Dear Finale List,
This has always been a point of a big question mark with me, but I wanted
to get some ideas of pricing structures, even gross, ballpark ones from what
seems to be in the market today. I recently had a deal go very badly
where I created over 100 pages of documents and now the client is balking at
the price. I have always charged by the page, which I have always also said,
"per part, per score". I have charged the same price for part and score,
and I have said that I will even do revisions after payment until the
client is completely satisfied. What happened is the client suddenly viewed
this, after the fact, as I was charging, "twice per line". I said I had to do
revisions and editing to all the parts, and that it wasn't just a
magically created part (or unedited, for that matter), so time and care for
page
turns, adjusting of dynamics, etc. must be accounted for in some way. As far
as I saw it, my price per page was so low that this was the only way I
could make any money.
In the case of this project, I was also doing arranging and not just
transcription, which I had never charged differently for, so I came up with a
higher rate, but kept the "per part, per score" clause. On top of this, as a
lot of these arrangements were meant to go with piano parts that already
existed, I not only didn't put the piano parts into the arrangement or the
score, but the client "benefited" since it didn't cause the score to go a
bunch of extra pages. I had to write in a piano part for one particular piece
due to transposition, and I was apologetic about it. Now the client is
saying that the scores, which were primarily for rehearsal purposes, only,
are simply ways to charge them twice. I should also throw in that this was
after the client kept adding more and more pieces to arrange and then kept
checking in, saying that the music wasn't being produced fast enough. I
was sending it as it was going, all parts and scores, and pages could have
been counted; then I suddenly get an email asking why I hadn't said the price
would be so high. This has all been very distressing.
I will come out and say it; for over 100 pages of music, scores and parts,
the total for everything came out to a little less than $1500, calculated
on $10/page for transcription and $15/page for arranging. I have been doing
this professionally for more than ten years; I really would like to know
your thoughts, either privately or publicly as you wish. I took three weeks
of my time working into the night on many occasions to meet this deadline,
for so little money, really, and now the client has my music but doesn't
want to pay; to make matters worse, I have known the client as a close
friend and associate for over ten years, and this may well terminate our
friendship. Am I being unreasonable? I haven't moved my rates since I began,
because I haven't even known how to do so.
Any and all thoughts are welcome.
Michael Wittenburg
Ridgewood, NJ
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