How to Commission Music for Your Game

A well-crafted musical score has the power to completely transform the player's gaming experience, adding depth, mood, and emotional impact to the game's world.

Unfortunately, commissioning music for a game can prove to be a challenging task for many game developers, especially when it comes to effectively communicating their vision and expectations to the composer.

In this article, we will delve into the process of commissioning music for your game, and at the end, I'll share the exact template I use to ensure a seamless and successful collaboration with my composers.

Music Commission Pricing

When it comes to commissioning music for your game, most composers charge on a per-minute basis.

On the low end of the spectrum, hobbyist artists may charge anywhere from $30 to $100 USD, while full-time indie composers may charge anywhere from $200 to $400 USD.

Studio rates, on the other hand, can be upwards of $1000 USD, and more established composers may command even higher fees.

When negotiating the cost of the music, there are several factors to consider, including:

Introduce Your Game to the Composer

Once you've found the right composer for your project, the initial step is to give them an overview of your game. Share the story, gameplay mechanics, unique selling points, and any concept art that will help bring your vision to life.

This is mostly standard procedure, which I’m sure most of you are already doing. Once the composer is apart of your project, we can move on to the process of commissioning individual soundtracks:

How to Communicate Like a Director

Contrary to popular belief, you do not need any musical experience to be able to communicate to composers.

Music composers frequently deal with clients who have no music knowledge. It’s part of their job to listen, understand the director’s visions and communicate without technical music lingo.

Unfortunately, as great as musicians are, they can’t read minds. You’ll have to clearly communicate your abstract ideas to them.

1. Create a List of Descriptions

A common pitfall when commissioning music is being too vague in your descriptions.

For example, simply saying "create a soundtrack for a sad scene" doesn't provide enough detail. There are countless variations of sadness, and a description like this could mean anything from "grief over the loss of a loved one" to "despair and loneliness."

To effectively communicate the emotions you want to convey, it's crucial to create a list of detailed descriptions to provide to the composer.

This type of detailed description will give the composer a clearer understanding of your expectations and help them create a soundtrack that truly captures the emotions you want to convey.

You can include as many descriptions as you feel are necessary. I personally provide 10-20, but feel free to include as many as you need.

2. Create “Negative Descriptions” (Optional, but Helpful)

Negative descriptions are things you don’t want in the soundtrack. Maybe you want a sad scene like the above, but you don’t want it to be hollow.

You can do that by adding negative descriptions:

If I want the song to be sad, but not hollow, in my mind it’s obvious, but the composer might not know this.

To be sure - I include these negative descriptions. You don’t need to include really obvious negative descriptions like “happy.”

The negative description list is generally much smaller than the description list.

3. Find Reference Artwork (Use AI to Generate)

Visuals can greatly assist a composer in understanding the mood and atmosphere you're trying to convey. Find 1-3 images that embody the emotions of the scene you're working on. Usually one image is enough.

With recent advancements in AI technology, you can generate stunning artwork that perfectly captures the mood.

It does require some prompt writing skills, but this is a skill all game developers should know. I recommend learning this.

To get started, you can try setting up Stable Diffusion on your computer, or utilize AI art generators out there. These tend to offer free credits as well.

4. Find Reference Music

When including reference music, it’s ideal to find multiple tracks, although this isn’t always possible.

Having multiple reference tracks helps composers identify the common elements you want included, and fosters creativity by allowing them to blend different compositions.

Reference music can be a double-edged sword though. Since you’re using music that wasn’t composed for your game, it’s likely not going to be perfect and this could influence the composer in negative ways.

Becoming too attached to the reference music can limit the composer's style and creativity.

5. State What you Like/Dislike About it

Just including Youtube links to a bunch of music isn’t enough. You also need to state what you like and dislike about each soundtrack.

Very commonly, since these soundtracks weren’t composed for your game, they are going to have flaws. It’s up to you to be able to pick out those flaws and communicate them to the composer.

6. State the Genre, Tempo, Length and Instruments

This should be pretty basic info. State the genre you want the piece to be in, the music tempo, the length of the piece and whether it is looping.

It should look something like this: