Expert: Sean Trapani - 9/8/2008

Question
I have wrote and produced a jingle for a pizza company from my area. They have about 38 franchises now and are in four states and are growing fast.They have released four jingles in the last 2 years on commercials. I was wondering what amount of money should I ask for?  Also I was wondering if I could liscense the use of the jingle to keep future payment coming? Thank you for your help.

Answer
Jamel,

I don't understand. If you have written the jingle, didn't the company hire you to do it? Or did you do it without their request?

If it's the latter, good luck. It's not impossible - and I'm not saying you shouldn't pursue it - but very unlikely that any company that already has an ad agency will accept unsolicited creative work.

If they did contract you for the work, and for some reason you didn't discuss price first, you have several options. They can completely buy out the rights of the jingle, they can buy limited rights (for set period of time and certain media placements) or you can blend the two scenarios together - unlimited usage for x period of time.

You can probably find some standard usage contracts online.

On average, a professionally produced jingle will cost $15,000-$20,000. This is a fee for union talent, studio musicians, ASCAP and BMI licenses and several other components. If you are non-union, and producing the jingle yourself, the fee can be considerably lower. I suspect, by virtue of you asking me this question, that you are non-union.

To that, I'd say you would not want to price your creative product so low that the client perceives low quality, but not so high as to make it cost prohibitive to a small business. A very rough estimate - and the rate I've paid to smaller, non-union talent - was between $1,000-$5,000.