How much would you professionally charge a client for a 1 minute track where you are provided with a basic 5 second loop to build on?

For a website.

Just curious.

My standard rate is 60 bucks an hour. I'd probably round it out to about an hour's worth of work as well.

See, I was only charging $30 an hour, and then we went into two revisions, so it was dragging out to approx 5 hours of work...

I told the client to buy generic techno loops and combine and edit them.

Free but I don't do it for a living. If they wanted a Fruity Loops loop then I wouldn't charge them.

Friends and business are tough, I've done freelance graphic design for friends and lost them over it. 5 sets of changes sounds excessive so I would have to be communicating that.

my friend is running his own design business doing websites, and he calls on me for sound and video if he neeeds it. so he is charging his client much more than i charge him. It wasn't for personal stuff. I should post the original loop and then the work I did online... where can I post?

Slave2daGroove said:

Yeah, it can get tricky with this multimedia stuff.

Usually I throw in audio with websites as favors just because I take pride in my work and I want it top notch to the best of my ability and equipment. (only when it's going to compliment a project as well) Musicianship is not something I do everyday so I know it takes me longer than someone that is doing it everyday like my studio partner Frank http://frankaxtell.com . He has every right to charge top dollar because he's an authority in that field. So I look at the favors as practice for me to become better in that area.

I use apple's "Soundtrack" for my audio projects that usually involve background loop type things and minimal recording. Now when it comes to recording narriation or more personalized background music or scoring, that's when I hand it over to Frank and he gets billed seperately.

The main thing is to compare your quality with that of others and find out what they charge. It's usually just as simple as submitting a fake job (or one you've just been handed) for a quote to an agency and see the figures. Then establish an average hourly cost and stick to your guns and ALWAYS keep them informed on the clock. I learned my lesson from the start to not charge by the job. Some people will have you working for months until they are happy.

And NEVER do work with friends. And if you do, make sure they are solid in seperating the two relationships. Business and friends that is. Me and Frank are cool like that. We've both been burned by mutual projects but always go into it knowing there's that chance. When people come to me, I tell them up front what I can offer them in the audio world. If they want/need more, then I send them to my big brother Frank and that way it's a totally seperate expense on the customer.

Love ya Frank!

I would also question your buddy's price on his customers for YOUR WORK. If he's charging a minimal expense for just managing the outsourcing of your services then that's fair. He's gotta call you and explain all the details, do all the file merging and all that jazz. There's been cases with me and Frank where he did all the composition, engineering and recording, but I had to do all the slicing and dicing and communicating to him what the customer was looking for AND THEN fit it in a video or flash presentation and I do charge for those editing hours. That's expected.

But ... If he's charging double or triple your rates then heck no. That ain't a buddy, that's a user and should be outsourcing to China for that sort of service.

Again if your running into concerns then deffinately communicate them to all parties involved. It's just business. (and I hate it sometimes) I'd much rather be the "creator" and be in my little cave and let someone else manage all those pesky details. If you got competetive skills and quality and you are a one man shop like me, don't hold back on that price tag at all. The one's that want it will pay it ... as I'm finding out. You probably know by now there's a lot more to it than just hiting a few keys on the computer. This is time consuming work and just like ANY job, there's a componsation rate for it. So there's the age old question ... Art and what is it worth?

Side Note
Working with a REAL marketing department lately, I'm learning all about this thing called "Value Added Percentage". If your product (Art = Product? seperate thread on this somewhere, I'm sure ... ) is going to earn your client X amount of dollars, there is an equation that I haven't figured out just yet, but it's an industry standard and totally seperate from your hourly rates. I gotta get on that puppy because my latest customers are BIG companies and they can afford it as well as understand it. It's fair and it's legal. How else is the guy working out of a garage going to get his store front business?

Funny, I just read back what I wrote and thinking back to the original subject which was "a minute worth of material".

I guess I wanted to share that I've spent days on that "minute" and what it can boil down to. It's deffinately not as simple as that "minute".