GameSoundCon Game Audio Industry Survey 2025: Game Music and Sound Design Jobs Data
- Brian Schmidt
- 11 hours ago
- 18 min read
Video Game Music and Sound Design Jobs, Salaries, Employment and Education information
The GameSoundCon Game Audio Industry Survey is one of the most referenced surveys of its kind in the video game industry, providing data on game music and sound job trends, technology, and more. The 2025 Survey ran from May 1 through June 15, 2025. 654 people responded to the survey, including 631 game audio professionals across all genres and studio sizes.
This year’s survey included new questions on industry layoffs, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in game audio, and how long it takes post graduation for new hires to find a job. We also look at some trends we have seen since we started this survey in 2014.
Given the breadth of the game industry, from small indie studios to giant AAAA games, we continue to break the industry down into three main groups:
· AAA Games. Typically, these represent games from large publishers, employing teams of hundreds with a development cycle in years. Typical AAA titles are games such as Forza, Call of Duty or Destiny
· Midcore Games. A mid-core game is a smaller scale than AAA, but is still developed and published by medium to large companies. Midcore games are often, but not always casual games such as those published by Zynga, or games such as Plants vs Zombies, Candy Crush. We also include physical games (arcade, slot) in this category
· Indie Games. An indie game is generally self published and developed with a team size ranging from 1-2 to around 20. Indie games are sometimes published by an ‘indie game publisher.’ Note that we generally do not consider ‘hobbyist’ games to be “indie games.” A hobbyist game is one done for leisure or education.
Of course, many games don’t fit neatly into one of the above boxes, and there is no clear delineation between the above categories. However it is useful as a framework for comparison, so that we are not comparing composition rates of giant AAA blockbusters with those of a small studio just starting out.
Of professional respondents (removing students and aspiring/hobbyists)
49% said the last game they worked on was AAA
29% said the last game they worked on was Midcore
22% said the last game they worked on was Indie
This is very similar to previous years' responses, and is included solely to give the reader better context of who completed the survey.
Topline Summary
Employment Status
There is an measurable trend towards 'audio outsourcing' over the past several years. A game audio employee is 3x more likely to work for an audio outsourcing company than they were 10 years ago.
More than 6 in 10 people working in game audio are employees of companies. "Moonlighting" (doing freelance game audio work in addition to being a game audio employee) was reported by 13% of game audio employees.
Game Audio Salaries
Average income for both salaried employees and freelancers were up by approximately 20% from the 2023 survey
Average Salary:
USA/Canada: $155,198
EU/UK: $71,388
Freelance Composer Rates
Freelance 'per minute' composer rates have inched up over previous years
Average AAA rate: $1871/minute
Impact of Layoffs
Layoffs affected 16% of salaried employees; around half of those found another job in game audio
Layoffs were more likely to impact mid-career employees than recent hires
Artificial Intelligence in Game Audio
The use of generative AI in game audio is still relatively rare. The most common uses are dialogue generation (Placeholder or shipping) and programming scripts such as Reaper or Python.
Education
Eight in 10 game audio professionals have a bachelors degree or higher
100% of recent hires have at least a bachelors degree; 90% of which include a major or minor in music, sound or game audio.
Demographics
82% of respondents were male, the smallest percentage since we started keeping track
Professional Status
How Many People Work In Game Audio as an Employee vs as a Freelancer?
62% reported they worked as a salaried employee of a company: 14.7% for an Audio company and 46.7% for a game company. 25% said they were a freelancer as their only source of income, while another 8.7% said they had a ‘day job’ unrelated to audio, but freelanced in game audio on the side. 11.3% also said they were a salaried employee in game audio, but also freelanced on the side.
Game Audio Outsourcing Trends
For the last several years, we have asked people their professional status: employee vs freelancer, and what kind of company they worked for. Anecdotally, the feeling in game audio is that many of the larger game studios are ‘outsourcing’ more of their their game sound design or music to companies that provide services to game companies. To see if this perception was accurate, we looked at how the industry makeup has changed since we first started tracking this in 2016. Although most people employed in game audio work for a game company, the percentage of people employed by audio outsourcing companies has steadily increased, almost tripling from 5 % of people working in game audio in 2016 to 14.7% in 2025.
Put another way, in 2016, a game audio employee was 10 times as likely to work at a game company as an audio outsourcing firm. In 2025, that has fallen to 3 times as likely.
Game Audio Jobs Data: How Much do Game Music Composers and Sound Designers Make?
