Hello All Cool Indie-Game Developers!

Now, I will go "blah-blah-blah" for a while, so you can skip the initial crap, but... it could prove to be quite encouraging information for you.

This week, I attended the Nordic Game Conference, and... WOW! So many cool great indie games on the market right now.
What was really amazing: The indie game Limbo kicked a** and won the Best Nordic Game, beating giants like Age of Conan and some other really huge industry giant games. And what is even better: so many cool new indie games that are underway as we speak, made by you guys!

I've worked to write music for a couple of great projects recently with some very talented people.
To mention a few indie games:
- Jeff and Lee at Zarksoft, soon to release a big game on AppStore, called "Empire of the Eclipse".
If you look at the graphics, I don't think I have to mention that Lee has worked for Blizzard.
- Abydos Online, a really big fantasy game underway where the players will be able to shape the world.
- Rock Pocket Games, with their platform game "The Package".

It's really fantastic to see what people can do with games on handheld devices. And for me as a musician, it's also really nice to know that there are no limitations for the music, even if it's a handheld device. An indie game can easily have the same quality as a big Hollywood Film production - it's the developer's choice.

So what have I been up to lately? I have seen some really fantastic results coming my way.
- May 12, it was announced that I won 3rd Prize in the International Songwriting Competition with 15,000 competing songs from 115 countries
- ...and last month, it was announced that I was selected as finalist in the Great American Song Contest with 1600 competing songs from 44 countries.

Besides working with the teams mentioned, I have worked intensively with my music agencies, and been active with submitting music to film contracts.
I have also been working with some new big and epic tunes, ready for licensing, and I am right now freshing up some old productions by making them longer and switching the instrument banks from good instruments to perfect instruments. I have extended my instrument library a lot, getting new cutting edge sound banks, so I now have a studio with equipment for around 10,000€ (14,000$) in hardware and software. It may not sound like a lot, but I can assure you that it's getting more or less impossible to distinguish some of my new productions from real orchestras, which is not strange as the sound banks are using samples from real orchestras - and... yes... these ARE the sound banks that are actually used in Hollywood Production movies!

Now, I'm waiting to boost your cool indie games with my music.
So here's a lil reminder:
- All my current songs can be licensed as is, priced from 40€-200€, depending on length, style and complexity.
- ...or they can be evolved, changed, improved, prolonged, faded, looped and cut - tailor made to suit your wish for NO EXTRA COST (as long as it's <1 working day)
- ...or you can of course order completely new songs.
All my customers will of course be promoted at my News-page, and now that I have both an iPhone and Android phone, I would love to download your games and promote them "live".

So keep up the great work guys! You know where to find me: "craze.se", or "craze(at)craze.se" :-)
Now, get back to coding and let your creativity kick some industry-giant-a**, just like Limbo did!

Best Regards
/Christian, craze@craze.se, www.craze.se

So let me get this straight... I understand you're a composer, but you're charging people 40-200 euros.

This forum is primarily US citizens who use US Dollars.

1.00 USD = 0.705948 EUR
1 EUR = 1.41653 USD

So your prices are as follows.
$56.66 ($57) - $283.30 ($283)

That's extremely expensive with no examples of your work. Let alone samples. Just a word of advice for someone who is willing to compose for companies, it's just best to show some pieces, maybe even from past games you've worked for, samples and such. Then maybe a price will seem less heavy as it is now.

~Axerax

I'm actually a British citizen, but god damn your prices are expensive!

Your prices (in GBP) is the following:
£34.79 - £173.83

For these prices (for what other comissioners charge) and you paid them this sort of money, you could produce a whole soundtrack!

And like Axerax stated, you have shown no examples, samples or recommendations, why would we want to pay this sort of money for a single piece of music? You need to give evidence of your work. To me, it seems like your trying to con us.

That is all.

Hi Axerax and DarkNesa.

My name is Christian Andersson, and I work full time with music.

