What to consider and how much to charge for freelance jingles?

November 20, 2013 3:29 PM

How much should I charge companies to write and record 30-60 second instrumental jingles to help sell their products on websites?

I work in the Sales side of the consumer goods industry and have also moonlighted as a musician (in bands, recording solo stuff) for years. A company I call on needed a 40 second instrumental to be overdubbed onto a video they use to sell their products online. As luck would have it, I had a bank of choices to send them and they liked one and have asked for more.

Questions:

1. What should I charge? Obviously it depends on the company's budget, but is there a ball park high/low I should consider?

2. YANAL, but are there any legal implications I should consider or have them acknowledge? Not likely but if someone heard the jingle and liked it, should I keep the rights?

3. How does the transaction take place? Should we sign anything, etc?

4. Anything else to consider or advice for a newbie jingle writer?

Thanks hive mind.

posted by priested to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

I don't know about rights and contracts, but I am a freelancer, and here's how I'd go about setting rates:

How long will it take to put together? How much do you normally expect to earn, per hour of work? Multiply your expected hourly earnings by two, then multiply that my the amount of time you expect it will take you to put this together.

Example:
If it takes 5 hours to write and record a jingle, and you normally earn $20 an hour, $20*2*5=$200.

I always suggest multiplying expected hourly earnings by two for several reasons: assuming you're in the U.S., your tax burden for contract earnings is double your tax burden for salaried earnings, so you need to make more for the same amount of work; you may under-estimate how long it will take to finish, but when you're quoting a flat rate you don't get to charge more when it takes longer; beyond the time involved in creating the content you're being paid to create, your relationship with these companies will involved unpaid time -- creating and sending an invoice, nagging about getting paid, checking in to see what other work might become available, etc.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 3:45 PM on November 20, 2013

So the big legal issue is whether you keep the rights and license the music and get residuals or just do the one-time composer fee thing. It really depends on whether you think the commercial will be running long into the future, in which case you'd probably be better off getting paid per impression. But if the run is short, you'd probably be better of just charging the one-time fee. My guess is that for something small, you'll probably just do the one-time thing, which means you more or less sell them the piece of music and then it's theirs.

I'm not sure there's any amazing way to go about figuring out how much to charge. Per hour is one way for sure, but sometimes writing music is hard to put into that model. In the music commission world, often a commission is charged by per minute of music composed. Well-known composers charge maybe $1,000 per minute. So if your piece is 40 seconds, you'd charge like $650 of whatever. You may not be able to get that much, but that's a model that might work for you.
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:52 PM on November 20, 2013

What does the union say? Even if you're not a member, they should have a guideline.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 4:59 PM on November 20, 2013

This article might be useful
posted by Ned G at 8:04 AM on November 21, 2013