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Price of Music


ShadowBlade
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I recently (today) got an email from a small software/video game company asking how much I would charge them per minute of music.

Truth is, I honestly have no idea what is a reasonable price. I realize this is probably a difficult question to answer, but I was hoping someone who's done music for such companies would be able to help me out with this.

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Well, first and foremost, what's your music worth to you? Everything has a price, including how much work you put into the music, so it should probably be a reflection of that and the final product.

I'd say start small, such as $50 or even $100 (depending on the quality of the track; you don't want to alienate people, but you also don't want to appear like you have no spine and just give the music away), and then if they think that's too high/not within their budget, the negotiations can start and you can work with them to make a win-win situation.

Also, time spent per minute of track is relative; you will spend the most effort on a particular track and nobody will like it, and you'll spend the least amount of time on a track and it will be the greatest hit of the album.

my 2¢

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Also, time spent per minute of track is relative; you will spend the most effort on a particular track and nobody will like it, and you'll spend the least amount of time on a track and it will be the greatest hit of the album.

my 2¢

Absolute truest thing ever. No way to predict this kind of thing.

Xenon's right about not starting too high, but also not selling yourself short. Do you know how much total music they're expecting out of you?

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I think at Magfest the OCR peeps said upwards of $900 per minute of material wasn't uncommon. But those are bigger league composers.

I'd find out what price you'd be happy accepting, bid a little higher and let them talk you down. Just be prepared to get a "Wow, that's a lot of money!" response no matter what price you give them, people who don't make music (and often people who make music as well) don't really realize the work that goes into it and how much it's really worth. Especially in today's world where there are thousands of ways to get music for free, illegal or not, a lot of people just aren't used to paying for music.

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For myself personally when I worked on past projects, we determined the general scope of the project early on and instead of providing a price per minute (or per sound effect), we determined a price for the whole project. You might evaluate that and use that as a starting point, then adjust it as necessary based on whether the project ends up taking up more or fewer resources than anticipated.

It may be a little easier for smaller companies to deal with this simpler model than settle on a strict per-minute rate, to later find out that the composer wrote a 12 minute title screen opus. Well, not really likely, but you get the point...

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Don't forget to take revision costs into consideration.

There's very little chance people will say amen to the very first iteration of each song you present to them.

So it's up to you to determine if you wanna include that in each song's pricetag or treat it as a separate cost.

Depending on the scope of the projet/studio size, you can for exemple offer a certain number of revisions for free, then charge extra if they exceed that threshold.

Like everything else, simply discuss it and clarify things before signing your contract.

In a similar fashion, do not overprice yourself by asking for 900$ per minute if you're working for a small company or independant developper. That would be overkill.

Sometimes, it's better suited to try and cut a royalty deal on sales rather than clumsily trying to push for the big check up-front.

Best of luck. :)

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For AAA games the average that people get paid is typically between $900-1500 per minute, so naturally you probably won't get that from a small/indie studio.

That being said, music is usually a pretty critical part of the game. It's important that you get paid fairly without devaluing your work to the dev, but also without scaring them off by trying to get $500 a minute or more if they're funding the project out of their own pockets or something. And never quote a price right up front, always try to get as much information about the game and music as you can, then evaluate it and get back to them quickly. Find out stuff like:

-What kind of music they want

-How much music they need

-How long you have to work on it

-How much control are they willing to give you on the music

-What kind of game they're making

-What platforms it will be distributed on

-How much they'll be selling the game for

and definitely ask

-What their budget is for music

I'm never a fan of people just straight up working for $50/minute or something for original music, because that's honestly like the equivalent of working at McDonalds for like $2 an hour when minimum wage is much higher. And what if you agree to $50 a minute for 10 minutes of music, and then the game goes and sells 150,000 copies. Suddenly a game that's making at LEAST $150,000 has only paid you $500 total for the music, and that's crap.

So here's what I would generally recommend. Find out what they can afford to pay you now. If it's really super low, then tell them you'll work for that as long as they give you some sort of backend. You might have to negotiate how much, but at the very least you should ask for at least 5% of the sales or something. Also, ask if you can keep the rights to sell the game's soundtrack on your own if you want. Then you can throw it up on iTunes/Amazon, Bandcamp or wherever and any money you make on that is just extra $$$ in your pocket.

Anyway, those are my $0.02, do with them what you will.

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For AAA games the average that people get paid is typically between $900-1500 per minute, so naturally you probably won't get that from a small/indie studio.

That being said, music is usually a pretty critical part of the game. It's important that you get paid fairly without devaluing your work to the dev, but also without scaring them off by trying to get $500 a minute or more if they're funding the project out of their own pockets or something. And never quote a price right up front, always try to get as much information about the game and music as you can, then evaluate it and get back to them quickly. Find out stuff like:

-What kind of music they want

-How much music they need

-How long you have to work on it

-How much control are they willing to give you on the music

-What kind of game they're making

-What platforms it will be distributed on

-How much they'll be selling the game for

and definitely ask

-What their budget is for music

I'm never a fan of people just straight up working for $50/minute or something for original music, because that's honestly like the equivalent of working at McDonalds for like $2 an hour when minimum wage is much higher. And what if you agree to $50 a minute for 10 minutes of music, and then the game goes and sells 150,000 copies. Suddenly a game that's making at LEAST $150,000 has only paid you $500 total for the music, and that's crap.

So here's what I would generally recommend. Find out what they can afford to pay you now. If it's really super low, then tell them you'll work for that as long as they give you some sort of backend. You might have to negotiate how much, but at the very least you should ask for at least 5% of the sales or something. Also, ask if you can keep the rights to sell the game's soundtrack on your own if you want. Then you can throw it up on iTunes/Amazon, Bandcamp or wherever and any money you make on that is just extra $$$ in your pocket.

Anyway, those are my $0.02, do with them what you will.

That sounds like some damn good advice! Thanks a ton!

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