Commission Woes

[Caveat Lector]

Here's a link to the wiki page, which links various sites and composers that do use a Creative Commons license: http://wiki.renai.us/wiki/Pre-Made_Music

I especially love the music from Incompetech, plus there's always Jamendo.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

I'm a blunt asshole, so I'm going to go ahead and just link MusicAO's thread which Jackkel Dragon PMed me. Dunno why people haven't so far.

Sigh. And nothing about this thread raised any eyebrows with people?

It has all the hallmarks of a scam. It is literally 'too good to be true'. 20 songs in 3 days? 5$ a song (at first)? As one poster put it, speaking praise but hitting the nail on the head as to why this should have sent alarm bells ringing - "Great tracks with an inhumanly fast turnaround time." Exactly, because it isn't possible to turn out that many original songs that fast and have them all sound good.

Not only that, but working on multiple "OST"s at the same time, on the same days? What composer does that?

And look at the time stamps on the start of this thread and the last post of that one - it looks like MusicAO circled the wagons and closed shop the minute they were done seeing Jackkel Dragon's PM calling them out. Quite a convenient "studying break".

http://www.fiverr.com/hollyao/compose-y ... ic-request

They seem to do a lot of business on fiverr as well. If it's not too late, i'd file a complaint with paypal (if you went through them), or even your credit card company. You could potentially file a report with the police as well since you paid quite a bit in total.

I know this person is supposedly in Australia, but from just the amount taken from Jackkel Dragon, you are looking at a grand larceny amount in many U.S. states - a felony. How much money did MusicAO take from Lemmasoft members in total?

I'd like to see more policing from the staff here on Lemmasoft when these types of recruitment or services threads pop up with all these red flags attached. I know you want to give people the benefit of the doubt - but in cases like this, the services being offered were impossible to fulfill in an honest manner. Staff wouldn't be remiss in these cases to ask some pointed questions. But forum members should also exercise a little more "buyer beware" caution too.

[Greeny]

The problem is, for many of us, Music is an arcane art and we have literally no idea how it gets made or how long it would take.

[Lishy]

If it's not too late, i'd file a complaint with paypal (if you went through them), or even your credit card company. You could potentially file a report with the police as well since you paid quite a bit in total.

I think everyone who was scammed by him should file a complaint.

Since I'm a fine believer in Karma, it would be my pleasure to participate. Just PM me when we have a concerted effort to do so.

[Jackkel Dragon]

If it's not too late, i'd file a complaint with paypal (if you went through them), or even your credit card company. You could potentially file a report with the police as well since you paid quite a bit in total.

I think everyone who was scammed by him should file a complaint.

Since I'm a fine believer in Karma, it would be my pleasure to participate. Just PM me when we have a concerted effort to do so.

According to the PayPal resolution center tutorials, you can only dispute payments up to 45 days after the transaction. They still recommend reporting problems that are found after that time, but I can't find out where those reports are filed. I'll send a report if someone can walk me through how to do it, though.

[MelodyKnighton]

just talk to paypal's customer service. they'll point you in the right direction. is your paypal linked to a bank account? maybe talk to your bank as well.

[Lishy]

If it's not too late, i'd file a complaint with paypal (if you went through them), or even your credit card company. You could potentially file a report with the police as well since you paid quite a bit in total.

I think everyone who was scammed by him should file a complaint.

Since I'm a fine believer in Karma, it would be my pleasure to participate. Just PM me when we have a concerted effort to do so.

According to the PayPal resolution center tutorials, you can only dispute payments up to 45 days after the transaction. They still recommend reporting problems that are found after that time, but I can't find out where those reports are filed. I'll send a report if someone can walk me through how to do it, though.

-censored for now-

[Mad_Scientist]

Now, I'm not sure what I should do regarding music for my own project. It's still a long way off from release, but I don't have the kind of money I'd need to get a custom soundtrack. Unless there's music available for free that is also royalty-free, I might have to release the game without music until I am able to pay for a soundtrack.

Caveat Lector already linked to the wiki which includes a link to this page among others, but I can personally recommend http://www.nosoapradio.us/ It has 500 tracks all licensed under CC BY 3.0, and I really like some of them. Of course using any free sources of royalty free music means that your soundtrack won't be unique, but I'd say it's better than having no music at all. You can already replace it later with an original soundtrack if you can afford it again.

Sorry to hear about the whole situation, it really sucks.

[LeetMusic]

Tip: NEVER commission someone unless they have a sound cloud with past work and ways to contact them![/quote]

Anyone can make a soundcloud page and upload stolen music claiming to be their own though...

