You can forget your own phone number and still sing a carpet store's jingle from 1994. That's the entire business case. A good jingle is the cheapest long-term real estate your brand will ever own in a customer's head — and the market for making one is wildly opaque. Jingle companies quote anywhere from $500 to $50,000 for what sounds, to a buyer, like the same thing. Here's how the pricing actually works.
Why Jingles Still Work (The Science Is Annoying)
Musicologists call it the "earworm effect": melody plus repetition encodes into long-term memory in a way spoken copy never does. It's involuntary — which is annoying when it's a competitor's jingle and free compounding brand equity when it's yours. In a world where most audio ads are skippable, a hook that lives rent-free in someone's head keeps advertising after the media budget stops. That's why brand jingles keep showing up in every format from AM radio to Spotify pre-roll to TikTok.
What Jingle Companies Charge
The market breaks into three tiers. Budget/online marketplaces ($200–$800): a freelancer adapts a pre-written melody to your business name. Fast and cheap; you'll occasionally hear your melody selling someone else's muffler shop two states over. Dedicated jingle houses ($2,000–$15,000): custom melody, professional singers, full production, usually with market exclusivity. National agency work ($15,000–$50,000+): the big-brand tier, where the jingle ships with a strategy deck and a licensing contract thick enough to stop a door.
For a local or regional business, the honest price for a custom, exclusive, professionally sung and produced jingle lands between $1,000 and $5,000. Above that you're paying for the vendor's overhead; below it, check what "custom" means in the fine print.
What Actually Drives the Price
Five things move the number. Custom vs. adapted melody — writing an original hook costs more than re-skinning a library track. Singers — one voice or a stacked vocal group. Instrumentation — programmed tracks vs. live players. Versions — you'll want cutdowns (a full :60, a :30, a :15, and a 3–5 second "button" for the end of every produced spot). Rights — exclusivity and ownership, which is the piece that matters most and gets read least.
The Licensing Trap: Read This Before You Sign
Plenty of jingle companies don't sell you a jingle; they lease it. The contract grants "broadcast rights" for a term — a year, maybe two — and the melody stays theirs. Stop paying, lose the hook your customers now associate with you. Some contracts also limit the jingle to specific media, so running your radio jingle in a YouTube pre-roll technically requires a new license. Before you sign anything, get two things in writing: perpetual ownership or an unlimited perpetual license of the finished work, and exclusivity in your market and category. If a company won't grant either, that's the real price tag talking.
How to Judge a Jingle Company's Demos
Every jingle house has a highlight reel. Listen past it. Ask for three complete, recent, local-business jingles — not national work from a founder's former life. Then apply the ten-second test: play the demo once, wait ten seconds, and try to sing it back. If you can't, your customers won't. Check that lyrics land the business name and one benefit — clever that doesn't sell isn't clever. And confirm the same team that made the demo will make yours.
Do You Need a Jingle or a Great Spot?
Sometimes the right answer is neither tier of jingle company — it's a well-produced spot with a strong audio signature. A distinctive voice, a sonic logo, a recurring tagline read the same way every time: these build memory too, at spot prices. Our take: start with a great produced commercial ($199–$399), and when it's working, add the custom jingle and button it onto everything you run. That order of operations means the jingle lands on an audience that already knows you. If the funny angle fits your brand, a comedic hook makes a jingle even stickier — see what we do with humor.
The Bottom Line
A custom, exclusive, professionally produced jingle for a local business should cost $1,000–$5,000, you should own it forever, and it should pass the ten-second singback test. Any company that hides pricing, leases melodies, or dodges the ownership question has answered your real question already.
Want a hook they can't forget?
We write and produce jingles and audio signatures with full ownership and market exclusivity — and we'll tell you the price before you ask twice. Tell us about your business or see our spot pricing to start with a produced commercial.