#3

The life of an indie media composer

Every musician or composer has a different story of how they got to where they are. However, I will focus on five things that I have found to be common between composers who haven’t yet got their big break. This will hopefully help illustrate to you, the director/producer, why hiring a composer is not the same as hiring a ´regular´ employee.

1. The “finding-a-gig” struggle
   Composing for media is a relatively hard to get job. A pub or other music venue may rotate between different musicians every day and night, but a film or game production will use one composer for a period of days, months or even years. And opportunities are limited when you think about how many projects there are vs. how many composers are out there.
   George Christopoulos, replying to one of the questions during my interview with him, correctly points out that there has never been more opportunities in media than today but that the number of media composers out there are far higher. This therefore reduces the ability of a composer to just move from one project to another with ease.
   Furthermore, considering that some productions look for a particular style which only a certain selection of composers are able to reproduce easily, then the number of opportunities becomes even more limited.
   This leads me to my next bullet point.

2. Investment
   In order to keep on top of their game and increase their chances to get their next gig, a media music composer will need to invest in both hardware and software in order to be able to deliver quality material on time.
   

   But what do we invest in?

   1. Software
      In order to simulate an orchestra, we invest in software that is not cheap and takes up loads of RAM. When a composer simulates a violin in a MIDI keyboard, they need to have ready access to audio files of every single note of that instrument performed with different dynamics in order to reproduce it instantaneously as soon as they press a key with a certain force. That means they need to load all of those sounds into RAM. By way of example, a full steinway piano may require 2GB of RAM memory. So you can have an idea about how much RAM a whole orchestra would take.
      Each instrument can take anywhere from a few KB to several GBs.

   2. Hardware
      In order to run the aforementioned software, they will need to get a computer that is powerful and only used for work purposes. A computer, RAM memory, SSDs and external SSDs are important and all of that requires significant investment. Then factor in all the needed instruments and audio gear (microphone, guitars, speakers, stands, sound interface, MIDI keyboard, headphones, etc).
      As you know, software and hardware keeps improving. So there is never really an end to these investments. It’s just something composers slowly start doing less after you have a reached a certain quality but you still do it nevertheless. For the sake of staying on top of things.

   3. Studio
      A media composer needs a good room and studio in order to be able to pull off a lot of the work that is required. That’s yet another major expense.

3. Experience through dedication, AKA time
   The music industry is not an easy one, especially for those composers who are just starting out. There are a lot of people wanting free work or to pay very little and a composer will need to learn how to navigate all of that in order to be able to make a living out of it, otherwise it will be a life of exhaustion trying to attend their “daily jobs”, friends, family, and still manage the tight deadlines and work a production might demand. They also need to keep honing their craft for when that opportunity knocks.
   How then can they invest if it’s hard to land a gig at the start? It is common practice to have a second job.
   Hans Zimmer during an interview stated that you don’t get into this business if your main focus is to make money. Sure, money is a goal. However, as you are aware, the point is that a composer needs to have passion for the craft first - this industry is very demanding and if the passion is not there, then they won’t have the energy to dedicate the amount of hours needed to reach a competing level.

   I once scored for a Christmas commercial about my homeland with a very tight deadline. That commercial has earned more than 480 000 views. I got the call one evening and was told that the production had to be completed within 3 days. It was a tight turnaround for all involved but we managed it. The director was happy and so was I - the process went as smoothly as it could have considering the tight deadline and I was proud of all involved. This, of course, was not an ideal process. However, the fact that I was able to get the right information; coordinate with my go-to professionals and deliver a quality piece in such a short amount of time was all due to my previous years of experience.
   
   

4. Reduced royalties
   The reason royalties exist is to help artists. As we’ve seen, getting the next gig is always a struggle if they haven’t made a name for themselves or have an agent or manager. Royalties allow an artist to get paid when people use their work and while they find their next gig. New directors and producers sometimes fear they need to pay this out of their own pocket. This is a misconception and not true. I will explain how they work on a later post.
   Today, Spotify pays an artist 0.004c per listen; certain TV channels fight against these royalties payments or do not report usage and YouTube pays dramatically less than Spotify.
   If the back payment is something that disappears, the upfront payment for projects will be higher as a result.

5. Many hats and extra work hours.
   Finally, being a media music composer means that we wear many hats at the same time because that is what is expected today. We don’t just write music and we also don’t work just 9-5. We write music, we sequence it, we orchestrate it, we mix it, we keep learning new techniques, we are our own PR and HR agents as well as budget managers, marketers, legal consultants, contract drafters and team managers. We also need to be filmmakers or gamers as well. We need to be technicians and know just enough to fix anything that might come up with our equipment. We need to stay up late if need be and we work on weekends or during holidays. All of this is required in most projects.

Now you have a brief understanding of the different aspects of the career of a media composer. Much in the way a music composer should know the process/nature/business of film or game-making, I feel it is important for the people who are hiring to understand composers as it will aid the professional relationship and help to clarify why you need different contracts for music composers. I will explain about what you should include in contracts in a later post.

But before the contract, you need to find yourself a composer! We’ve talked about a few qualities of what to look for in a media composer but we haven’t spoken about when.

“So J, when?”
That will be in my next post!