https://battleofthebits.com/academy/GroupThread/43102/Looking+for+Help+regarding+Pixelart+work_+and+Music+creation+YM2612+%28Sega+MD%29/

discuss

thread title changed to be more descriptive

the only people out there charging $5 per minute of music are either scammers or children. mostly scammers - plagiarists, midi slappers, people running stuff through converters, etc. that kind of low effort work is the only way a rate like that would even come close to being worth the amount of time you're putting into it.

i would absolutely rather work for free than for a paltry rate like $5/min - that sounds like an awful work relationship in the making - imagine putting five hours of work into an arrangement, for which you are receiving one dollar per hour, and the person paying you doesn't like it and asks for all these revisions. sounds awful for both of you.

at that point, you could be doing just about any other kind of work and it'd pay you far better. i don't care how passionate you are about composition, that just doesn't make sense. not only are you massively devaluing yourself & your work, you're devaluing other composers' work by extension.

imo the absolute floor for commissioned work is $100 per minute of music from any random, average, not-AAA studio source (as Mel mentioned that rate is much higher). there are reasons to deviate lower, such as a homie rate, for a favor, or to fit within the budget constraints of something you do genuinely care about and want to see through. Akuma's Castlevania project technically falls into the latter, but when i say "deviate lower" i mostly mean landing somewhere in the realm of $60-80/min, not $1-5/min. i definitely think that should just be a passion project and the arranger should just be somebody who really wants to make it happen for its own sake. (which... is not me, sorry Akuma! i've never even played a Castlevania game 😅)

and these are prices for if you're new! you definitely also deviate higher with experience - the commissioner is paying for your professional quality work, your experienced hand.

when thinking about rates, you just gotta do some simple math when deciding what to charge. ask yourself the question: how much time do you foresee spending on each song, or each minute, or whatever? how many hours? to formulate a rate out of that, you definitely want to ensure you're making minimum wage, and most probably you want to ensure you're making a good and comfortable wage. assume that with hiccups or revisions along the way, it's probably going to be more than your guess, too.

for me, a good polished piece of music of ~1min length can take anywhere from 4-6 hours, and so even a (relatively low, again, the floor) rate of $100/min is going to pay me somewhere between $16-25 per hour of work (revisions notwithstanding), which is comfortable but not amazing pay. it's often enough to feel like the work is "worth it" which is not only good for my wallet but it's good for the work relationship. if i'm feeling good about how much i'm getting paid, i'm going to do good work, i'm not going to be resentful if there are problems or more work is needed, etc... on the other hand if i feel i'm being underpaid then every step of the way is muddy and irritating.

fwiw, i've charged anywhere from $100-200/min for commissioned music depending on situation, level of detail, and also the aforementioned stuff about homie rates and favors. and that number is only ever going up. value your time, value your work, value your fellow composers.

for homebrew gameboy music which is most of my ongoing commissions i currently charge 150usd per song - around 1-2mins and a reasonable amount of revisions.

for non gameboy music, i charge $200 with the same deal as above.

these rates are already on the low end of the spectrum.

i typically don’t work for free but i will make exceptions as a favor or if its a project that really interests me.

anything less that $100 i would consider it an insult and not worth my time.

a bit about where i'm at: i've built a modest online presence but i don't really advertise myself as open to commission work, so the few jobs i've taken on were all from people who approached me out of the blue.

figuring out what to charge is something that i struggle with quite a bit, and i don't think i'm the only one! there are trade-offs to everything. i've turned away clients by offering an initial rate that they deem unreasonably high (which isn't actually an issue for reasons i'll try to get into), and the last time i agreed to a revenue share the project failed to materialize and i earned nothing from it. but on the other hand, the jobs i took that did work out paid pretty well for hobby work!

for a concrete example that's close to the scenario in the linked thread, the developer of the tic-80 game sleepless cards

commissioned me for sound design and music work. it's a small, non-commercial indie project from a previously unknown developer with limited funds. we eventually settled on somewhere between $150-200 for a suite of SFX and a couple of extendable tracker loops, which we both felt was fair given the circumstances.

