Hi,

I just released a study on US Employment and Music Composers using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov) that I thought might be interesting to this group.

I did the study after reading an article in USA Today a couple weeks ago that listed "Music Composer and Audio Director" as the third fastest growing job category in the US over the past decade.

I wanted to see what the cause was, so I dug deeper into the data and found that games seemed to be the driving factor.

The press release on the study is here:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/9/prweb11118906.htm

The full report is on the GameSoundCon web site

Edit: The story was picked up by Geekwire: http://www.geekwire.com/2013/study-video-games-causing-spike-music-composer-employment/

Very cool Brian - and good news for us audio folk! :)

Thanks for a great study!

Entry to the industry is easier than ever with more positions opening up, but an equivalent glut in amateur composers seeking employment has also made it a little bit harder to climb. Might be interesting to find a study about the average fees of working composers at all tiers. I saw one a couple years ago, but the sample size was 24, so it's basically useless.

Might be interesting to find a study about the average fees of working composers at all tiers.

As far as working composers (people who reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics that "composer" was their profession), salaries haven't gone down.

The last couple paragraphs in the full study (on the GameSoundCon website) mention this: salaries for composing jobs remained relatively flat at around 53k.

Now of course that doesn't count hobbyists, or people who don't make their living composing. That group of course would bring the number down significantly.

What I meant was actually the fees that composers charge for specific deliverables (i.e. per minute, hourly rate etc) measured against relative experience within the game industry, rather than their annual average income.

I was under the impression that the latter category saw a decline in recent years, though. Good to hear that that's not the case.

Thanks for a great study!

Entry to the industry is easier than ever with more positions opening up, but an equivalent glut in amateur composers seeking employment has also made it a little bit harder to climb. Might be interesting to find a study about the average fees of working composers at all tiers. I saw one a couple years ago, but the sample size was 24, so it's basically useless.

From people in the industry the average earning for a small project is 5-20k (GBP) and big projects anything upwards!!! Although it depends whether you are freelance or work under a company like Microsoft/Sony :)

salaries for composing jobs remained relatively flat at around 53k

Is that USD ? :)

Define "Small Project"?