How We Pay Sound Artists

Every quarter, sound artists get paid because someone needed the sound of rain, or a slamming car door, or footsteps on gravel.

Pro Sound Effects exists to fuel creativity with the authentic sounds of our diverse, ever-evolving, and constantly expanding world. To do this well requires a perpetual investment in recording all over the globe, continuously building our library to serve the imaginations and needs of creatives and technologists.

Behind PSE’s 1.3M sounds are real people—masters of craft traveling to thousands of locations, using best-in-class equipment and expert techniques to capture the world as it sounds. When a PSE client needs the sound of the Amazon rainforest, a Hawaiian monk seal, or Mongolian tundra ambience, we ensure not only that they are legally licensed for their use case, but that the people behind the sound - PSE sound artists—get paid every time, on time.

Ensuring sound artists get paid is critical to our culture and process. From recording and editing to metadata, licensing, and delivery, the collaboration between our library development team and sound artists produces professional sounds that find homes in world-class projects. PSE empowers creative and technology clients to easily find and use our sounds for any story or application. The work we do results in a living sonic archive—providing history, depth, and richness across the entire sonic spectrum, while striving to represent the ever-evolving nature of sound.

Providing reliable, alternative income streams to sound artists is fundamental to the reason I started this company.

What this looks like for our sound artists

The key outcome of our licensing work on behalf of sound artists results in a new category of income that provides steady financial support and ongoing royalties. Over the years, some of our most prolific sound artists have built studios, purchased their first homes, and paid for their children's college tuition. Others rely on PSE to cover everyday expenses, new recording gear, or annual family vacations. At the end of the day, my team and I are proud that our daily work contributes as much as it can to the financial well-being of the sound community and helps fund their next recording adventures.

How PSE Sound Artists get paid: the royalty flywheel

The basic mechanics of how we pay sound artists are simple:

1. The sound artist records.

2. PSE curates, edits, tags, and licenses the content.

3. PSE clients pay us for those licenses.

4. We pay the sound artists, and the sound artists keep recording.

This financial flywheel is what differentiates us from other companies. We both believe and have proven that when artists get paid on an ongoing basis, they keep contributing on an ongoing basis. Since 2004, we’ve focused on building relationships based on trust, long-term commitment, and collaboration. It’s why the majority of our new recordists are personally referred by current PSE sound artists themselves.

Monetizing non-musical sound is challenging

From a zoomed-out perspective, PSE is in the business of monetizing non-musical sound. It is our job to continuously find new opportunities to do so.  And monetizing non-musical sound is arguably one of the most challenging things to do well. 

Why? To this day, sound is taken for granted, assumed to just exist, thought of last and valued least. Within audio, music and voice are big business. And then there is everything else—sound. For the first time, we are bringing the industry together to champion the value of sound and stand against piracy through the Professional Sound Alliance (PSA). I’m proud to be the founding Chair.

When we start working with a sound artist, we are clear about our roles: it is their responsibility to record, and our responsibility to develop and monetize their recordings across all media, known and unknown. Since 2004, over 50 sound artists and their teams have entrusted us to turn their recordings into commercial assets across diverse platforms and revenue streams—from single downloads and studio site licenses to content creation platforms and technology development.

PSE invests, runs the day-to-day, and artists keep the upside

For many years, we’ve had to fight the perception that PSE is just a reseller, distributor, marketplace like Amazon, or DSP like Spotify—the idea that sound effects arrive fully finished, we put them on our site, and customers automatically show up to buy them. We’ve worked hard to dispel this myth.

Behind the scenes, delivering this quality requires a massive investment of capital and talent, made possible by our 22 years in the business and the daily commitment of our team.

To give you a high level look underneath the hood, PSE invests in, manages and operates:

• Library development

• Engineering (website, SoundQ, API, Download Manager)

• Marketing

• Sales & Licensing

• Support

• Accounting & Bookkeeping

• Legal

• Business operations

Our commitment shows up in offering the highest quality uniform metadata, providing flexible access, telling the unique stories of our sound artists, connecting with clients, navigating complex custom licenses, collecting on invoices, and ensuring our artists get paid on time, every time. It is a massive, highly complex endeavor for a team of 20.

The Bigger Picture

Zooming out, the model we’ve built around fairness and compensation is a win-win-win for artists, our team, and our clients. It is a virtuous cycle that enables us to pay sound artists. The goal is to create a sustainable, reliable, self-renewing business that elevates creativity for all.

We are navigating a new world, but we do so with the confidence of the relationships we’ve built over 22 years and the name we’ve established for our company and library. That keeps us committed to investing in and supporting this small niche of the audio industry for years to come.

I want to give a special shout-out and offer my deep gratitude to everyone who makes this possible: our team at PSE, our sound artists, our clients, and our partners. Thank you to everyone who has supported us throughout the years and who remains committed to supporting us moving forward. I am proud to say we have partnered with some of the best and most storied sound artists for decades to build together, and I remain forever inspired.

Sound shapes every story we watch, play, and build, yet it's rarely given its due. Keep reading to see what we're doing about that.

→ Explore Sound Matters

→ Why Sound Matters More Than Ever

→ Why I Founded Pro Sound Effects

→ Join the Professional Sound Alliance (PSA)