Scaling Your Scoring Business: A Thought Dump

I often write about things I’m researching or experiencing as a means of clarifying my thoughts. This one is interesting because I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and trying to figure it out and will read much more like a stream of consciousness trying to solve a problem than my traditional posts. It is going to be very candid, and also likely some of it is flat out wrong. That said, I am hoping to start a conversation rather than dictate the way things should be so please reach out, write a response article, or share with your friends and let me know their thoughts.

And a side note, the numbers I use are purely hypothetical and theoretical in order to demonstrate a point. Some are definitely not realistic, but were randomly picked for the discussion rather than the facts. Many composers have multiple jobs and diversified income streams, my goal today is to figure out what can be done to push a composer to a point where it’s more than just a full time job, it’s a business.

How exactly does a composer scale their business and their career?

I want to look at this from the POV of a freelancing composer, rather than one who is going the assistantship route and growing their career that way.

Once you start getting consistent work, how do we grow our business/revenue while also getting higher quality gigs?

The most obvious thing to me is take on more gigs. More gigs = more money, especially if you have the time and nothing else to do. Even if you took low budget projects like student films, if you do 20 in a month for 2-300 each that’s 4-6k/month or 48-72k/year. Assuming 5ish minutes of music per film, thats $40-60/minute of music, but about 100 minutes of music per month. Hopefully some of these projects are much higher paying than 300, but even then this is an intense amount of work that is hard to sustain, not to mention the amount of effort needed to go for sales, and we aren’t even discussing spotting sessions, revisions, contract discussions, etc. Obviously then, volume of work can not be the only method. These films also may or may not be something you even want to share when all is said and done, but sometimes a job is just a job even if it’s not a full time career. Really the best way to get into this level though is to just start reaching out and set a daily contact goal and do it.

That being said, low budget/student films do have the benefit of building your network and helping get your name out there more. They can often be repeat clients or good means of entering into a new network of potential gigs & connections. For an early stage composer, this sort of intensity might be worth looking into while you get your footing, provided that your project management skills are up to par, you have the time, and that you can write at this sort of speed. If that is the case, I don’t see why you shouldn’t at least take a few lower paying gigs, even just to get a couple extra bucks for the weekend, but eventually you will need a new strategy.

(Also just a side note, I am using “Films” here but I truly mean low budget anything - film, video games, podcast, etc. Composing is still composing, but this is just the most “cliche” route in the media composing niche and what I am most familiar with personally. Mixing and matching mediums to increase your volume/revenue too as you’ll have access to a wider market - as long as it’s still the same primary skill.)

Higher paying gigs then would be a good idea then when possible. But even then, the higher you go up the budget ladder, the less opportunities there are and the more competition there is. Hans Zimmer could theoretically be in the running for a multi-million dollar blockbuster AND a 5k low budget short. A recent Berklee grad could be fighting hard to get on that same short, even without Hans in the ring. In fact, if Hans truly wanted to be on that lower paying gig (and was cool with the compensation offered) he would get it instantly over a recent college grad because of the perceived value he brings. With higher paying gigs, you may take fewer higher paying gigs, but that’ll also give you more free time to do other things like marketing or sales - which is great for snowballing your career a bit more or taking additional low paying gigs to further increase your monthly revenue.

It can be very hard to jump from nothing to a large budget feature with awards potential. However, every smaller film you do and every credit (and possibly award?) you earn does increase your perceived value as a composer (something we should also explore at a later date) which can help you too. It seems like in a way this could be a matter of “a journey of 1000 steps” vs “one very lucky leap” - which also by the way, luck plays a large part in all of this too making scaling worse/harder so yeah? There is no such thing as an overnight success after all…

Anyway, perceived value can definitely help you land a larger gig than you normally would. A composer with 50k+ followers (yes, I hate that it’s important but it is) and over 100 credits, some of which were recognizable or award winning some were things you’d never want to surface, is a lot more “valuable on paper” than a fresh out of college kid with no credits and no social media history (aka no paper trail or social proof). Composer A has proven over and over he can do the gig and as he or she takes higher paying gigs, it puts even higher paying gigs in their grasp. Trust is the key element here.

