Rate chart

[Les Harper]

A couple of weeks ago I was cruising the forum, and ran across a discussion about how much to charge.  Someone had given a link to a great rate chart for television & film composing, but now I can't find it.  Does anyone know of such a chart anywhere?

 

Thanks

[Douglas Edward]

Hi the only public rate chart that I know of for television and film can be found on the musician's union website. They list out everything except composer fees (due to the fact that this fluctuates from project to project and composers are not organized through this nor any other union).

[Chris Alpiar]

yea but only some of them are available without being an AFM member. But you can still see a good portion of rates. AFM covers performers and also music prep (arranging, music copying, etc) but the music prep rates are only for AFM members to access

http://www.promusic47.org/wage2/scales.htm

[Jesse Hopkins]

Charge more than ORCHESTRATOR scales with the AFM

[Chris Alpiar]

yea, rates for composing are something that you need to develop over your career. Personally I try to not work for less than 1k per minute of complete music and for orchestral stuff orchestrated and such I shoot for 3k per minute. But I am also working at getting into film music as opposed to advertising, stage theater and some small tv work, so I am scoring shorts and charging accordingly.

[Les Harper]

Lisa Smolen said:

....and composers rates are tricky because yes, they are not organized through a union, so their rates vary from person to person. You need an agent to negotiate your fees - mostly based on past creative fees on similar projects.

Actually, I think the rates should vary from person to person. We're not all the same, are we? Why would we assume that the world should pay us that way?

[Les Harper]

Thanks for the info, everyone.

[Les Harper]

You're right. 'Sorry about that. I'm a little union weary right now. Thanks for the kind advice.


Lisa Smolen said:

Les, I'm not sure you actually read my post.


Les Harper said:

Lisa Smolen said:

....and composers rates are tricky because yes, they are not organized through a union, so their rates vary from person to person. You need an agent to negotiate your fees - mostly based on past creative fees on similar projects.

Actually, I think the rates should vary from person to person. We're not all the same, are we? Why would we assume that the world should pay us that way?

[Chris Alpiar]

Well you obviously have not much experience or have done a lot of research about how unions work for musicians and related. They do not set a price to be the same for everything. Ever. Some set a rate MINIMUM meaning that you dont ever get paid LESS than what is worked out to be a realistic wage for the members to live a lower middle class lifestyle. But it does not ever create a cap. Something that is desperately needed IMO as I have seen my income go from six figures into barely paying the bills over the last 8 years. Partly that is from me moving from LA to anyplace else in the world, but the majority has to do with the economy, the technology enabling non-musical people to 'write music' that is passable and who will work for free destroying my workplace, and lastly and probably most importantly having no representation or strength in numbers to set some basic things like a minimum scale, and working conditions (like when I score a film I get paid as composer, orchestrator, arranger, music tech, music prep, mixing, performing, mastering, etc, etc instead of get paid not a whole helluva lot to do all those jobs and pretend its one job)



Les Harper said:

You're right. 'Sorry about that. I'm a little union weary right now. Thanks for the kind advice.


Lisa Smolen said:

Les, I'm not sure you actually read my post.


Les Harper said:

Lisa Smolen said:

....and composers rates are tricky because yes, they are not organized through a union, so their rates vary from person to person. You need an agent to negotiate your fees - mostly based on past creative fees on similar projects.

Actually, I think the rates should vary from person to person. We're not all the same, are we? Why would we assume that the world should pay us that way?

[Chris Alpiar]

Actually Lisa, I think most of the LA crowd is leery about unionizing because they are scared they will lose the few gigs they have, get blacklisted somehow, etc. But the way the AMTP is headed, they are JUST getting a pension fund and health care benefits as a union for now, backed by the Teamsters. Which while its a good thing, its about as benign as you can get, offering no benefit to the "noob" composer and just enough for the existing elite crowd to get them to sign off and kind of further the cause to shut out the noobs.

[Les Harper]

Hey, guys, thanks for the enlightening discussion on unions. I wasn't really trying to open a can. Hope I didn't ruffle any feathers.

[Douglas Edward]

No problem Les I think this is a great topic.

Apologies for taking the subject matter more towards unions, but I'd love to hear more reasons why there shouldn't be one. Not many people want to talk about it (understandably so I guess). Lisa- you mentioned that unionizing will take away the ability to negotiate rates but I'm not sure I follow, unless by that you are referring to rates that would be deemed below union minimals.

That's great that you know a well established composer who performs just enough to keep their health care, but doesn't that sound kinda sad? I mean, what if that situation was the other way around? I don't mean to instigate anything here, I'm just looking to educate myself on this whole situation. Feel free to email me if you'd rather have a closed conversation on it.

Thanks!

[Jesse Hopkins]

A union minimum is just a floor below which you can not fall. And the WGA has deferred pay options for low budget, so you could still work for lower, but wouldn't get ripped off in the end. Composer minimums could allow for that. SAG actors negotiate their own rates as well, and get paid a hell of a lot more than composers. Union scales don't drag down rates. It's a total myth, and the opposite of the truth. Composer rates have fallen steadily since the dissolving of the previous union.