I am sorry that I didn't provice samples, but I have been posting to this forum since last autumn, once every second month, and I've also had some customers here, so I didn't think I needed to introduce myself once again with samples and all. Anyway, you will find all my songs at my home page:
http://craze.se/shop.htm

You can also find links from my home page to
- International Songwriting Competition where you can see the winners.
- The Great American Song Contest where you can see the finalists.

I am 37 years old, and I have a family to suppport. I am a Swedish citizen. Thus, I pay 50% tax on all my sales. Yeah... we pay that much tax in Sweden: 20% tax for sole proprietorship + 30% income tax.

It means that if I spend 40 hours on an epic song, like Abydos Online theme, I charge 400-500€ on that. (Feel free to contact the design lead Christian Flodihn - he's a great guy to work with!) If I had this kind of work every week, which I dont... it would give me a salary of 2000€ / month. Remove tax from that, and that will be 1000€ left to pay off loans on house, living costs, etc, etc.
I don't know what the living costs are in UK or US, but I bet that it would be pretty tough for you to live on this.
People are licensing my work every month for money between 50-500$ per song depending on style, length, complexity and work effort.

Does that sound like a lot of money? It's not. I don't work 8 hours days, 5 days a week. I work 12 hour days 7 days a week, and I'm still struggling with the economy. However, I understand that you guys work with RPG on your spare time. I love small indie project that do, and that's why I keep low prices to you.

If you need any kind of evidence, please contact me at craze@craze.se or visit my home page where you will find lots of projects that I have been inolved with, and I will give you all the references you need to get evidence. You can click the song competition links yourself and check my name on the winner/finalist pages.

I totally understand that maybe the 2 of you can not afford my music. There are plenty of RoyaltyFree sites for you to license music between 5-30$ per song. You will find a lot of great songs there, but most likely, not the best instrument quality and huge orchestral compositions with 20+ instrument tracks. For example, the Abydos online project has been going on for 6 years, and 400€ for a great title tracks is not that much. But I understand that a 6 month RPG project has a much smaller budget. It's all depending on your needs, size of project and budget.
So of course, the music should match the budget of your projekt.

If you think this is a lot of money for my licensing fees, I can tell you that I'm a permanently featured artist at AudioSparx.com. I have around 140 tracks there. The site administrators recommend licensing fees between 50-150$ on my songs there.
So if I should write a song specifically for your project, surely you understand that 50-150$ is far too low price for working 8-40 hours to create a new project from scratch, tailor made for you.

You are always welcome to visit my page and I am always open for project specific negotiations. However, due to my work load and living costs, I can not write completely new songs for less that 100€ a piece. I think that now that I have explained, you will understand the situation.

So take care guys, and best of luck with your projects!
/Christian

It's not that I don't believe you. It's that I work 24 hours a day for 6 months every year being in the military for deployments, as well work very hard at my job on top of my game design. I only make about 2000-2500$ a month. Which is well more than what you earn per song. I'm sorry your hardship on taxes in sweden, but you need to take into account the currency differences, people on this site are generally normal civilian workers, not rich contractors... who don't have money to be spending like that. I'm just trying to help you out. Because if you want business from the indie community, a lot of us don't have that much money and are looking for free work and generally just others to work on the game with them. I'm sure people here can find a willing artist to design an entire OST for the price you charge at max.

You're better off advertising yourself on a musician for hire website with those prices. That's all. Not trying to come off rude, just blunt and to the point.

I am continously licensing my work to indie game deveopers for the prices I mention here and on my web page. But again, not everyone can afford it. Anyway, thank you for your information. All feed-back is appreciated.

Best Regards
/Christian

(Pretty much fast read through here) But if i may ask, correct if wrong. $50.00 or more for one song? or pretty much as many needed.. Tbh if atleast less then 2-4 Songs i highly (In my opinion) Dealt it is worth it. I can easly find a Free program online that makes music or edits it and allows adding Notes here and there... Where i am pretty sure could maybe take 30-65 Minutes 175 at best for me.