(below market rate, perhaps, but about 10-20x the $5 per minute you've proposed.)

the lesson i took away from this is that people will value your work if you value your work! if a game developer believes in their project, they are willing to invest in making it as great as possible, and investing in sound/music is a key part of that.

to that end, the "race-to-the-bottom" pricing you describe can actually turn people off. if i'm a developer pouring my heart into a passion project and i see a composer charging $1-2 per minute of music, what do you think i'd assume about the effort they're putting into it? do i really think that their cheap-ass music will elevate the experience i'm trying to build?

more productively, what can you do to stand out? the competition that Da Flarf mentioned in the other thread is real--there are far more composers than paid composing jobs. but lowering prices isn't the answer. i think a much better approach is to believe in the quality of your work, and then convince commissioners that your work will up the quality of their projects. setting a fair price can actually be a part of that!

how to convince people of the quality of your work? i'd suggest building a portfolio somehow. participating in game jams as a composer is a good way to do that--not only can you prove to people that your music can elevate a game, you can build relationships with developers who might want you to contribute to their future projects! that's a much healthier relationship than one built on exploitative pricing.

adding to Petet's truly excellent advise, in regards to standing out I'd say:

- be a nice person
devs usually want chill people to work with, someone that can communicate, that will answer messages in a reasonable timeframe, that can listen to feedback and just overall someone that feels nice to be around

- don't flake
im honestly surprised at the number of times ive received a message saying "our composer dipped, are you free"

its true theres loooots of people wanting to write music but competent composers that are easy to work with and are consistent are rarer to find.

lastly id add you don't need to focus on getting 100 different gigs, most devs will hire you again if they enjoyed working with you, or will recommend you when the opportunity comes up, so I would focus on nurturing your existing relationships (and if you dont have any, gamejams are a great place to start as Petet said!)

i'll make whatever i've made before again for 30 dollars worth of food. if you ask me to make something new that's at least 50 dollars worth of food. gift cards acceptable. preferably Chilis. 1-2 minute starting and volume of food cost goes up from there. my terms are firm and are absolutely not something i'd recommend anyone else follow

Great insights but I have 2 glaring questions from all this:

1. where?
Where are you getting these opportunities from? From a passerby interacting with your YT/social? In the collaboration forum posting trenches? In discord servers? There are so many places to look for work, some more effective than others.

2. This question is for the composers who've made their own games. Is making your own game more beneficial for a portfolio than collaborating with a rando or is it less beneficial?

In my experience it's the latter

for me, it's been a mixture of people i know, communities i've become involved with, people who know my friends, and complete cold calls from people i've never met but who came across my work somehow

i charge 85 for first minute, 30 for additional minutes, but i am extremely selective with who i will accept work from. i will only do work for people i personally like, or for people who are associated with people i like. i do not need to make substantial income from music because my primary career more than provides, so i charge enough that only serious inquiries can be made. (if i charged less, everyone and their uncle would come knocking, and i would burn out).

the vast majority of my clients are twitch streamers commissioning background music for their "streaming soon" and "brb" screens, and i have a stipulation that my artist name must be displayed on screen whenever my music is playing. this has been a great decision and has driven a fair amount of traffic my way, as well as no shortage of prospective clients, all of whom so far are interested in ordering more music in the future.

furthermore, i retain all commercial rights and intend to release my streamer tracks as an album sooner or later.

there are a few factors that went into my decision, but at root, i chose not to charge the amount my work is "worth", but rather, an amount that i feel good about accepting from my friends. (and in this economy, i would feel awful charging more.)

GUYS!!!! IN A CRAZY TURN OF EVENTS I'M IN CONVERSATION WITH A DEV RN! WHAT'S A SOLID % FOR A REV-SHARE???

