Spectrum: The title of your talk is “Music in Video Games: Surpassing the Scope of Film Scores.” Have we covered all of the ways in which game scores are surpassing film scores?

JD: This is a very important aspect that you may not be aware of—and a lot of game composers are not aware of—and that is the pay scale, the business side of composing for video games. It's far behind the curve of the film industry.

In the game-composing world, the game composer makes his deal based on a fee per minute of music. That's the norm, to my understanding. That means, for the most part, a finished piece of music, be it synthesizer only or synthesizer with some live complement of musicians. And on the face of it, it sounds like a good payment. But it's really not, because the video-game composer does not participate in any royalty structure. Once you're paid, that's it. It's a work for hire; it's a buyout.

That's got to change, given that the video-game business has surpassed the film business now by 2 to 1—US $18 billion versus $9 billion. This is why, many, many years ago, the composer societies, ASCAP and BMI, were established. ASCAP—that's the one I'm a member of—is an advocate for the musician, for the artist, whether a songwriter or a composer. It's imperative, now that the video-game business has grown to these soaring heights of success, that there be some kind of a royalty schedule for game composers.

Games like Halo that sell millions and millions of units should start looking at how to compensate the artist fairly—the artist and, by the way, perhaps other people who are involved in the creative team. This is normal in film and television. This is why some of the best and brightest composers want to get into film and television. Let's say you do a hit series; that hit series can go on for many years, and the composer is paid royalties quarterly and yearly for the public performance of their music.

So that's a huge, huge financial difference between these two worlds. One can make a very handsome living doing a television show. Conversely, you could do—and I'm not singling out the guys that did Halo, but let's say it's a game like Halo that sells in the millions of units—is it fair that a composer writes, say, 60 minutes of music and makes $60 000 for a work that will last years and years and years? I don't think it's fair. And I think as time goes on, video-game companies should come up to the plate and look at that.

Now, there's got to be a different, probably a much different formula, for how we can benefit from that. But now that this world is growing in leaps and bounds, the composers should also be able to participate in some of the profit margin. It's only right.

Spectrum: Was that a fair example, by the way—60 minutes, $60 grand?

JD: I'm glad you asked that. I kind of just said that out of you know where. My understanding is that the fees are anywhere from just that, from $1,000 a minute to $2,000 a minute. I'm not an expert. That's something you may want to check out. It's been my understanding—that has been the figure that's been thrown out there.

Spectrum: And what would be a typical film deal?

JD: Film deals are much different. Film deals usually have nothing to do with the per-minute count. They're usually based on the stature of the film composer you're going to hire. For example, John Williams is at the very top—he's the crème de la crème—he's going to make the very highest fee that film composers can make. And let's say another film composer who's just starting out is going to make far less than that. And it's based on other factors as well. The budget of the film, for one thing.

And I like it that way, by the way, because the per-minute count—for me—takes some of the artistry and the creative juice out of it. Because if I'm working on a beautiful little movie that has 10 minutes of music, you know, 10 minutes could be extremely important. It could be an Academy Award–caliber film. So then I don't want to be paid for 10 minutes of music; I want to be paid for my artistic contribution. And I think that's the way it should be.

So this idea, it's an old formula that the video-game community has come up with. Writing music for an animated series was sort of like that. I did that in my youth. You'd get a per-minute fee. It was like wham, bam, thank you ma'am, you don't own any of this, you can't participate in royalties. And I would guess that that was, in effect, the business model that early video games had. And they probably didn't know any better—by the way, I'm not blaming the video-game developers; it just was a different approach. And they probably never dreamed in their wildest dreams that video games would become, as they are today, this huge behemoth of money and creativity.