Contracts

I'm getting hired to write music for a video game at the moment. My employer just sent me a "first draft" of the contract. He is also unexperienced in this field, so I (and he) need some advice as to what is fair, and what is not.

Issues that popped up on my side:

Pay

Legal Rights over music

So any information on this would be awesome, since this is my first time potentially getting paid for music.

Notes you may want to know:

I'm writing 11 songs (5 minutes each), and he gave me "one or two months" to do it.

This is for a MMORPG that will be free but you can pay for a premium account.

I only get payed if this person makes money off of this (150 free members and 10 premium members within 2 months)

Thanks!

Here's a sample contract for general media composing purposes that you two can adapt to suit your specific project. Essentially, if you want a truly comprehensive and accurate contract then you hire a lawyer to draw it up for you, but since it's just a general agreement for an amateur level job, you can work it out yourselves and let the honour system fill in any blanks.

COMPOSER_AGREEMENT.rtf

Cool thanks Marius! I glanced through this one, when I have a bit more time I look a little more in depth at it, and compare the contracts. And yeah, I don't think I'm going to hire a lawyer this time around, thanks though :)

While looking through this file though, I came upon some of the recording stuff. And I'm just sending him computer generated sounds. Problem is, they are Finale 2008 sounds, and I'm using my school's finale program to do it. Is that going to bring along some legal issues with it? Am I allowed to use those sounds for this?

You'd have to ask your school to double-check but as long as they purchased full licenses, yes you're free to. If they purchased educational discounts then you're not legally allowed to make money off of anything you produce with their Finale.

But honestly, no one's going to be able to tell or really give a scraggy even if they do, especially not in this case, so I wouldn't worry about it.

Cool, I won't worry about that then.

About the pay, in the contract it says that if the game "flops," then I don't get payed anything at all, because he is "unable to compensate." Is it reasonable to ask for a reduced pay amount initially, after/while I write the actual songs? Then get paid a percentage of the revenue made from the premium account members, after the game is established? How much is reasonable (especially considering I'm not well known, and he isn't either)?

About the rights to my music. I want to make it so that the music can only be used in the parameters of the game, and not anywhere else. Which would include a soundtrack they desired to make it. Should I make a separate contract that would involve the soundtrack? Or should I just ask for royalties if they plan on selling a soundtrack (which is basically what the other contract would say).

Thanks again Marius!

Oh boy, this is going to be a long one...

The first question is a bit sketchy because it depends on how professional this whole arrangement is aiming to be. If you're doing it the "real" way, then you get paid part of your fee before and part after, plus any royalties you've negotiated. Which means that "if the game flops, I can't pay you" translates as your employer trying to avoid forking over the cash. If he's signing you on as a contractor to write the music, then it's his responsibility to ensure that you get your fee as agreed upon, unless you both mutually decide that your music isn't worth any money or that it's worth a different amount or whatever — but that requires a new contract to replace/add to the old one and it's just a messy situation.

Therefore it is not only reasonable, but a basic professional practise that you should ask for part of your fee up front and then talk about the rest depending on the success of the project. Now again, being a tiny indy thing, this might be overthinking the problem and you can just roll with whatever happens and either get paid or not, because chances are that even if you have a solid contract and the game flops, your employer's not going to pay you out of pocket if he's got that attitude. After all, are you really going to sue over this?

Generally you'll want to either pick a flat price that you think best encompasses the value of the work you'll be doing, or you charge a "per-minute-of-included-material" fee with added fees for more than, say, two significant edits. Royalties are a separate issue and stem from the copyright arrangements you asked about in your second question, so I'll address that in a sec. For now, you should be aware that the industry standard rates for an amateur media composer in the gaming industry are such that you could confidently ask for $200USD per minute of completed in-game music as your fee and be well within fair ranges, even given your relatively insignificant industry experience.

Now, the fact is that our work is depreciating in value because as more and more composers flood the market, their biggest bargaining chip is their price, so they work for less and less and therefore the rates themselves necessarily end up lower than they should be. Depressingly, it's not uncommon for amateur composers to work for $20/minute on projects or, usually, for nothing at all as I'm sure you know. But you should stand up for the value of your work, so don't be afraid to start the negotiations with the industry rates — make sure your employer is well aware of what they SHOULD be paying you compared to what they ARE so they realize how generous you're being with your work.

From that point on, it's all a matter of discussion. Is there a budget for the game? How much are they willing to dedicate to the audio department? More often than not, you'll get the archetypal director who will pull the "you'll get royalties once the game is released!" line, which is more or less utter bullshit in the indie game zone because VERY few projects make it out to commerical status. If I had a nickel for every time I heard that and wasted my time writing music for a project that subsequently tanked, I would have lunch money every day. Don't get me wrong, the experience of practising the composing is valuable, but financially it's a waste of time.

Which brings us to some R&R...not Rest and Relaxation, sadly, but Rights and Royalties, which may very well be considered the complete opposite of the first R&R. :P Generally speaking, I can't imagine any reason why you would allow for a director of a game at this level to get any copyrights for the work. What you'll want to make sure is that you retain all copyrights and that the director has the right to implement the music in the game ONLY and/or any related promotional materials, including a soundtrack, trailers, etc. In that case, you can ask for a cut of the profits. Again, precisely how much depends on the director and how much you can negotiate. Remember that audio is important though, don't be afraid to be confident of the value of your work and ask for a fair share. After all, how many people are on the team? 5? That means you start at 20% and work from there.

Either that or you license the music to the game company for use, which is when you would be recieving royalties for every copy sold and every time it's used in a trailer or whatever. Copyright law in the music industry is about as scary and convoluted as a granite octopus, so my advice to you is to keep things as simple as you possibly can while feeling secure about your intellectual rights. Remember that this is just a little indie project to get some stuff into your portfolio, so practise taking it seriously, but don't take the legalities TOO seriously because at this stage they're not as relevant and influential as they will later become. For now, focus on the music and the experience of working professionally. :)

Wow that was a long one. Thanks for taking the time to post it! It is very helpful :)

I see that this one may not be very big and all, but if I get further into the business, it'd be great to get it close to right, or atleast understand what the standard is. And previous to this post, I was getting 150$ for 55 minutes of music (I thought that was low, and now that is confirmed) and no royalties or cuts from the pay (except the 150$).

So thanks again Marius, this is awesome! And I like the granite octupus statement, that's just amazing.

Happy to help. :happy: