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.

Comments

WTF?

[Tickenest]

An article about licensing music in games and not a single mention of GTA?

My personal preference

[Bagels]

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.

Re:Gamers and Elvis...

[PainKilleR-CE]

I know a lot of gamers are into their game music but am I the only one who goes into sound prefrences and turns that crap off so I can listen to my own MP3s?

It depends on the game for me, and the music in the game. The first time I play through a game I almost always leave the soundtrack intact. If I'm playing online I usually turn the music off completely, and only play my own music if I'm not trying very hard to do well in the game. The only game I can think of at the moment in which I've replaced the music when I'm playing single-player is Project Gotham Racing, which was just screaming for a good rock/metal soundtrack, and allowed me to run the songs from the hard drive so I don't have to choose between the game and the music for the stereo.

Some games have soundtracks that add to the games, and those I rarely change, others detract from the game, and quickly get the shaft ;)

Still, I think any game developer that accepts a royalty agreement for music on their games is getting shafted, because obviously some percentage (if not all) of the gamers are going to give the music the boot. The people that really like the music and can track it down will most likely buy it on a CD, for which the artist should be paid royalties. The article even quotes industry people discussing releasing game soundtrack CDs, and the (sometimes disgusting) practice of releasing 'special edition' versions with the sound track CD bundled with the game after the game has shown to be a good seller (I call this sometimes disgusting because it's often the only way to get the CD and some amount of gamers will buy the special edition even if they already have the original; note that I have no problems at all with developers/publishers releasing a special edition along side the original release, only the whole 'after its successful' part, which the movie industry seems to have really jumped on, especially with XMen 1.5 and the new Fast and the Furious release to promote sequels).

I hope this doesnt work for RIAA either.

[bkedelen]

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