Prices for Composers?

[Lishy]

Hey guys. How much do experienced composers here usually charge for music commissions, and entire soundtracks? Professionals, and hobbyists?

I'm entering college, and I must budget my money. However, I am still considering recruiting/hiring serious composers for my project.

So for the confident composers out there, how much do you charge? I'm willing to contact you in the near future when my budget could afford it.

For reference, this is the musical style I'm hoping for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U7oPZEw9NY
(I'm not a musician, so I have trouble defining genres. Classical? The entire song is a lot more than pianos though...)

[jmclark]

The best way to work out a pay-scale with a composer is per minute of music, rather than in hours of their time. That's the "industry standard" for TV/Film/Game music composers. I'm pretty whimsical about how much I ask for based on how much budget is there is, how much I want to work for the project, and how valuable the work will be to my portfolio.

I've also done all the music for a project for a flat sum, which worked out okay for me; but I like getting per-minute rates -- I feel like that is more fair to me and to the person who hired me. It works out well because most looped tracks run around 2-minutes, but you can request 1min tracks for short scenes and 4-5min tracks for longer scenes. The longest through-composed track I've seen for a game was the ending music for Suikoden II which ran close to 13min.

Make an offer to composers you are interested in that is reasonable considering your budget, and see if they bite.

[Roganis]

Prices depends totally on the composer. Some composers are asking per-minute prices, per-track prices, or per-number of instruments in the track prices ^^'
Also, some composers are mostly composing for their own pleasure, or to be better known, and work for free. I'm a part of it, but I can't help you right now, too much projects to do x)
If you want an idea about composer's prices, it is mostly about 15-30$ a track, but he can also ask you only a percent in the sales of the product. It depends a lot on the composer you're having business with !

[Ziassan]

Jmclark reply summarized well the thing.

It's easy if you think about it : the composer has a personnal hourly rate based on how much he/people values his works (and the other job possibilites he has), and if a 2min track asks him for instance 5 hours, he just have to multiply by his rate to get an idea.
For instance Roganis said 15~30$ a track(which is really the lowest-lowest side, a normal rate is more around 40~70 a 1min30~2min track at least, for some bigger projects more). If he's working at 10$/hour (~7€ so the minimum to be paid in France), that means 1h30 to 3h of work on each track (with all the modifications and restart on it because it's not always good the first time).
For instance in a movie, which asks a lot of work for just one minute of music, normal rate is 500$/minute (normal means, for not big movies and not big composers).

Well after not everybody make all that much calculation but it works like that when you have to.
Some others factors come, like the size of the project budget, the size of the OST (longer OST means some prices can be lowered because once the instruments etc. are chosen it's easier).
% of share can be fine but that's not the best since an artist or composer is less likely to work for something that could be 0% of nothing (and the guy at the other side of the net can cheats easily on the numbers, also).
All of that was for usual things, you still can find composers who want experience since they're starting in the thing and ask really a little. And your budget can define the kind of work, for a instance a piano (like the one you linked) or music box track can takes less time to do, it's sometimes a bit lower price.

PS : that was if your project is commercial, of course, if not it can be a bit different.

[jmclark]

Prices depends totally on the composer. Some composers are asking per-minute prices, per-track prices, or per-number of instruments in the track prices ^^'

Per-minute and per-track prices tend to work out to about the same since they are based on the same scale. A general rule of thumb that my comp teacher gives to his students is that a decent composer can work at a pace of about 1 minute of music every 3 hours (for most "chamber music" type things)... but that's before you have to do any sequencing or rehearsing.

Sequencing is its own animal. I know composers who are good at composing and terrible at sequencing, and I know guys who can't compose at all who can do insane things with a computer... and a lot of people spanning the gap in between.

The only time you might need to worry about the number of instruments in a track is if there are live performers involved or you are asking for an orchestration that is outside of your composer's comfort zone (asking someone who usually just does electronica pads and piano to write something for a full orchestra). In the latter case, you might end up better off trying a different musical vision or a different composer (depending on your priorities). If you really have money to spend, you can hire a composer and an orchestrator.

The best route to go if you are worried about budgeting is to try to work out some type of package deal from a composer. There are a fair amount of decent composers running around who'll at least consider an offer if you go to them and say, "I'm putting together a VN, I need 15 tracks: 10 tracks @ 1-2min, 3 tracks @ 4min and 2 tracks at 5+min (for opening and closing sequences). I can pay you $x for the whole thing (half up front and the rest when we're done)."

Heck, I did a 4min drum track last fall for some friends to practice belly dancing with for a case of beer (which I drank while making the track) and some homemade cookies.

[Roganis]

Roganis said 15~30$ a track(which is really the lowest-lowest side, a normal rate is more around 40~70 a 1min30~2min track at least, for some bigger projects more).

Well, don't forget we're talking about a lemmasoft visual novel project... So the tracks need to be at least longer than 2 minutes in order to no to loop a lot during the game (I think 2"30-3" is a good size) and I don't think someone could buy a full OST at such a price ^^"

[LVUER]

Which one will be cheaper (in sum/total that we must pay to the composer)? Lots of short tracks (30s-1m) or few of long tracks (2m-3m)?

[Ziassan]

LVUER > Hmm I'd say a few long tracks, because each track has its own amount of work needed to start it, once the thing is got it becomes easier. Like (only an exemple), 2h to setup the whole things, mood, instruments, feel + 2h/minute.

Roganis > If I may quote the original question, "How much do experienced composers here usually charge for music commissions, and entire soundtracks? Professionals, and hobbyists?" it was not only the hobbyist side with hard budget to follow, it seems.
And even for that, people do afford that kind of price here (which are not that high) for their commercial games, with less it becomes difficult for a composer to do something deserving a story serious enough.
After, sometimes people just make a team with motivated people and share the thing after the game is sold, but that's a bit different.

[jmclark]

Which one will be cheaper (in sum/total that we must pay to the composer)? Lots of short tracks (30s-1m) or few of long tracks (2m-3m)?

It depends on how the composer does his rates. If he charges by minuet of music -- which is what I do -- then it wouldn't matter. If he charges for set-up for each track, then fewer tracks would be cheaper. Honestly, the only way to really affect the price substantially is to ask for more/less music (in terms of time). Instrumentation can affect price (this shouldn't be a huge factor, but a large template with lots of MIDI data takes more time to edit than a small one), so can the presence of live performers (this can run up the price quickly), and the quality of sound libraries at your composer's disposal can also affect price to a degree (FL Studio with Soundfonts is significantly cheaper overhead than Cubase/Reaper/DP using EWQL or VSL).

However, the main factor is always "how much music do you want?"