[LeetMusic]

Now, I'm not sure what I should do regarding music for my own project. It's still a long way off from release, but I don't have the kind of money I'd need to get a custom soundtrack. Unless there's music available for free that is also royalty-free, I might have to release the game without music until I am able to pay for a soundtrack.[/quote]

What I've done with indies that have (relatively) low budgets is compose music following their spec for lower pay than my work for hire rates. The catch is that I maintain ownership of the music, so I can later monetize it through through OST sales or licensing. But of course I don't release the music until the game has released, unless the project is officially abandoned or release delayed indefinitely. I will also wait awhile after the game release before submitting to any license libraries. These are all points to negotiate between the developer and the contractor.

[rufiangel]

As someone who commissioned works off MusicAO as well, I'm rather dismayed by this turn of events. I requested some very specific atmospheres and moods, however, and MusicAO managed to meet my requests and also make adjustments immediately when I asked (e.g. remove/add instruments, adjust tone/mood, reduce noise). So I'm not sure how much of what I received was really a bunch of stolen tracks or not. Perhaps she just created tracks based off existing ones? It's disheartening to see the lack of response from the composer... I guess that pretty much confirms that this person was a hack.

[LeetMusic]

I'm a blunt asshole, so I'm going to go ahead and just link MusicAO's thread which Jackkel Dragon PMed me. Dunno why people haven't so far.

Sigh. And nothing about this thread raised any eyebrows with people?

It has all the hallmarks of a scam. It is literally 'too good to be true'. 20 songs in 3 days? 5$ a song (at first)? As one poster put it, speaking praise but hitting the nail on the head as to why this should have sent alarm bells ringing - "Great tracks with an inhumanly fast turnaround time." Exactly, because it isn't possible to turn out that many original songs that fast and have them all sound good.

Not only that, but working on multiple "OST"s at the same time, on the same days? What composer does that?

And look at the time stamps on the start of this thread and the last post of that one - it looks like MusicAO circled the wagons and closed shop the minute they were done seeing Jackkel Dragon's PM calling them out. Quite a convenient "studying break".

http://www.fiverr.com/hollyao/compose-y ... ic-request

They seem to do a lot of business on fiverr as well. If it's not too late, i'd file a complaint with paypal (if you went through them), or even your credit card company. You could potentially file a report with the police as well since you paid quite a bit in total.

I know this person is supposedly in Australia, but from just the amount taken from Jackkel Dragon, you are looking at a grand larceny amount in many U.S. states - a felony. How much money did MusicAO take from Lemmasoft members in total?

I'd like to see more policing from the staff here on Lemmasoft when these types of recruitment or services threads pop up with all these red flags attached. I know you want to give people the benefit of the doubt - but in cases like this, the services being offered were impossible to fulfill in an honest manner. Staff wouldn't be remiss in these cases to ask some pointed questions. But forum members should also exercise a little more "buyer beware" caution too.

Agree about the cheapness suggesting scam and also posted as such. As for policing the forums, it seems hard to do based on heresay. Should anyone be banned because anyone claims to have had a problem with them offline? Probably best on a case by case basis. I strongly agree about "buyer beware" caution. Cheap is good but it isn't everything. You get what you pay for.

[Katta]

Agree about the cheapness suggesting scam and also posted as such. As for policing the forums, it seems hard to do based on heresay. Should anyone be banned because anyone claims to have had a problem with them offline? Probably best on a case by case basis. I strongly agree about "buyer beware" caution. Cheap is good but it isn't everything. You get what you pay for.

Sorry for being off-topic here, but I hate this "blaming the victim" attitude, have already seen it among some artists here on lemmasoft in a thread about some problems with an artist, when they said "oh you wanted to scam us artists by paying too cheap, then you deserve to be scammed in return". Most of the people are hobbyists and beginners here, I understand you want to get professionsl rates and you well deserve it, but for most people it's either getting something cheap or not getting at all. And I don't think it's fair to other musicians here on lemmasoft to say that cheap means scam, they may be doing it mostly as a hobby or want to help other people (but still get a bit of money), many reasons.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Agree about the cheapness suggesting scam and also posted as such. As for policing the forums, it seems hard to do based on heresay. Should anyone be banned because anyone claims to have had a problem with them offline? Probably best on a case by case basis. I strongly agree about "buyer beware" caution. Cheap is good but it isn't everything. You get what you pay for.