(edit)

the dev in question: "Aight obviously you can be valueable to the team.. I'll send you over all I have of files and tones of the game."

turns out being a dev at the same time as a composer pays out

congrats!!!

rates are hard to set, and i think you kind of have to vibe it out. it's a function of amount/complexity of music required, plus the number of people on the team, as well as commercial track record, plus there's the risk of the project failing, and somehow your rate needs to include all of these factors?

naturally, getting paid up front eliminates the risk of working hard for no reward if a project fails to see the light of day. that's something i learned the hard way!

buuuut... if you're ok with a revenue share and you're working with a team without a prior commercial track record, 10% gives off good vibes, can't explain it. if i were in your position, i'd start negotiations at 10%; it feels like a reasonable ask if there's a high chance that the project won't materialize or won't sell well. you can always negotiate downwards if you really feel you have to, but i wouldn't go below 5%. but i'd wait to hear what other people here think too, i've only got one or two data points.

gonna bump my commission rates after reading this thread x))

my reasoning is the same as damis, but when I started doing commissions, I only did it for friends, so my rates were a little on the low end and I simply never corrected it up when I opened commissions for everyone.
which on the other hand is okay because it ensures I stay under the tax free extra income per year

if you want a more concrete answer, I think starting with charging 50 bucks per minute of music rendered is fair. if I were you, I would start with offering that as my rate and see where it goes. negotiate if you need to, just read the situation. over time it'll become more clear how much you're worth to clients as you move through more projects and commissions

update: a 10% rev-share has been negotiated. We'll see if it goes higher if I end up helping out with the coding side as well, but for now I'm content.

as an aside--i think i might've figured out where jason graves's $5 per minute figure came from.

as you can see from the consensus here, standard commission rates are at least 10 times higher than that, even >100 times once you're established. but if you were to compute an effective rate from revenue share payouts, you might end up with a figure much closer to what you've described

for example, suppose you write a 10 minute soundtrack for a game. suppose that the game is priced at $5 and sells 200 copies, for a total of $1000 in gross revenue. if you agreed to a 5% revenue share, you get $50 total, which works out to $5 per minute of music, assuming you negotiated your share with respect to gross profits. i pulled these numbers out of nowhere, but it does paint a picture about composer payouts with respect to number of sales. (maybe games should be priced higher?)

nonetheless i think that revenue sharing is OK. if you agree to a revenue share, you're establishing a partnership where you and your commissioner will share success or weather failure together. it's probably best not to rely on those arrangements as a primary source of income, but this is much more fair than agreeing to exploitatively low pay at the onset.

You gotta ask for their budget first so you can give them the highest price you can give
/J

wow i agree with kleeder, im ripping myself off

most of the time i base it off of what the game is. usually i charge a set amount per the amount of time it took me to work on the song (since i get distracted easily, i use an application activity tracker to time how long i have worked on the app im using to write the song, like Famitracker, etc.).

THAT SAID, if one of my friends approaches me and asks, “hey, can you do a track or two for my nonprofit Mega Man fangame”, i’ll probably just do it for free.

note to self: if I make a mega man fangame I can call it a nonprofit startup (JK)

Alright, on a serious note, as someone with a decent rep I tend to charge around $100 per minute of music, which maybe is kind of less than I should do ? lol

Back when I was starting out with comms and shit i found even $50 to be a crazy amount of money because I simply didn't know how much one should charge for this kind of work. Tbh, my current rate still feels like a lot because of my circumstances and context. Given what I've read in this and the other thread perhaps this is less than I should consider at this point lul.

Back to the main point btw, do I find that $5 rate absolutely insane and indeed basically an insult to one's abilities and time. I get what you mean but yeah, not THAT little.

Now, about the "where do you get comms?", personally most of the time I just get a random message or friend request on discord for asking for details lol. Expected response, but really p much the only steps to actually get consistent offers are 1. Build a reputation in a community; and 2. Build a network of people. These are definitely much easier said than done, however in fact BotB is a very good place for both of those!
Also, diversity is good for your portfolio and image, preferably do not get stuck in a single niche or genre !

Btw any thoughts on what pricing would be good personally for me would be greatly appreciated !