Let’s say however, high paying gigs still aren’t enough. Hypothetical: you make 100k a year after expenses, taxes, whatever. And you feel you’ve worked as much as you possibly could. You’ve done all the networking, marketing, saleswork etc as a solo person. You even do the the score entirely in the box. No hired musicians, no mixers, nothing. You can not possibly take on more work. Well, what if you hired others? A mix engineer can work on score A while you are composing Score B. Suddenly, you can increase volume further. Orchestrators, midi programmers, assistants and more functionally do this same thing: take work off your shoulders to allow you to focus on what you can provide uniquely to your clients.

This is why composers like Hans have teams of people to help them on projects. Yeah, I am sure Hans Zimmer is more than capable of orchestrating/mixing his scores but he also can be working on the “big money” items that only he can do while someone else takes care of this, allowing him to take in more work and further the cycle. But the thing that’s hard for an artist to do is delegate the “art” portion of their business such as the actual composing. Because why would a director hire you if you’re not actually writing the music? But, is this a bad thing?

At this point, you’re probably aware of Hans Zimmer’s remote control productions (a music production house/collective of composers under Hans), the idea of ghost writing in the industry and other related topics. A group like Hexany Audio is a similar thing in the game world (though receives far less criticism for it than HZ for some reason). I even worked for a few composers who uses other ghost writers too so this isn’t really a surprising revelation on my end.

How do you scale a business to that point where ghost writing makes sense, and how do you sell it to accounts? A product is a product at the end of the day and your music for a film is ultimately just a small portion of the end product. Do they really care if you actually wrote the music if your name is on it or not? Is it more “authentic” to compose under a group name like Hexany or Remote control in this case rather than using your own? I think this has to do with the expectation of the person hiring you. A group of highly valuable composers collaborating should also theoretically have a higher perceived value than one alone, maybe? If they know they are hiring a collective and get a product from the collective, they’ll be far less “annoyed” than hiring “Joe Chris” but actually getting a score that’s by “Collective TEAM name here”.

Either way, this sort of problem does not occur until one has more work coming in than they can handle. Besides the music production team we mentioned earlier, perhaps hiring people for sales and marketing could help?

Let’s say 20% of your week is taken up by sales efforts: finding leads, reaching out, pitching demos, etc. And another 15-20% of your time is doing admin work: running the books, managing your calendar, all that fun stuff. Well, that’s time you can be using to compose - if you have the money and lack the time, wouldn’t hiring these roles out make sense too? You’d have to set up systems and train employees, but if these processes can be “automated” by someone else so to speak, then you’d be able to dedicate much more time to composing and also taking in more money.

Getting to this point to me, feels like a big one to me because once you can hire a sales/marketing person, that can eventually snowball into a team, which can mean you need to hire more on your music team (assuming an idealistic scenario of a great product, great sales team, lots of available opportunities etc.). This is essentially what a lot of people believe an agent or a manager does for them, but from my understanding that is not really the case - but please correct me if I’m wrong I’m not there yet myself.

But there’s also only so many films or video games being produced each year. How do we increase volume to build all of this when that is the case? Well, you’d need to either diversify your market or diversify your services. If you only write for films for instance, getting into video games instantly increases how much work you can take on. If you compose music, perhaps an adjacent skill like doing sonic logos or mixing would be useful to offer, even if it’s not your main thing. Plus, you can bring an expert to handle that for you so you if you can afford to. So this is where operating like a collective, agency, or a production house ie a business rather than an “artist” can be greatly beneficial to you - this is part of the reason I have set up Electric Raindrop Audio the way that I have as well.

In short, the ultimate goal is to find all your bottle necks and find ways to implement systems and improve the efficiency so everything flows as smoothly as possible. Can’t take on more work because you’re doing all the roles yourself? Hire a mixer or an orchestrator and suddenly there’s more time in your schedule. Don’t have the time to line up projects for next month because this month is so busy? Hire a sales team. Have too much work that you can’t keep up, even with your massive team? Hire more composers, ghost writers, etc. Spend money to make money, set up systems, and treat it like a business, not an artist. But it all starts with sales volume and volume of work coming in, which comes from upping your prospects, leads, etc. volume and reaching out and expanding your network in this way.

This whole post is probably a very naive take from someone who’s just trying to figure this out for themselves. It comes from a place of not knowing, but wanting to. Please reach out and continue the conversation! I’d love to hear your thoughts. This post also doesn’t cover the immense amount of work and luck and networking and marketing and all that other stuff. It is not so “Step 1, step 2, etc” in practice, but it could be a good roadmap for figuring things out for myself in the future. Honestly, this also may be me trying to convince myself to let go and hire people to help me in the near future. Let me know your thoughts though! I’d love to hear from you.