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Licensing Music For Games Big Business
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Billboard/Yahoo story discussing licensing music for videogames. As the article states, "Facing an industry-wide decline in mechanical royalties, music publishers and songwriters are increasingly turning to a new revenue source - video games." Although specially-composed soundtracks (a better way to go for a more integrated audiovisual experience?) are also discussed, licensing of existing songs seems to work as a"..flat-fee buyout that can range from $1,500 for a song from a new artist to $20,000 for six songs from Elvis Presley", with royalty-based licenses the 'holy grail', potentially bringing artists a great deal of money if their songs are featured on million-selling games.
Not many gamers I know would care for Elvis songs in their games.
An article about licensing music in games and not a single mention of GTA?
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
"Not only do we require $20,000 to license "Heartbrak Hotel" Giant, you must bring to Graceland......A Shrubbery!!!!!!!"
I've always preferred music composed specifically for the game, by someone actually on the staff (particularly Yasunori Mitsuda in Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross or Koji Kondo in all of the Zelda/Mario games). For certain kinds of games - specifically, RPGs or adventure games - music with vocals in it just wouldn't sound right. I can't imagine the latest pop song in Sonic, for example! Still, for certain kinds of games (Tony Hawk) it seems to work well enough - the music there is just an accompanyment, as it only has to set the mood for the game in a much broader sense.
--- Bwah?
Many games have always had good music, just look at the C&C series -- some of those tracks I still have in my playlist.
But real soundtracks for games? Offhand, I can only think of few games where the music so impressed me I bought it: 'The Longest Journey' is the most recent example, but the 'No One Lives Forever' games also had good music which really added to the experience, the original songs were exactly like the 60's songs of the world Kate Archer is supposed to live in.
As for licensing existing music -- how many games really fit with such music? There's only so many GTAs. I'd be willing to bet most movies have an original soundtrack, or at least a number of songs written especially for the movie. Why should another visual medium be more suited for 'recycled' music?
The article mentions 'Enter the Matrix' as an example of a game with a soundtrack, but I can't say the music of movie or game really did something for me.
Games are just like movies: those with great soundtracks are those where the soundtrack has been conceived as an integral part of the product from the start, but most only seem to have had some ambience painted on, perhaps with one good theme at most.
If more games come with complete --and original-- soundtracks, that will finally be a reason to buy the deluxe editions again: all too often I preorder a 'special edition' only to find some cheap addons.
An article about licensing music in games and not a single mention of GTA?
Never mind that, how about Rob Zombie / Dragula? Remember 2-3 years ago when that track appeared in every other game?
In Soviet Japan, game soundtracks are big business, just like movie soundtrack - the best known example is the Final Fantasy series (dozens and dozens of CDs!).
My personal favorite: Xenogears/Xenosaga.
Check out, say, GameMusic.com for the original Japanese overpriced releases or find the China/HK knockoffs in any number of places.
Warning: Extremely geeky. You do NOT want your [potential] girlfriend to catch you with these CDs.
...potentially bringing artists a great deal of money if their songs are featured on million-selling games.
Whoops, typo. Here's the fix:
...potentially bringing the RIAA a great deal of money if their songs are featured on million-selling games.
Blatant self-promotion: Jerek.net
last thing I want to see is N'sync or Christina Agulera making game music.
I most certainly hope good quality composers make the game music
On a side note, one of the better places to listen to game music is GamingFM. But beware of the Sonic Arcade tracks.
Too many zeros, not enough ones
you know nothing of big business. 20 grand is an insignificant sum in industries of billions.
The wipeout series had an excellent (if you like dance music) soundtrack. Underworld, The Prodigy, Fluke, Leftfield.... I find the beats help me maintain focus and get good times.
Considering the incredible independant talent out there (ex. Alex at www.cynicmusic.com) who probably require much more reasonable fees for their content, and help support people who the industry has not "discovered" (or choosen not to discover) yet, I would suspect that if a publisher made a post on ./ and asked for quality independant musicians, the publisher would get more than enough contacts to make their project fly at a fraction of the cost.
-Benjamin "Durandal" Edelen
bkedelen@yahoo.com
did a song in Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball.
Thankfully, you can replace it with your own music...
Thos eprices don't make any sense.
Let's say I wanted to license Smash Mouth's "All Star" for my movie. I want to tie it into my merchandising. Like in Shrek, or Mystery Men. I can see how that would be pretty costly. A lot more than that piddly $1500 fee they mention. More like $30K or so.
An Elvis song on the other hand... What is that worth for a movie? Certainly not worth more than "All Star". I mean think about it. Does "Devil in Disguise" get you as excited about seeing a movie as "All Star"?
The Elvis songs in Lilo and Stitch were cute, but that's about it. There's no way I'd try to promote a game or movie off those songs. So why are THEY worth $3300 per song and more recent songs which people enjoy more are worth less?
I can also see how it would make sense as a developer to pay $2K to license say "All I want" for Crazy Taxi. The song was used to give the game a certain feel, and attract gamers to the arcade machine. In addition that was a big budget game.
But what about all the othe rgames out there? What if I want to have a bar somewhere in my game, which plays an elvis song when the player puts a coin into a slot machine? A point where many players will never get to, and even fewer will ever think to use the jukebox? It doesn't make sense at all to pay $3300 for THAT. But they do that sort of thing in movies all the time, where someone is simply playing a song in the background in a fairly unnoticeable manner.
For those sorts of uses, those prices are outrageous.
And forget about being able to license any tunes if you're a shareware author with those prices!
Hell I can pay someone to produce an original song for less than half those prices. There's lots of bands that wouldn't mind licensing their stuff for less than that. Why support the evil music industry when you can support smaller independent perhaps even local bands?
Besides. Who wants to hear music they already know every time they play a game during the game? I don't. I thought the songs in Wipeout were totally ANNOYING. And the gameplay of Wipeout was sucky too. It was clearly designed to be flashy and ignore the gameplay because the physics of the ships in that game felt like total crap. Everyone bought into the hype of it's art beign designed by famous designers and the music being licensed from sony.
In fact I'd go so far as to say that Sony is unfairly competing with other developers when they do that stuff. As Sony, they can use as many songs as they like at little to no cost, because they own both a game and music business. That's not fair to me the small PC game developer who would have to license music from them at $2-$3K per song. And they could refuse to license me the music if my game competes with theirs.
How about Britneys 'Hit me baby one more time' for the UT2003 soundtrack?
I want my karma, and I want it now!
CD Japan (www.cdjapan.co.jp) provides much better selection and service. It is advised that you buy multiple albums, because Express mail shipping is fairly expensive. You can choose airmail if you're money-strapped.
Also, a good site that sells import game music is CocoeBiz (www.cocoebiz.com). Their selection is smaller, but they carry some things the other retailers don't, like the soundtrack to Okage and Metal Slug 3. They also have official English translations of certain game composer sites, like the ones of Motoi Sakuraba (Star Ocean, Valkyrie Profile) and Noriyuki Iwadare (Lunar, Grandia).