The "Working For Free" Debate

My words of "Wisdom" from my experience, for what it's worth:

Something I was talking with other composers about earlier today was the long-standing, tired debate of "working for free" and whether or not composers into films and games or whatever should do it.

I've seen this topic come up countless times over the years and basically everyone has the same sorts of opinions on it. Which is either "don't do it/you're devaluing the industry/charge whatever arbitrary dollar figure you think you're worth" (a ridiculous take) or get something "of value" in exchange, or that it is fine "for the credits/exposure".

I however offer a different approach and seem to be the only one who does.

The first is that, if you DO do this, you don't do it for "free". Rather, you offer a 100% discount. This is not the same as doing it for "free" because it plants the idea in the client's brain that this is worth a certain dollar figure and they just getting a great deal. They could conceivably come back to you in the future, knowing your rate ahead of time and now able to pay it. Regardless, make sure you retain 100% of the rights to your music.

The second and real point, which is a conclusion I've come to after 10 years on and off and writing music for money: It is actually a waste of time to write custom scores unless you are getting paid a decent amount of money, like enough to pay your bills, entirely.

90% of projects never get finished anyway and most want you to sign away the rights to the music. Every indie game dev or film maker thinks being "professional" means having some stupid contract that enslaves the creators and uses "NDAs" (as if anyone is going to steal their ideas) and then when the project inevitably falls through, all your effort goes down the drain. At least if you'd kept the rights, you could reuse it to license the music out.

Face it: The reason people are working on these indie projects and stuff is because they want to build a portfolio that they hope can get them better, higher-paying work in the future. You simply don't need to be writing custom scores to do this. Just write what you like, make sure it's suitable for films or games or whatever, and offer it to up and coming indie projects for a credit, but it is also much easier to get some amount of money out of them along with it if you're just offering one of your existing pieces or whatever. One track could get you 5 different "credits" for example, and if these projects you licensed to fall through, it's no loss of time investment and you'll probably have earned some cash in the process anyway. This is also better for indie devs and such rather than having to get a composer to commit to working for free and having all this drama; it's much more affordable for both parties.

I wish I'd started doing this YEARS ago. I can honestly say at this point, I would only be interested in doing a custom score if they came offering at least a five-digit figure to do it, and the project would be completed within no more than 2 years. If someone comes offering you 5,000 to do a game score or whatever, but it will take them two years to finish it and — that's IF they finish it! — then it is probably not worth it, tbh. You could pick up a few more hours at your day job and make that extra 5k in maybe a couple MONTHS whilst just writing the kinds of music you want on the side, that you own the rights to, that can generate you income through licensing and give you more credits, passively. Most likely, you'll never even see the full 5k you agreed to, and when the project falls through, no one will be able to hear your hard work because it's still property of whomever you signed it away to. Even if you can show the music, you probably can't reuse it, and you'll have no projects to show for your work beyond the music.

TL;DR: It's rarely worth it to compose custom scores on the indie level entirely. 

It's sort of a phase thing. Young people have energy to burn; they do things

for cheap or free and later regret it.

I would say it's a bad habit to get into because you are putting yourself

in a 'hoed out' position. 

I would say maybe go through that phase and experiment and

then come up with a business model that allows both flexibility and reward.

Truth is most people are looking for the quickest, economical way of doing it

and that hardly fits into most artists uhh.. 'world'

You're going to go through the merry-go-round of getting exploited,

you'll have to build some kind of machine to help protect yourself.