We asked how much game audio employees received from their employer in the form of salary and bonus last year. Not included are benefits such as health care, vacation time, etc. Because we noticed a reasonably large difference between employees in the US and Canada vs the rest of the world, we treat each separately. For the purposes of comparison, all compensation information in this report are converted into USD.
Game Audio Salaries in the U.S. and Canada
For 2025, the average Game Audio employee salary in the United States and Canada was $155,198, a 20% increase over the 2023 survey ($128,511). The Median salary was $127,070. The average number of years of experience is 10.1, with a median of 8 years.
This year showed a strong gender discrepancy in salaries. Male respondents reported significantly higher salaries than non-male respondents. However, there is also a strong correlation between salary and years of experience, with a steady increase in salary through approximately 25 years. We are in the midst of deeper analysis of this discrepancy.
The distribution of US/Canada game audio salaries (employees of companies) is shown below:
As with previous years, there is a strong correlation between salary and years of experience. However, the correlation weakens after around 20-25 years of experience. The highest salaries tend to include managerial roles, such as “Lead Sound Designer” or “Audio Director.”
Game Audio Salaries in the European Union and United Kingdom
Game Audio music and sound design salaries in the UK and EU are significantly lower than their North American counterparts. The median wage for a US game audio worker (127,410 USD) is just over twice that of workers in the UK/EU (62,500 USD). Although this discrepancy is large, it roughly aligns with the discrepancy in tech salaries between the US and EU/UK technology workers, as shown in the Global Software Engineer Salary Research 2025 report .
As with North America, EU/UK salaries vary greatly depending on the number of years of experience showing a steady progression for the first 15 years of work in the industry.
Game Audio Salaries in Other Countries
We did not receive enough responses from game audio professionals in regions outside the US, Canada, EU and UK to do a significantly meaningful analysis, so we refrain from reporting an analysis here.
Game Audio Salary Breakdown by Role
As explained above there is a large difference between salaries of US/CA employee composers and sound designers when compared with the salaries of employee composers and sound designers in the EU and UK. They are broken out separately in the chart below. Note that the table below includes all sizes of studio, from indie to AAA.
The average salary for a game music composer who is a company employee, based in the US or Canada was $131,686, with the median amount of $109,444. For sound designers, the average salary was $124,277, with a median salary of $100,621. For Audio Directors, the Average salary was $165,331 with a median salary of $134,178.
For the EU and UK (Note: (All values are converted to USD), a game music composer who is a company employee, had an average salary of $63,236, with the median amount of $54,128. For sound designers, the average salary was $58,566, with a median salary of $54,808. For Audio Directors in the EU/UK, the average salary was $99,796, with a median salary of $88,160.
It should be noted that “Composer” and “Sound Designer” include overlapping responses; for example if someone reported that they do both music composition and sound design, they were counted in both the “composer” salary stats as well as the “sound designer” stats.
How Long Does it Take to Get a Job in Game Audio After Graduating?
We asked full-time employees of companies (not freelancers) how long after graduation it took to land a full-time job in game audio. After removing respondents who said they had not yet become employed in game audio, the chart below shows how long it took a typical employee to find work in game audio after graduating.
One important note: The table below represents people who are are working in game audio. That is, they did find a job working in the field. So the best interpretation would be “if you got a job in game audio, it took on average 1.2 years after graduation to do so.” It should not be interpreted as “once I graduate, I can expect to land a job in an average of 1.2 years.”
How Much are Starting Game Audio Salaries?
For recent hires, which we define as having 2 or fewer years of experience, the average salary in the US/Canada was $63,457, with a median wage of $62,500. This is down from $79,012 reported in 2023.
Game Audio Industry Layoffs
16% of all respondents (both current freelancers and employees) said they had been laid off in the past 12 months. Layoffs generally affected mid and senior level positions somewhat more than more recent hires. Game audio employees with 12-14 years of experience were the most likely to experience a layoff in the past 12 months.
Of people who were laid off in the past 12, almost half (46%) said they had found another job in game audio. A handful said they had decided to become a full-time freelancer, with approximately half still looking for a job, though one third of those said they were doing freelance work while continuing to look for full-time employment in the game industry.
Game Audio Freelancing
What do Freelance Game Composers Charge?
Although an imperfect way to quote for game composing, a ‘per-minute of completed music’ remains a popular way of charging for game music composition.
