Atypical Art Licensing Question

June 24, 2021 9:40 AM

I'm an artist, and I've been posting some of my work on social media just to see if people like it, and they do! A friend wants to pay me to use one of my works for a project, but there's a catch.

They're already working with a designer, and they want to use my work as inspiration, and have the designer use it as the base for their design, rather than use my work as is. We want to work out a licensing agreement, but I'm a complete noob to selling art and am not sure what I should charge under these circumstances. Should I license the concept for the same price I would license the original, or for less? And what should that price be? I was thinking $100-$250 USD based on looking up what other artists charge, but low or high end, or am I way off?

posted by Beethoven's Sith to Work & Money (3 answers total)

First consideration off the top of my head - is the new project a thing that will or could generate income in the future?

As in, selling a singular physical work of art is one thing, where a flat fee might be appropriate, but selling an artistic concept that would be the basis for, like, an image on t shirts or coffee cups that are for sale, or as part of a marketing campaign or a company logo or something, I would think you'd be within your rights to consider asking for royalties (percent of sale), or the licensing needs periodic renewal, or rights to the image revert to you after a period of time, or other options where you're not just collecting a few hundred for your art that then gets used to generate thousands or more for another company, directly or indirectly.
posted by soundguy99 at 11:54 AM on June 24, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I should clarify that it's not for a business and I don't think there will be any profits. It's a performance affiliated with a school.
posted by Beethoven's Sith at 1:01 PM on June 24, 2021

Using work as inspiration (and even taking significant aspects of it for a new work) can easily be considered fair use -- to be honest it is very decent of them to be reaching out to you for licensing at all, unless the final product will be very similar to your current work. That said, once you license to them you are going to be giving them rights to the original work as well so you need to take that into account.

What are they planning to design based on your art -- a logo? Something else? This affects the price too. People spend a lot of money on logos!

I assume they are looking for a royalty-free license with derivative work rights and no credit provision?
posted by goingonit at 1:47 PM on June 24, 2021