Is $5 to make midi of a pop song a fair price in 3rd world?

[invictius]

Damn subject header limit. You may have heard of a site like fiverr where people do online/offline tasks for a minimum of $5. I had a couple of guys from India make a 2 minute midi from little beginning content - is it simpler for them to write something that already exists as, say, a karaoke track so instruments are easier to get the notes for?

[SouthernLion]

I mean, that seems fair.

[Jimmy]

...You've gotta be pulling my leg and pretty much all my other extremities.

First of all let me disspell the myth that Fiverr is worthy the time of anybody (who is using it to make money). Consider what $5 will get you in today's capitalist world. A bag of sweets, maybe. A new song off the internet. Whatever it might be, it will invariably amount to a fleeting moment of serenity and personal freedom that is gone in an instant. You can spend $5 without even thinking about it. And if you have rent and other bills to pay, $5 is jack-diddly.

This has been said so many times: When you pay someone money to do a thing for you, whether it's a MIDI file, a custom-made plush toy, a design for your website, a blanket made of expensive materials, or your red-and-black fursona on a body pillow, you're paying for not just "a thing being made", but multiple things.

- That person's time and energy resources which are inevitably finite
- That person's skill and expertise in their craft, and problem-solving ability
- That person's own personal flavor, i.e. art style or approach to music composition
- That person's assurance of quality in what they do
- That person's years spent training, perhaps in academia, to hone their abilities
- That person's ability to translate what you want (or what you think you want, in your head) into a real thing.

Everything an artist does is a creative endeavour, and artistry itself is not gained lightly. You're certainly not born with it, and any artist will tell you they didn't get good by accident. And when pressed on how they got good, every single artist will say "practice, practice, practice". Because that's the only way.

Back to the original question. Is the value of a person skilled in music theory, composition and transcription, working for what will easily amount to hours, on converting a pop song with multiple layers and instruments into a MIDI file... equivalent to $5?

I mean, what do you think. I'll give you two guesses.

Transcription is no small task. I should know, I have done it. If you want an idea at how difficult it is, I urge you to find a video on your phone or tablet that has like five people talking conversationally, unscripted, and then try to type out into a Word document everything that's being said, with no margin for error. That should give you an idea.

There appears to be a myth floating around that MP3 (and likewise streamed audio) and MIDI are interchangeable formats and one will go into the other seamlessly. That individual sounds can be picked up within a highly-compressed MP3 audio stream and spat back out as carefully-arranged melodies. That one format will easily translate to the other with virtually zero effort. There's the iconic moment where Joel from Vinesauce puts an MP3 of John Cena's theme song into a MP3->MIDI converter and is shocked to discover that the result isn't quite as melodic as he might have expected. I mean have you tried any of these sites? They don't examine the melodic structure of an MP3 file because it doesn't exist. The individual note information has been blended and compressed and thinned out to a point where not even the most sophisticated of computer algorithms will ever be able to discern what a "note" is anymore. Take an MP3 file, open it up in Audacity, and play, I dunno, an isolated 1/10th of a second of it. What happened in that little slice of music? Was it a bunch of incomprehensible noise? Yes! You, a being with (relatively) high intelligence, couldn't tell what that was, so why would an unfeeling computer that doesn't understand music be able to do it?

No, in order to transcribe something to MIDI, and to do it well, you have go through multiple steps. Learn how music works. What are the twelve notes? How do chords work? What are chord progressions, inversions, and cadences? What are melodies, scales, intervals and modulations? Once you've gotten your head around most of the concepts in music theory, you have to listen to a great deal of music with an analytical mindset to start "ear training". This is where you literally rewire your conscious mind to pick out all those musical concepts in not just music, but in everyday life. What is the interval of that bird singing? Is it a major seventh or a minor ninth? Sounds like it could be a quarter-tone flat. It sounds ridiculous, but you need this level of sharpness to approach transcribing a full musical composition, even if it's just a pop song that might only use those same boring I V vi IV chords that you hear everywhere. You just need to be able to identify these musical concepts in a heartbeat so that you don't spend forever trying to transcribe a song that only has three ideas in it, which isn't time-efficient at all.

You also need to get to grips with actually composing music which helps the process through immensely. Placing notes down in a timely manner within your software program of choice, or your notation software if you're geared more towards traditional means. You need to study and understand chord voicings, registers, various rhythms like nested tuplets, and how the devil to transcribe that shitty bitcrushed vocal melody that you can barely hear underneath the drums as they get louder and louder before the big chorus at the end. Oh and there's a guitar solo in the middle of the song that uses quintuplets and heavy pitch sliding.

Basically, if you want to earn money for what you do as an artist, you essentially want to get so good at the thing you do that you can do it almost in your sleep. That you can minimise the time and energy spent per task, and thereby maximise the compensation you get.

Still think musicians are worth five dollars?

I ask you. That's five minutes of work at the very most. And let me tell you you won't get a quality-assured product in that amount of time.

This undervaluing and underappreciation of musicians, of artists, and of the work they've put in their entire lives, is why a lot of people are broke and the art of today is often described as stale. And this isn't me just soapboxing, it is a very real problem. Without a solution, it seems:



Maybe one step towards at the very least easing this problem would be to start valuing people who have a rich history of quality-assured work somewhere in the ballpark of what they're actually worth.

"If you’re shocked that actors have day jobs maybe you should consider paying for art."


EDIT: ... Also you might want to look up what "the third world" actually is. India ain't a third world country.

[Nash]

I live in a third world country and I'd charge $20 - $50 * to MIDI-fy a pop song. The more complex and popular the song is, the more I'd charge. Transcribing shit (especially by ear) isn't easy fam

* this has been adjusted for currency conversion

[Agree 10000% with everything Jimmy said, being a musician and producer myself; heck, he's probably seen most of my Facebook rants about the show/music biz =P]

[SouthernLion]

What I meant was, $5 is fair to the buyer. It's a great deal. But yes, I agree with all of this stuff you guys wrote. lol

EDIT: ... Also you might want to look up what "the third world" actually is. India ain't a third world country.

Depending on your definition, it actually is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

[Matt]

Jimmy's right on the more general point regardless of India's classification.

[Rachael]

You guys made your point (and I agree with you), especially Jimmy - but it does no good to dog pile him.

@ invictius: Once again, I am disappointed.