Among:
Indie freelance composers, 55% said they charge by the minute
Midcore freelance composers, 51% said they charge by the minute
AAA freelance composers, 81% said they charge by the minute
Composition rates vary widely by game size/scope.
For AAA games, the most popular rates were $1,000, $2,000, and $3,600 per minute of finished music, with rates up to $5,000/minute.
Average $1,871 (3% increase over 2023)
Median $1,700 (12% increase over 2023)
For mid-core games, the most popular rates were $1,200 and $1,600.
Average $998 (8% increase over 2023)
Median $1,000 (67% increase over 2023)
For indie games, the most common rate was $400
Average $618 (5% increase over 2023)
Median $407 (13% decrease over 2023)
Both indies and mid-core topped out at $2,100.
How Much do Game Audio Freelancers Make?
As with salaried employees, there is a notable difference between the average annual game audio freelance income in the US/Canada and EU/UK. The average income of a full-time game audio freelancer in the US and Canada was $98,375, with a median annual income of $58,800. In the EU/UK, the Average annual income was reported to be $58,775, with a median of $52,200.
For both regions, a smaller number of high annual income raises the average; that difference was more prevalent in the US/Canada than in the EU/UK
A breakdown of the annual income distribution is shown in the charts below:
Who Owns Copyright to Video Game Music? What are Contract Terms of Freelance Video Game Composers?
When work is done with a freelance composer, it is typically either delivered under a license agreement, where the composer retains the underlying rights to the music, or under a Work for Hire (WFH) agreement, where the music rights belong to the game developer or publisher.
Whether the ownership of the music remains with the composer or is transferred** to the developer/publisher is highly dependent on the size/scope of the game.
Freelance composers for indie games are far more likely to retain music rights, with over one third (36%) of freelance indie composers saying for the last game they worked on, they licensed music to the developer/publisher.
For mid-core games, that number drops to 11%, and in AAA games, none of the freelance AAA composers reported that the last game they worked on were done as a license, where they maintain music ownership rights.
** when music is composed under a Work for Hire contract, the developer/publisher is considered the ‘author’ from a legal perspective, so no ‘transference’ actually occurs.
Do Game Composers Get PRO Income from Game Music?
Regardless of ownership of the music, be it the composer or the developer/publisher, in some circumstances the music generates Performing Rights payments. Despite freelance composers generally not keeping the copyright to the music they composed for a game, AAA Freelance composers were the most likely to receive PRO income from game compositions, with 36% reporting that they had received PRO income from their game music composition in the past 12 months.
Composers who are employees of companies also often reported they had received PRO income, but were overall less likely to receive PRO income for their game composing work than their freelance counterparts. It should be noted that in the charts below, although it shows a high percentage of Indie Employee Composers receiving PRO income, the total number of Indie composers was quite low (less than 20), so one should be careful of reading too much into that particular chart; it is shown here for completeness.
Employees: Additional Game Audio Contract Terms
Note: We did not consider 'employee non-wage compensation such as vacation, retirement plans, health insurance, etc in this section.
Salaried employees, in addition to their salary, may be eligible to receive additional payments based on game or company performance.
Among AAA games, Less than 1/4 (23%) said they were not eligible for any additional payments. Of those who did receive additional income, it included: cash bonus (63%), company stock( 32%), some portion of revenue from the game's soundtrack (2%),or eligible for per-unity royalty (6%).
39% of game audio employees working on midcore games reported getting nothing except salary. Other eligible income included: cash bonus (34%), company stock(26%), some portion of revenue from the game's soundtrack (4%),or per-unity royalty (13%) .
Among indie game audio employees, 26% reported their only income was from their salary. Additional terms included cash bonus (47%), company stock (11%), Soundtrack Revenue (16%), a per-unit royalty (15%), as well as ancillary use payments (5%)
Freelancers: Additional Game Audio Contract Terms
Among freelancers, in addition to the fee they charge for their music or sound design work, may be eligible to receive additional payments based on their contract.
Among AAA games, 2/3 said they were not eligible for any additional payments, although some reported being eligible for a cash bonus (16%), company stock( 12%), some portion of revenue from the game's soundtrack (12%),or eligible for per-unity royalty (7%) or payments for ancillary use (4%). 56% of those freelancers working on midcore games reported getting nothing except their contract amount. Other contract terms allowed them to collect a cash bonus (20%), company stock(8%), some portion of revenue from the game's soundtrack (24%),or eligible for per-unity royalty (5%) or payments for ancillary use (4%).
