What To Do When Someone Asks You To Work For Free

They’re interested. Negotiate.

Tensions long simmering reached a boil last week when a music maker dubbed Whitey tore a potential customer a new subwoofer and went viral for his pique after apparently being asked if he was willing to license his music to a production house at no charge. Great googly moogly, a musician finally stood up for demselves! And there was much celebration in the land.

But I for one doubt this ventation will net Whitey significant Benjamins moving forward. There will of course be the righteous activist-with-money types that seek to reward his valor, and also those hoping to just put out the fire before a full-scale insurrection takes hold. But his rant is the one of untold thousands that went viral—simply duplicating the deed isn’t likely to win you the same sympathies.

Why is this such an issue anyway? You can always go to the corner store and ask them for a six pack on the house—is the owner going to bust a bloodvessel and start emailing every blogger in sight how ungrateful you are for his distributorship? No, he or she is just going to quote you the price and, if you try to take it anyway, sic the police on yourazz. Why aren’t musicians so comported?

The main reason of course is that music is such an emotional thing and the musicians feel their music is a symbol of their own self-worth. When someone casually suggests that their soul is actually worth bupkes, it hurts right to the core.

So let’s do an exercise. I will tell you your music is worthless, and you will go have a good cry.

Boooo hooooo hooooo. Waahhhhhahhhhhahahhhhaaaaaa. Boooooooo hoooooo hoooooo. You said I’m worthlesss and, hooooooo hoooooo hoooo. Waaahaaaaaaahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.BOOOOOOOOOoooOOOoooooooohooooooohooooooooooooo.

There, that wasn’t so bad was it? Uhm…what was the point of all that sobbing? I have no idea, but at least now we’ve fully cried it all out and we don’t have to do that again. (Yes I’ve had my cries too.)

What will we do instead next time someone asks? As I mentioned, going all Whitey on their asses isn’t likely to net you much. Your prospective will just go around telling their peeps they tried to talk to you and you went all amazon on them. “Watch out for that one, they postal!”

Let’s instead see this for what it is. You have a potential customer! Someone is interested in your content in an era in which content seeps up through the cracks of the sidewalks! That in itself is cause for rejoicing. Finally we will have something to tweet out to our friends and family to prove that we aren’t just a total loser indulging in escapist fantasies, refusing to buck up and get a real occupation. Nosiree, we’re an authentic, in-demand musical genius! And we gots the email to proves it!

Oh and the catch is they like it but they don’t want to pay for it. Well, should we be so happy they thought of us at all that we stoop and accede to all of their demands? We mustn’t threaten this month’s best shot at relevance remember. And don’t we admit in our hearts that our music isn’t all that good compared to that of our heroes? (Hmm…what would our heroes get paid for this anyway?)

It’s almost been reflexive this year for people to write articles on how much someone in the arts should expect to be paid for their goods and services. Typically, they advise you to tabulate all your costs of doing business, buying equipment, paying dog walkers, etc. Divide it by the time spent on the work and then place a “reasonable” markup on your costs. There, that’s what you should charge.

Horsepuckey. Intangible content has no cost of goods sold (it’s not like jewelry that has a market value for its materials) and your overheads in making it is your business not your customer’s. Since content can generally be sold/licensed many times, the market expectation is your overheads will be covered by your hits. Not having hits? Your cost of being in this business is your ante for this game of chance, and it’s hard to insist others cover your own hopeful wager.

Understand your point of satisfaction.

But in this instance, short of hits, you do at least have interest. How should you price your services? I suggest two dimensions: market comparables, and your point of satisfaction.

Figuring out what an accurate market comparable price for the work in question is can be hard. For one thing, everyone in this business insists that they are in crushing demand, rather than actually spending much of their time procrastinating with a PS4. And so people will often add a whole digit to their claims of how much money they’re being paid for stuff. And occasionally they will chance upon a well-off fool that will grossly overpay them for something (and that can become a happy pattern). Getting your hands on real comparable numbers requires finding honest friends that aren’t pounding dents in their chests bragging.

Figuring out your point of satisfaction—how much pay you will be satisfied getting for the work—is also hard, in another way. Here rather than getting honesty out of your acquaintances you have to coax it out of yourself. This number is a gauge of your self-esteem, and it may vary from hour to hour, depending on just how bipolar being in this business is making you. You might have fantasies about what masterpieces you have made and how you mustn’t just toss those pearls before swine. Charging a lot will force them to believe! Or you might hear the footsteps of your landlord and think how nice it would be to get something—anything—for music you’ve long grown out of.

But come to a point of satisfaction—a figure below which you are confident you’ll regret establishing as the price for your goods and services. And stick to it as an absolute minimum, informed by the reality of market comparables. Will your clients feel ripped off when they learn of less costly comparables? Or will you feel taken advantage of? There is a figure in there you can both live with, and one hopes you will see enough of it to cover your overheads and costs of living.

Never say no, just quote a price.

So let’s get back to the prospective client who has just asked you to give your work away for free. You have three options: 1) Go all Whitey on their ass, screeching about how disrespectful they are and the whole nine—which is likely to win you nothing that an hour with a punching bag wouldn’t. 2) Ask them for the price you have determined to be your point of satisfaction, and calmly insist on it. 3) Ask them for double your point of satisfaction, and start haggling your way down to that point, so you can both feel victorious at the end of the negotiation.

Because that is what this supposedly rude and disrespectful potential client did when they asked you to work for free. They opened a negotiation. Yes, with an absurdly low “bid.” But it is a negotiation nonetheless, and you have nothing to win just walking out on it.

If you really don’t like the person or the project, your point of satisfaction is going to go up. If you personally hate oil companies for instance, charge them ten times your point of satisfaction and see if they take it. If they do, Robin Hood, you just took money away from the bad guys and gave it to the good.