Media Commissions

Rates of pay for media commissions will vary according to the nature of the project and the commissioner, the status of the composer, medium, and most importantly the rights package required. 

Bear in mind that you may not always be able to negotiate a fee but may be presented with a budget you need to work to. Generally the fee offered for a media commission will incorporate the cost of producing a recording as well as writing the music, so you will have to weigh up how long the work will take to complete.

Fee examples

These are examples of actual fees paid to composers for commissions and are taken from survey data. The examples given are total commissioning fees, excluding royalties, received by MU and BASCA members for media projects. The majority of these fees cover the production and delivery of a recording as well as the score. The number of minutes refers to the amount of music commissioned.

See full fee examples in the Fee guidelines document.

Fees per minute of music

Category	Range of per minute fees	Mean average per minute fee
TV Documentary	£34 - £400	£117
Feature film	£111 - £1,200	£509
TV Drama	£100 - £800	£294
Children's TV	£75 - £417	£163
TV light entertainment	£56 - £500	£248
Advertising	£1,000 - £20,000	£8,263
TV Sig Tunes & Stings	£128 - £7,000	£1,624