Among indie freelancers, 42% reported their only income was from the content they provided. Additional contract terms included cash bonus (8%), company stock (5%), Soundtrack Revenue (36%), a per-unit royalty (21%), as well as ancillary use payments (5%)
Composer Share of Game Soundtrack Revenue
How likely is it for a game composer be eligible for game soundtrack income?
In addition to the above, it is interesting to see how many game composers said they are eligible to receive income from the game soundtrack. The chart below includes all composers, both freelance and employee-composers, but excludes those who also do sound design. 44% of indie composers said they were eligible to receive soundtrack revenue, compared to 47% of midcore composers and 29% of AAA composers.
Not that these numbers include cases where no game soundtrack was released at all (in which case it would show up as 'not eligible to receive income')
Game Audio Income Sources: How do Game Audio Professionals Earn a Living?
Most people responding to the survey who are working in game audio make all of their income from game audio; more than half (53%) of respondents made 100% of their income from game audio, with almost three in four (73%) making 75% or more of their income from game audio.
Looking at all responses, the average breakdown of income sources is shown below
Game Audio Creation: Creating music/sound for a game
Non-game audio creation: This is creative content for other media such as TV, Film, etc.
Audio Business (not content). This is income from an audio related that is not directly related to creating music/sound. Examples might include selling sample libraries, consulting, teaching or other businesses
Non-audio Income: This is a 'day job' that is unrelated to creating audio in any way
The chart below shows the average income breakdown averaged over all respondents. In other words, if you combined all respondents into a single entity, this is what the income breakdown would look like.
Looking at freelancers only, we categorize them as “all freelancers” and “serious freelancers,” with serious freelancers defined as freelancers with no “day job,” that is a job unrelated to audio in any way.
Game Audio Freelancers, on average, make two thirds (67%) of their income creating game audio content, with another 15% creating audio for something other than games. A game audio freelancer makes, on average 9% of their income from an audio-related business. This includes teaching, or other entrepreneurial endeavors, and averages 9% in from non-audio related work (aka a ‘day job’).
'
'We define serious game audio freelancers as freelancers who reported zero ‘day job’ income; they get all their income from freelancing or an audio-related business. Of serious freelancers, almost ¾ of their income comes from game audio, with another 17% from creating audio for other media. The remainder comes from an audio-related business or entrepreneurial endeavor.
We also asked freelancers, "Why are you a freelancer?"
51% of full-time freelancers responded that they prefer freelancing over being an employee
28% said they would prefer to be an employee, with an additional 16% saying they were freelance because they had been recently laid off.
Some typical comments regarding freelancing included:
It just worked out that way
The risk of layoffs is too high for me to accept a (salaried) job
It just happened like that
Salary requirements cannot be met
I enjoy the flexibility and variety of projects I work on
I would prefer a salaried job, but I don’t want to live in a big city where all the studios are
PTSD and burnout from being an in-house game company employee before
I prefer the flexibility and security (of working freelance)
Game Audio Tools: What Software do Game Composers and Sound Designers Use?
What are the most popular game audio middleware engines?
Game Audio Middleware continues to be popular, although what particular tool or engine is used often varies with how large the game is. Audiokinetic’s Wwise engine continues to be popular tool used by those working on large-scale, AAA titles. Both FMOD and Wwise are commonly used in both the midcore and indie games.
Using a game engines built-in audio engine (such as Unity’s audio engine or Unreal’s Audio Engine/Metasounds), are also occasionally used.
One Important note for the graph below: The charts (bar heights) represent the number of people using a particular tool or engine, not the number of games using the tools. So, a AAA game that has many sound designers may show higher numbers in the graphs below than an indie game that has only one or two, even though each may represent a single game in development.
What are the Most Popular Game Engines?
Game Audio tools are not used stand-alone; they are used in combination with a game engine. The chart below shows the most common game engine/audio engine combinations. That is, for a given game engine, how frequently is a particular audio engine used, either 3rd party middleware or the game engine’s native engine.
Studios that create their own game engines tend to use with Wwise or their own custom audio engine. Games that choose to use the Unreal Engine frequently use Unreal’s built-in engine, and tend to use Wwise more that FMOD Studio as the audio engine. For games written with the Unity Game Engine, FMOD was the most popular audio engine used.
This reenforces the fact that it is best to have at least some familiarity with each of the main audio engines, FMOD Studio, Wwise, Unreal Audio and Unity Audio, since the game developer will always choose which game engine to use, and usually decides on which audio engine to use as well.
