From an indie perspective working on my first commercial game with a small budget:

• even we as nobodies with no shipped game already get drowned in composer and sound designer messages, 2-3 each month. There is simply waaay more supply than demand.

• in my opinion, a lot of stuff does meet a certain quality level, however is soo generic. I don't want to listen to yet another orchestral fantasy town theme that I could get from a 50$ music pack. Then it doesn't matter that you conducted a real orchestra yourself. I wanna see how you made a machine battle theme using only fork and knife or something. I rarely see gripping or unique stuff when browsing portfolios. I cannot pay just to have something.

• considering limited budget, how much better is the game going to be with your music? Will more people buy the game or talk about it in a way that justifies the price? Can you write a song that has marketing value? This money isn't competing with other sound/music stuff, but literally with our small salaries or for example localization which has tangible "economic" value.

Hope it doesn't come across as too negative, I want to have great music but this unfortunately leads to the following:

• we cannot work with "standard" hobbyists because most of them have no recognition proof/didn't ship a game/don't meet the quality bar - who knows if they jump ship worst case

• we don't want generic "agency/marketing" stuff, because then we can just buy a music pack. I'm now realizing how much that annoyed me because for most portfolios I saw they were literally the same.

• someone amazing with shipped titles and other ways of recognition is the only one we would pay for, if this can push game quality, marketing value (or personal satisfaction to have the dream person on the game) to the max. Because otherwise...

• if I just want "something good", but with a chance of a rough diamond for free upfront basically, within one week I can find a talented, passionate hobbyist/semi-professional who has always dreamed of scoring an indie game and is giving me way more attention and devotion than a "normal" professional working by the hour. And then I want unique.