Sorry for being off-topic here, but I hate this "blaming the victim" attitude, have already seen it among some artists here on lemmasoft in a thread about some problems with an artist, when they said "oh you wanted to scam us artists by paying too cheap, then you deserve to be scammed in return". Most of the people are hobbyists and beginners here, I understand you want to get professionsl rates and you well deserve it, but for most people it's either getting something cheap or not getting at all. And I don't think it's fair to other musicians here on lemmasoft to say that cheap means scam, they may be doing it mostly as a hobby or want to help other people (but still get a bit of money), many reasons.

It wasn't the cheapness of the songs that suggested the scam (though it definitely contributed to suggesting that with other evidence). The red alarm that it was a scam is the turnaround time.

Any of the musicians on Lemmasoft can feel free to chime in, but offering complete custom original soundtracks consisting of 15-20 songs in "3 days max" just isn't possible while maintaining any sort of quality. That's only 3 and half hours a song - IF the composer doesn't sleep at all. Assuming the composer sleeps every night, that's 2 hours and twenty minutes a song - IF the composer doesn't eat, bathe, go to the bathroom, etc. doing nothing but composing from dawn to dusk. More than likely MusicAO was using that time to browse music libraries to find songs that matched whatever description for mood and atmosphere was requested. In case anyone doesn't know, most online music libraries can easily be searched by mood and atmosphere, so finding a close match to even a detailed request wouldn't be hard if you had no scruples.

The time turnaround being the sign of a scam is reinforced by the cheap price. Think about it - if MusicAO WAS some kind of musical savant that could create an amazing song everytime from scratch in less than 2 hours, she'd be working herself to death for $2.50 a hour. And she lives in Australia. Where the minimum wage is over $16 an hour. And this isn't a case of American dollars being worth more than Australian dollars, the two currencies are almost equal in value. She's charging the equivalent of 9 minutes sweeping floors in her home country to turn out an original custom song just for you.

I know "victim blaming" isn't good, but knowing the value of things is important. For instance, if you bought a new shrink-wrapped PS4 off of someone for $100 in a parking lot (Ebay, or anywhere else for that matter), you can be sure you either bought a box of bricks or a stolen item. It is the same thing here - if someone is offering you something of great value (a custom song) for less than a hamburger or a cup of coffee, and it isn't defective (i.e. the song is great) - 2+2 equals a stolen item.

If you look at MusicAO's Fiverr page, she offers SINGLE DAY turnaround on any song (not AS insane, but still seems crazy to me), plus she'll loop it for you for more money. But you can see a few comments from people that requested a looped version of a custom song and noted that MusicAO apparently wasn't able to perfectly loop the song. Again, this points to her not actually composing the music herself. She apparently knows how to apply a few filters to an existing track, either in Fruitloop or Audacity, little else. Maybe she can compose original music if the mood strikes her, but those 20 piece custom OSTs aren't including any of them. But it is pretty damning that she "paused" accepting gigs on Fiverr recently too. Jackkel Dragon must have scared her good.

Again, I'd love for the music composers on Lemmasoft to come forward and talk about the time it takes to make a song, to educate people. I'd also imagine they could see red flags in the wide and eclectic assortment of genres and songs MusicAO has "produced". I imagine composing is much like illustration - an artist can draw in different styles, but to a trained illustrator, the way they make their lines is as unique as a signature. They have habits and tendencies that repeat in pieces that may varying wildly in style. I'm not musically trained, so I couldn't say if the same holds true in music, but I'm willing to bet it does.

[Haze]

I'd love for the music composers on Lemmasoft to come forward and talk about the time it takes to make a song, to educate people.

Well, I currently don't compose professionally, just in my own time and for my own games, but I have to agree-- the turnaround time definitely is a red flag. For me, the shortest time it took to make a song was 1 full day-- and that's when I had all the time I wanted at the piano! Making a great song in just 2 hours definitely sounds...well, almost impossible, really. Especially if someone has school/work and can't spend their whole day making music.

Here's my basic song process-- "brainstorm" different keys, chords, etc at the piano; write the song, usually on paper(which obviously takes some time); put the song in Musescore(which is a great program, despite being free); and change around the instruments, mainly because sometimes a song can sound better on different instruments than piano, and because Musescore's default piano sound isn't that great, compared to the real thing, anyway. Depending on how long it takes to write the song, this can take days at a time. The song I mentioned above that I wrote in 1 full day hasn't even been put into Musescore yet! So, writing a great song in 2 hours, or 1 day if you look at her Fiverr account? Sounds... a little unbelievable.

LeetMusic, I know you've offered your music services on lemma. How long does it take you to write a song?

EDIT: Just wanted to add that I'm not blaming anyone who got fooled by MusicAO. I'm just trying to say that, as a composer myself, I would have considered her turnaround time a little suspicious had I been buying music from her.