How is Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Used in Game Audio Production?
8% of professional respondents said they were currently using Generative AI in some way in the course of their work on creating audio for games. An additional 15% said they were currently exploring its use. The most common use case was the creation of placeholder dialogue, which accounted for 43% of the people who said they used Generative AI. The second most common use case was generating code for simple code-scripts such as Reaper or Python.
Commonly used AI tools were Suno Music Prototyping, Elevenlabs VO prototyping and Soundly VO generation.
Not every person who said they were currently using Generative AI thought it was a good idea to do so, with some including comments such as :
Team is generating variations of some voice lines using eleven labs for variety’s sake. I have advocated against it, but it was out of my control.
Other uses of AI included QA, Writing, Production VO, Voice Cloning, Voice Changing and “Researching”
Education in Game Audio
How Much Education do Game Composers and Sound Designers Have?
A typical job in game audio does not require a degree. An employer will typically look primarily at your demo reel or portfolio before checking your credentials. However, the overwhelming majority of people working in game music or sound design have a degree of some sort, the majority being music or sound related. In addition, 100% of survey respondents categorized as "recent hires" (2 or fewer years of experience) had either a Bachelors or Masters degree.
Across all professionals, including both freelancers and salaried employees, 58% had a bachelors degree, with and additional 22% having a Masters degree as well. 11% attended some college, and 4% received their associates degree. These proportions are not significantly different from our 2023 survey
What Degrees to Game Composers and Sound Designers Have?
Unsurprisingly, the most common Major for game music or sound employees are music or audio related degrees, with 77% of respondents saying they had a music degree or audio related degree. 7% of respondents reported having both a music/audio degree and a highly technical degree, such as computer science.
Degrees unrelated to audio vary widely, from adjacent, such as film production, and fine art, to wholly unrelated fields, such as Criminology, urban planning, law, biology and Asian studies.
Education for Recent Graduates/Recent Hires
What major or minor do recent game audio hires have?
As noted above, game audio jobs generally do not require a degree. However, when we asked recent hires (which we define as having two of fewer years of experience in the industry) about their education, every recent hire had either a bachelors (79%) or masters degree (21%).
Over 90% of recent hires in game audio had a degree related to sound or music. More than one third (35%) reported having either a major or minor in game audio.
Among degrees unrelated to music or sound included Game Design, Oral Health and mechanical engineering.
Demographics: Game Sound Design and Music Gender Makeup
Respondents to the Game Audio Industry Survey continue to be mostly male, at 82%. 15% said they were female with 3% reporting they were non-binary.
Since we started the Game Audio Industry Survey in 2014, there has been a gradual, although modest increase in female and non-binary responses. In 2014, 96% of the respondents were male. That number has gradually decreased to a low this year of 82%. Note that “other/nonbinary” was not introduced as a choice until the 2019 survey, when just under 1% reported they were other/non-binary. This also shows a gradual increase, reaching almost 3% in 2025.
Race/Ethnicity in Game Audio
The racial/ethnic makeup of game audio had minor variations from the 2023 survey. White/Caucasian comprised just over ¾ of respondents (75%, unchanged from 75%), with Latino/Hispanic the next largest group (8%, down from 9% in 2023) and Asian (6%, down slightly from 7% in 2023). Black representation was slightly up (3% from 2% in 2023); Native/Alaskan was 0.4%, under our rounding margin. Other responses included South Asian, Maori, Caribbean, Indian, Italian American, Jewish, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern/Arab, Semitic, South African, Turkish
Additional notes this survey
The Game Audio Industry Survey attempts to gather data in as neutral a way as possible. However, it is not a randomly sampled study. We attempt to make the industry aware of the survey when it is open through various email lists and social media (Discord Servers, Slack Groups, Facebook, X/Twitter, Bluesky). As such the survey may have inherent limits and biases. This may result in a larger percentage of ‘more connected’ composers and sound designers responding to the survey than a fully randomized survey would have.
Some anomalous looking responses were discarded. These were either self-inconsistent, or contained data vastly outside of expected values. This may result in a pre-conception bias.
Questions on salary or anything related to money were optional; this is done to increase participation in other areas of the survey. 95% of salaried employees and 88% of freelancers reported the income or rates.
Contact
Brian Schmidt
Executive Director, GameSoundCon
Facebook: Facebook.com/GameSoundCon
Bluesky: @gamesound.bsky.social
Twitter/X: @GameSound