Hello everyone,

It seems that you would want to factor in how much money it is going to cost you to make the music and who is paying for it.

For instance, are you making this on your home studio, by yourself, or are you paying people to play instruments in a somewhat “decent studio”.


Also, is this going to be exclusive or non-exclusive because selling one 10 min. song for $6,000 compared to selling a song a bunch of times for $25.00…Seems if they want exclusive music rights then you apply the appropriate zeros. (As Brian noted you will not be getting royalties, so go ahead and add an extra zero...) Thanks Brian!

No one is going to make Micros**ts next tune for $25.00…

I suppose you would want to figure in how long it takes you to make a minute a music as well 2,3,10 hours?? Days? Weeks?
Anyway, just found your site a couple of days ago, glad to be here, feels like a good place to meet game designers and discuss gaming music from top to bottom.

Sincerely,


liftedCREATION

p.s. Listened to your music Nathan and Sam, nice work!!

(Plus you'll get the royalties)[/quote]

With the exception of small, indy projects, royalties are virtually unheard of in videogames. Years ago (in the 90's) occasionally we'd get "back end" but that changed over a decade ago.

And you are correct-- if the client is expecting "live orchestra" production quality, you certainly need to factor in those costs as well.

Brian
Executive Director GameSoundCon
President, Game Audio Network Guild
Brian Schmidt Studios

Afternoon Brian,


Thank you for correcting me on the royalties. With that being said, is $600/min the avg. for indie game producers to pay for “non-live orchestrated” exclusive music?

Also could someone point me to the person in charge of the Marketplace here??

Thank you,

First off, thanks for the kind words on my work! Appreciate it!

There is no set, standard rate across the entire industry but there are norms or trends. I've heard the "common" rate for exclusive rights can be as high as $1,000 - $1,250 per minute of music composed. I've even heard as high as $2,500. But for "normal" indie budgets this can quickly exceed what's realistic. So you have to focus on the average price point of the end product. A typical iPhone app isn't going to have the same price point as a PS3 title. This is why it gets tricky when discussing standard rates... plus, to my knowledge there's no mass email or publication going out to (non-union) composers saying "okay, now X is the new set rate." At least not yet.

It's hard to say what the average indie game producer(s) can pay these days because that label encompasses a much larger range of folks and projects. Before the app store and such, most indie game producers were smaller, non-major companies that still had a decent amount of dough. These days an indie game producer could be a programmer in a basement who pays the $100 dev fee to Apple and uploads his game.

in short - I've charged more than $600/min and I've charged a whole lot less. Many of the factors already discussed in this thread would explain why.

Here's the contact page if you still need to speak to someone directly on staff about the Marketplace: http://www.gamedev.n...ut/contact.html