I don't think it is a problem. It is how free market works. Ok, I'm bending his quote here a little ;) to point that it is not something that someone can resolve or find a perfect solution.

I would argue that if someone is producing the music in their spare time then it's not really an example of an idealised free market where everything finds its true value - instead you have someone able to sell their services at below cost price due to having excess resources to fall back on (ie. their day job). This makes it a sort of inadvertent predatory pricing.

I'm not in favour of artists gathering together to agree artificially inflated prices, but on the other hand we mustn't mistake the ability for some individuals to be able to afford to give away free music as implying the cost of making music approaches free.

oh lawdy, this topic has created a spiral effect of discussion. I did not think it would spawn this much attention! :)

I can give a funny example from past a few days. I was doing an research on Voice Over recording options here and there, quoting companies and people for the project we do. Some of them had give me their price, some not, some asked for more details etc... I've made my choice and machine started to go on... And after a couple of days one of the companies I quoted but not selected started to... renegotiate the price. They were asking for 'my preferred price' and some other things. They finished on "we will overbid anyone with 30%". Quite interesting, somewhat funny, spoken a bit idly... but my point is that the process of fixing the price is dynamic and when people starts to bid each other it can end far below a real value of their work.

Were you asking companies for a quote (they were producing the recordings), or were they asking you for a quote (you were producing the recordings)?

Why would they overbid someone else by 30%?

If they were underbidding by 30%, they sound desperate, which probably means they aren't getting enough work, meaning no repeat customers, meaning dissatisfied customers. That's speculation though.

oh lawdy, this topic has created a spiral effect of discussion. I did not think it would spawn this much attention!

this is a really good thread... but on the subject of money - I'm still curious what a small indie project budgets for the music (or music/fx/voice etc - all encompassing?) I'm curious if you'd be willing to share the budget you have in mind - or if you could share the budget range of other game producers who are in your shoes (without naming them of course )

it really all depends. If you have no kickstarter and you are a guy with 3 other guys just making a game to try and get into the business your budget is rather small. Add that to the software costs for lisc. as well as possible distribution costs and shit starts to really pile up. None of the team members I have are paid at this point and they are only working on the basis that we HOPE it sales well. I am the only team member with a steady job and I make decent money but just getting a wife and starting to look for a house complicates that process and ties up a big pot of my "disposable income".

So, more to the point, the budget is limited if any. I will run down some costs:

• Adobe Suite: $4000 ( or 79 a month for 1 year sub )
• Github Subscription: $10 a month ( for 1 year )
• Obfuscation Software: $850 ( for 1 lisc and one developer )

Those are just three of the big ticket ones. So... music? If i can get away with giving somebody a % cut for the end product that would be ideal but most music people are like us, striving to get by and make it paycheck by paycheck. They need that money just as much as we need the money to make our game.

All of that said, if you get a kickstarter and make 600k than this totally changes everything. So, TL:DR Budgets are smaller than a few thousand dollars and thats without paying artists or musicians "normal" prices for their work. I would beg to argue this is the case for most if not all indie developers as most of us are just doing this as a way to get into the business rather than a hobby to our really epic day jobs! :P

That's a really good idea. The developer may think, "I have to take all the risk on this project, whether it succeeds or fails, so why should the composer get a fixed fee?" And that drives small developers towards trying to get free music, which isn't great for anybody. But if you can agree to transfer the exclusive rights only when a certain monetary threshold is reached then the worst case is that everybody keeps their own work for future projects, hopefully still acceptable to all.