Let's Talk About Music

Community Marketplace
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Hi, I’m a musician, and I was wondering what developers typically look for in music? I’m currently working on music for a game, but it’s development process is slow and it’s in the early stages so I want to branch out and work on some content for the unreal market place. If at all possible, it would be of great interest to me, and to other musicians that might see this thread if you could answer the following questions.

  1. What kind of experience do you have working with musicians?
  2. How much do you typically spend on music, or are willing to spend on music?
  3. What sort of threshold do you work with when finding the balance between quality and value? Like, would you be willing to pay more if the content was of exceptional quality, or would you rather find the best deal?
  4. What do you wish to see more of in the marketplace for music and sound design?
  5. What would you like to see in music or sound in the marketplace to have you rate the quality as 9/10 (or even 10/10)

I’ve been doing a lot of research, such as seeing what is currently in the marketplace. I’ve been reviewing and rating what is currently there, and it has ranged from 6/10 to 9/10, no 10/10 yet, but I guess if someone was making 10/10 content they’d be working in a AAA studio.

Currently I am considering producing a series of music and appropriate sound effects and transitional elements of a specific theme. Rather then trying to create something generic, I’d prefer to make the content for a hypothetical game, and give the music unique characteristics for that game. Currently I am working on the theme of “a horror game set in hell”. Does that kind of content interest anyone?

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Another thing I would like to add. Are there any programmed elements to sound integration anyone would be interested in seeing?

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  1. I’ve done professional work as a video compositor. I sourced the tracks used through a buddy of mine that runs a studio. Does that count?

  2. Depends on quality and how “generic” it is. $4.00/track is a decent rate for something generic. If it’s getting into super-specific zones, then $10.00/track. Price points are all about demand/supply tbh. Low demand, low supply, higher prices.

  3. It depends on what the track is for.

  4. Medieval assets, Asian assets, Celtic, etc… However, that’s just the type of game that I’m trying to make.

  5. Quality, feature set.

It’s fine to do a themed set. That’s what most purchasable music assets are. Again though, you’ll want to make it generic enough so people will (have a need to) buy it.

If you’re making a music track, separate the instruments out into different .wav files, and then, in the engine, combine them all into a master audio cue, and separate individual cue’s. Alot of extra work, and much more space needed, but this would allow for people creating a scene in VR to use the track in an HRTF manner. The reason behind this is for this type of scenario:

Individual Instrument Cue’s: Player walks into a bar/pub, there are 3-4 NPC’s playing music. If the player walks up to them, they can identify where each sound source is coming from.
Master Track Cue: The music is coming from a single speaker.
Stereo Left/Right Cues: A set of speakers.