draw at a professional level, one does not need to make music for a living to be just as good as a professional musician.

Well, kinda by definition being "a professional X" means you make money doing that thing. You don't necessarily have to sustain yourself by it, but the fact that you make money by doing it is what makes someone a professional. Writing at a professional level is kind of a different thing too, because you can be a composer hobbyist and not get paid a penny for your work.

Professionalism and expertise are different things :P

[DrumJ8]

Originally Posted by AngelCityOutlaw

How much does the average professional composer get paid, and how many titles would they have to score to make a living at creating only game music?

I think the range is so widespread that the "average" would be hard to pinpoint. I know many composers get paid per minute of music delivered. An old teacher of mine said he got paid like $200 per minute of music that he wrote for a game, and that's considered "low." If you deliver 5 full minutes of music at $200/min, that's a decent chunk of change (at least EYE think so), unless you're doing a project of that size only once every 6 months. Big time composers for AAA titles could potentially make, e.g. $600 per minute of music delivered, and in a big game that requires over 100 minutes of music, that's a lotta money. Not to mention because they're already writing for a big title, they've proven at that point that they do good work, are reliable and responsible, so that reputation will garner similar projects of that caliber.

If a composer wrote music for one big game in 1985, they probably moved on to other stuff; I highly doubt they're still living off the money earned from it.

[Emperor Charlemagne]

Case in point: all the famous personal computer-era composers like Tim Follin, Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Jon Dunn, etc. etc. Of course back in the 80s composers were much less of a big deal, in a sense.