What Game & Film Audio Actually Costs

Most audio quotes are a black box. You ask what it costs, you get “depends.” So here is how this work actually gets priced across the industry, what each billing shape tells you about a project, and what moves the number in either direction.

Three ways audio gets billed

Nearly every audio quote you will ever receive is one of three shapes. Which shape you are
offered says as much about the project as the number does:

• Per finished minute. The standard for film, animation, trailers and anything
  linear. You are buying finished screen time, not hours.
• Per asset. The standard for games. A footstep set, a weapon, a UI suite. It suits
  work that ships as a list of discrete things.
• Lump sum. One number for the whole build. It nearly always beats a la carte once a
  project is big enough, because nobody is counting items.

Film and linear: the minute is the unit

Not per hour, not per asset, but per minute of finished screen time, with a project
floor underneath. A three-minute short and a three-minute trailer take a similar amount of
craft, so the minute is the honest unit.

Within that, the real variable is how much is performed by hand versus assisted:

• Full custom. Everything performed and designed from scratch. The premium, and what
  most sci-fi, fantasy, and horror needs.
• Hybrid. Custom foley and design on the hero moments, library and AI on the ambient
  layers.
• AI-assisted. AI and library placed to picture with a human polish pass.

AI here is a speed lever, not a discount code. It is a different way of working, sold as a
choice, never as “the cheap one.”

Games: per asset, per system, or one number

Game audio is priced by the piece and by the system:

• SFX per asset, custom, built to your palette and implemented to spec.
• Music per finished minute, adaptive and interactive, not a flat loop.
• Take both as a lump sum that beats a la carte, and rev-share is on the table for
  new IPs worth believing in.

Retainers and revenue share

Two shapes that get overlooked. A monthly retainer fits a production shipping
continuously, where the work is ongoing and a per-project quote is just paperwork.
Revenue share fits a new IP with more upside than budget, usually alongside a reduced
fee rather than instead of one. Both are normal, and both are worth asking about.

What moves the number

• Runtime, and how dense the sound is.
• Custom-built versus library. Hand-made costs more because it sounds like nothing else.
• Whether the same person is mixing the final, or delivering elements for someone else to
  mix.
• Rights. A full buyout you own forever sits above a limited license.
• Schedule. A compressed deadline is a real cost, in every discipline.

The floor

Every project I take starts at $500 minimum. Below a few minutes of runtime, most
tiers converge anyway, so on short pieces you may as well take the custom one.

That is the whole model, no black box. Tell me what you are making, the runtime and
the deadline, and we will find a way that works for your budget.