Was it paid? If not, then it's free work. Call it whatever you want, in my experience the people talking about passion the most are those that are just looking to pay the least they possibly can.
Until we have established a name (track record) for ourselves, and/or have a number of respected people vouch for us, we are called on to demonstrate our skills, just as musicians and actors are.
In principle, I think this is reasonable, especially since there are reportedly many fakers and exaggerators applying for jobs.
In practice, it appears that there are so many shoddy auditions that we must endure when looking for a job, that it becomes almost a full-time waste of time. This is unreasonable, methinks.
The problem will become serious when nearly every company that is hiring runs a low-quality dog and pony show in which we must perform, or not be hired. We can already see an analogous issue in the ubiquitous presence of objectionable binding mandatory arbitration clauses in seemingly every contract we sign nowadays.
"Well do you have any recordings you can show me instead?" "No, I do other things with my free time. I don't work outside of work."
If the musician is any good compared to the people they've already auditioned, many times you won't play another song. The band will hire you on the spot.
I think I prefer the coding test.
Ha, but seriously, I hate take home assignments.
This is almost entirely the point of take home assignments. In fact, this is almost word for word what my response would be to anyone who doesn't like take home assignments!
> Thanks for admitting that, the first step is accepting you are no good at evaluating people.
Step two is admitting that, in general, evaluating people using non-empirical means is an enterprise fraught with peril.
In fact, we just hired someone who did that, and her assignment came back better than expected. At first we were so-so on her due to potential lack of experience, but the assignment (and her projects on her personal site) showed us were wrong.