Game Marketing – How to deal with music copyright?

Music copyright can be a very big problem sometimes and this is the reason why the game industry nowadays want to have copyright free music.

Ok all we love music! No matter what genre but we love music. In case of a game I think the music is a relevant part of the gameplay. Like soundtracks for a movie, the game soundtrack can even make the difference. And music nowadays appears to be not a way of expression just like it has been for decades, especially for the youth.

Games are actually more relevant for everyone, both young and older generations. Of course we know that society changes, but there is also another important factor to consider when we talk about the relationship between games and music. Games contains everything! A game can also be a very high quality and artistic product, and I’m talking just keeping from aside the interactivity offered by games. Because if we also consider the major and revolutionary factor introduced by games, the interactivity, there is not competition with any other entertainment industry.

In this scenario when we have £100 or less in our pocket destin to our entertainment and fun what we do? We see what proposts are coming from the entertainment industry well… who wins? Games! Please also read this very detailed article about marketing segmentation and positioning.

Different future for the music?

Of course the time where people use to follow a musician everywhere buying all his albums and merchs is probably gone. Now we have all the music we want in our pocket. And as I said before, the music is not a way to express our vision about life anymore. People use to easily chat on social media about less relevant things than before when older generations wanted to change the world, even on stage! I’m not gonna say that this is good or bad. And also think about the entertainment back in the days. Ok we loved 80s games but ok… be realistic… we got fun but just because we were little kids. Think about the opportunities offered by modern games. There is nothing in the entertainment industry that can compete with, right?

Ok in case of games we are more focused in playing them than to listen to their soundtracks, that’s ok? Despite this, we are often got captured by some amazing soundtracks have been written for games. Some examples? Doom, OutRun, Street Fighter, The Witcher, Space Harrier, Turricane 2, Skyrim and so on.

Licenses for soundtracks

As I said I love and respect the music copyright. But licenses are too restrictive for a game company. If you have a look at all the licenses we have to care about while we are asking for the rights to use a song in a game wow…! Guys that sounds overbearing for me. Why? Because it seems that music is the only and most important part os the project. And I personally respect the effort and the emotion an artist puted into it, but ok, do you know how much effort, time, investments have been involved in the making a game engine? And then the game?

How to avoid your game turning illegal?

Did you know that if just one of the music license expires and you forget to renew it your game automatically turns to be illegal and it will be permanently removed from the market? How could you avoid that?

Well, you should use license free music. Possibly, you should also have the full copyright of the music you use. Online there are several websites that sold copyright and license free music. In this case you have to pay one time and you can use that song without limitations or restrictions, but smeone else can use the same song.

In alternative you can ask help to a musician to create some specific dedicated songs for your game, even using some music kits out there. Consider this, many of the commercial songs are now produced this way.

Our thought about music copyright

At K Storm Studio we strongly believe that music is a very important aspect of any game and it’s essential to improve the game experience. But as a game developer you have to have the entire control of your product. Assets, codes, soundtracks, music, everything should be royalty free so you can easily distribute your game without additional restrictions.