I was reviewing my old notes from that course I mentioned as "proof" earlier. Long story short, I accidentally misquoted data. Statistics can mean anything if taken out of context. My bad, fellas.

There was basically a whole discussion about this in Maj7 as well and basically, the takeaway ultimately was you're going to need to have different rates for different folks/different needs. This gets extra complicated when it comes to rights, and especially when it comes who you're working with.

This is unfortunately a conundrum that most will have to figure out by themselves, there's very little advice that makes sense as everyone's got different expectations and experiences, and making sense of all of it yourself requires having gone through it ultimately.

Just to give you a few examples - some people do it entirely on the side: They already have a very stable primary source of income, so they can afford to not charge as much for their craft, but are in turn very selective. Others need all the work they can get, so they'll take many jobs at different rates. Few will be so in demand that they won't work for everything, and they're not super affordable. Others like to work exclusively for free just because it's more convenient than sorting out financials. As long as it's a decision you've reached by yourself and weren't influenced by someone to take said decision (especially if it's at a disadvantage to yourself), then personally I think that's fair game.

Myself, I just have a spreadsheet with base rates, and I input into it either how long the piece will be for, or how long I expect to spend on it in total - and then add a multiplier (can be less than 1 or more) depending on the workload. In my case, very simple chiptune stuff is x0.5, complicated stuff is going to be like x1.5 or whatever - this is just as an example really, and a rather silly one at that. I have set "prices" but they're never what I offer to people wishing to hire my talents verbatim unless it happens to line up that way.

As for how to get jobs... a lot of it is networking and exposure. You'll want to put yourself out there as much as you can (without being desperate ofc), and if you're super serious, even spend an hour or two a day perusing game dev stuff on socials and seeing what you'd like to compose for - gathering info on whether they already have a composer, whether they *need* an audio person, and just.. being genuine and nice, showing actual interest - I wouldn't just cold message everyone and go " hi do uneed composar please".

Even a lot of this is advice I normally don't follow, just to give you an example of how much experiences differ. I'm in the category of having too little free time to take that much of a mantle up (but maybe I should at some point, life's too short and I don't want to be working at a retail shop for the rest of my life, and I'd probably enjoy flexing my creative muscles more - then again, it's at least comfortable enough that I don't need to worry about not having money. It's tough).

Even so I hope it helps somehow. It's not really answering anything, but yeah.

ok so now that i'm finally back to this site (and my hiatus turned out to be really short again ogkfddfh), i can participate here

i'm still really clueless when it comes to commissions and all that. and i feel really shy trying to expose myself, also hating the fact that i have to promote myself as a Brand™ instead of just me when it comes to more professional enviroments x . x

at the very least that's how i've felt, and maybe i'm self-sabotaging any chances at having some success with my comms.

but anyway, so far i have a base price of $100 USD per minute. but for commercial rights i charge double that price, and for exclusive rights i charge four times.
however i've been told that i should be more selective and smart about exclusive rights stuff, like for example charging at the very least ten times the base price if i want to work with a professional game studio.
but then that price is too fucking much for indies x_x so idfk anymore

i considered both decreasing and increasing my prices. decreasing because when i tried to work with indies they found my prices too expensive, but also increasing them because people tell me i should be more kind to myself and mind stuff like the hourly wage

rn if i work 8 hours on a noncommercial entry i get $12.5 USD per hour, which isn't that bad imo considering my hellhole country, known as argentina, has way worse minimum wages... and i used to work in a job where i was paid less than the minimum wage x_x

I feel that 4x might be a liiiiittle bit much but dont trust me on that because as i said i have no clue on whats Good for this work

I think that you don't necessarily have to promote yourself as a brand. You're a person with skills and you're showing off those skills to get a deal, i don't see what's wrong with that. I get the insecurity fully, i've felt it aswell, but yeah it's really nothing to worry about if youre gaining something at the end of the day. also it's lame to talk profesionally lol i wanna say stupid shit all the time

meanwhile in my head: damn there's money in this?!

I hear that some studios have begun supplanting graphics artists with AI. Are they doing the same with composers?

haven't seen that yet