Hey guys!

Yeah, one could discuss prices all day long. :-) .. In July I licensed a 12 second snippet of my song Hero of Darkness to MTV and I got 500$ sync fee for those 12 seconds, + coming broadcast royalties as the clip will be shown in 60 countries world wide.

Nevertheless, yeah, I know that indie game developers can be quite price sensitive. Right now, I'm having a low price drive on the site Pond5:
https://www.pond5.com/artist/ChristianA
The deal is I license 10 songs for very low prices, and then step up the prices to normal levels. I have now licensed 9 out of 10 songs (during 2 weeks) on this 10-song low price drive at Pond5. 1 more song, and then I need to step up the prices to normal levels, which means a raise with between +20$ to +50$ to match some of my other sites.

Short update: I added some new orchestral songs:
- "Gloomy Dungeon" (4 versions). Perfect for a dungeon crawler, spooky caves, dark environments, eerie labyrinths, haunted catacombs, etc.
- Age of Darkness (3 versions), powerful epic orchestral main title song.
- Then I added some electro songs as well. My electro songs are on sale for 4.95$-9.95$ per game license.

Some other cool news:
- I ended up as finalist in the UK songwriting competition with "Adventurous Epic Action Thrill." ... and this song was also selected by a major trailer production house in the U.S. for use in their trailers.
- 3 other songs were selected for the semifinals in the same competition: Rejoice in Triumph, The Raving World Orchestra and Dark Tidings with Intro choirs.
These songs are all available at Pond5 during this low price drive.

Best of luck with your games!
/Christian, www.craze.se, craze@craze.se

You have to recognise the context. We're not a television network airing in multiple countries. We're young adults, many of us students, many people that are don't have such a budget. Plus, other musicians on the forum would charge much less for perhaps the same quality of work.


There is no need to use RoyaltyFree sites. You can get a completely original soundtrack for between $5-30 per song on this forum. Many people do have very good instrument quality and huge orchestral compositions with 20+ instrument tracks.

I definitely agree with everything you say, and I am sure you are right - there are probably lots of competent and skilled composers at this forum with high quality instruments. I sell some songs at this kind of forum when I connect with lots of nice people, and then I sell songs at royalty free sites and music agencies as well. Of course, it will be different prices for different usage.

Best Regards
/Christian

@ChristianAndersson:

Welcome to RPG RPG Revolution. The average age of RM communities is generally much lower than other communities focusing on Independent Game Development, so therefore most of the users here are students (Either high school, or college/University) and do not have a lot of cash floating around, so when you have a professional musician who joins and offers up a high quality service (For a price), most will balk at the offer, especially when you have very talented hobbyist musician willing to do it for much cheaper.

Personally, I've been following you for awhile now actually (From indiegamer) and you create some really good work for the price you offer, and I wish you luck!

Thanks a lot, Ty! :-)

I see what you mean. When it comes to composing completely new tracks, I will never be able to offer same prices as talented hobby composers (I know some very talented hobby composers who offer their job for free as well) since this is my profession - that's totally true. Most of the time, my new music compositions are for game projects with bigger budgets (sometimes indie game projects) or the new songs are written with a focus on commercial licensing opportunities.

But I will keep on writing new songs and from now and then, for the people that like my music on these forums, I will offer my existing work to these talented game developers for very little money. So the same songs that are being used on TV and movie ads and sold by professional music agencies world wide for 500$+ will occasionally be sold to the people here for 5$-30$ per song. :-)

So if someone is interested in some of my existing songs but can't find them cheap enough at any of my sites, you can always send an email to me, and I'm sure we can work something out.

Best Regards
/Christian

I think this will get you more buyers. Thank you for considering our financial budgets, and I wish you luck on your sales! b^_^b