Freelance Audio Rates Brainstorm

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 I wrote this up for a conversation in the sound design discord and figured I'd make it into a blog post so it's more easily visible!

Someone was asking about how much they would get from a sound designer for a specific budget at junior, mid, and senior levels. I made up a loose demo with some basic ideas in mind. 

General assumptions: 

-2d adventure game, more cartoony than realistic 

-Not implementing or mixing

-8 variations for movement, 4 variations for vocalizations and abilities

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Player Abilities x5: charge, cast, loop, hit, and miss: 2 days 

Player Foley: basic single material footsteps, basic cloth movements and swings: 1 day

Minor Enemies x5: spawn, death, 2 attacks each: 3 days

Major Bosses x2: spawn, death, 5+ attacks, two phases, Foley, any extra cinematic moments: 4-6 days (2-3 days each).

General UI: menu clicks, start, end, inventory browsing: 1 day

Ambiences: basic ambience beds for one location: 1 day

Total: two weeks' work. Ish.

So, 80 hours of work time. Let's average to 100 hours if we're looking at revisions and accounting for any errors. 


Junior: Assuming a minimum wage of $18/hour, that's about $1800.  

Mid level: probably around $30/hour, or $3000.

Senior: A senior’s rate might be somewhere near $60/hour. So that would be $6000

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There will also be times where you just love a project or a project has a budget in mind that may be lower than what you're looking for. I highly recommend trying to get a budget from the hiring team before giving your own rates. That way, you know if the project is either out of your scope, much too low a budget, or if you REALLY want to work on it, you know how much you can negotiate your rate.


Also, budget more time than you think you need. You never know what's going to happen and sometimes you might just need an extra day. If that's already budgeted in your time, then you don't have to worry as much about asking for extensions or missing deadlines, or crunching toward them even!


This is all quite a loose demo on what to think about when it comes to freelance rates, and a lot of this will depend on variation count, style, and any amount of other things. I hope this helps at least get you thinking on the right path! 

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