Michael, So sorry to hear about your woes. Most of us have been there before. At this point, after the price has been set and the work mostly done, there isn't much to do except try to make the client see that the price IS actually fair. He must have had an idea of how much it would be in the end, since he was aware of how many measures and instruments he was asking for.
A friend of mine once said that there are only three things that are important in a contract. Scope, time and money. Scope is the size of the work, time is the deadline, and of course money is the price, about which there can be no discussion after the contract is agreed upon, UNLESS there are changes to the scope and/or time, which there appear to have been! Since you were clear about how the work is charged, there is no problem here. After being burned a few times on revisions and changes, I now charge hourly for changes after ONE chance to sign off on the original work. Offering certain satisfaction to the client, as you do, was my policy at first, but then I realised that some clients were never satisfied, and some (even worse) changed their minds constantly after the work was done. He added pieces but didn't give you any more time, thus incurring overtime on your part. He must have known that adding work would raise the price (I hope you gave him an estimate up front? Something like "100 measures makes about 25 pages of score and 20 pages of parts, so 45 pages times $10 per page gives $450 for this piece.") There are a lot of ways to charge, but most importantly, you were upfront about it. Per filled measure (frame) which Finale can count for you. This rate charges the same for a plain whole note as for a florid measure with slurs, articulations, and expressions, but easy ones can cancel out difficult ones on a large project. Per score measure. This rate varies according to the number of staves (not instruments!) in the score, and includes part extraction. The drawback is that you are paid the same for lightly-scored passages as you are for tutti passages. Again, the easy ones make up for the hard ones in the long run. Per page, as you have done. Whole notes take up less room than florid measures, so the number of measures may vary from page to page, so this might be the fairest method, unless you have fixed numbers of measures per system as they do in film work and Broadway. You need to explain to him that the rate takes into account the fact that you don't have to re-enter the entries for the parts; just format. If you were to supply scores and someone else were to work the parts, he would have to pay that person for it and your score rate would be higher than your combined score and part rate. The New York musicians union has many different ways to calculate arranging (I list them above), but they suggest charging hourly for part extraction and layout in a computer program. This way, tough ones are charged more, while easy ones are cheaper. But the bottom line is you worked overtime for three weeks and made $1500. That's peanuts. I think the price is more than fair, unless you are a newbie who works at a snail's pace, and you don't sound like that. Oh yes, and don't apologise for necessary work you did. You were required to do it and you did it. I probably would have wanted the score to have ALL the piano parts, since the music director would want to know what was there, but that wasn't my decision. This is the best method I've found for pricing. You may find it useful too. http://dashes.com/anil/2005/05/pay-by-the-hour.html Christopher On 4-Jul-12, at 4-Jul-12 7:41 AM, delius...@aol.com wrote: > 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 > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > Finale@shsu.edu > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
