I'm deleting the older comments just because I'm not trying to put it all out there.
Prices change constantly and dramatically, from what I understand. Both were reasonable at the time. You can hit up anyone's manager and get a quote, usually a high quote, from the booking email in their twitter bios. That's how I contacted both, and several other artists who I chose not to work with.
Riff was first. I had reached out to Soulja because I had this semi-serious plan to make stupid rap on purpose to see where it would go, that's where 'Cereal and Beer' came from. It's also where 'Dora' came from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSNzknLnSfc
I wanted to work with Soulja, but they literally wanted 10k, which even if I had, was way too much in my opinion for a hobby project with Soulja. So I did the next best thing, reach out to Riff Raff, lol. Max wanted $1500 for the song, and an extra $1000 for a video, but I'd have to come out on my own to shoot it. I tried to pay the $2500, but he wouldn't accept the video money up front. That made me feel more comfortable, but looking back that kind of helped him get away with it. I didn't actually pay for that one. I told a co-worker about it, and they stole the money from the store and gave it to me to pay him. This was years before the Stitches song was even a thought. It was supposed to be delivered in 90 days or less, and after the 90 days I called Max, and he acted like a cokehead pretty much. He straight up told me he would tell people I threatened to kill him.
Riff finally hit me up and offered to do the song for free, and literally never came through. I don't hold it against him though. He never saw a penny of my money. Here's the never-before-seen DM's: http://i63.tinypic.com/10p6kvq.png
I did contact his new management after he told me he'd do the song, but they basically said that while they completely feel me, Max was the one who robbed me, and Max is who I should go after. They aren't wrong. It is what it is.
When I contacted Stitches' manager, I explained to him what happened with Riff's manager, and 10 minutes later Stitches called me himself. I don't know what he's trying to charge now, so I don't want to say what I was charged, but I will say it was more than Max charged, but less than what Soulja wanted. Stitches offered to do the extra songs a lot cheaper though after the first. I was the one that backed out, but I really got what I wanted, one song with one decently known performer.
