When 21-year-old singer ericdoa released the song “>one” last March, he had an unusual partner: Valorant. This is not another artist. is a popular shooting game that attracted millions of players in February. Riot Games, the company behind Valorant, used “>one” — which the game refers to in its lyrics — in a trailer that introduced a playable character named Gekko. The track is now ericdoa's second most popular song on Spotify, with over 36 million streams.
“It was a huge spiritual victory,” he says Maria Egan, global head of music and events for Riot Games. “Can we do this over and over again?” she asks. “How do we unlock our platform and other gaming platforms to be the new place where new artists can find an audience?”
It's a question that is often asked in the music industry as well. In recent years, the industry has struggled to find reliable ways to ensure that its songs reach a wide audience. The gaming community is huge, young, and interested in music — in other words, an ideal target for record labels. However, there have been a few notable recent cases of games helping young artists break through or leading to music discovery on a mass scale.
“Like music, games are global and have significant cultural relevance, but scalability at this intersection is still a challenge,” he says. Jeff Sawyer, gaming and esports agent at UTA. “Players and revenue are scattered across an endless web of product categories and consumer affinities, not all in one big bucket. While there are incredibly good, custom integrations happening between games and musicians, the music industry will need to upgrade its licensing model to truly achieve scale in this category.”
In fact, gaming doesn't need music from more labels to thrive – the gaming industry won about $184 billion in 2023, dwarf music (about $26 billion, according to IFPI). As one prominent music tech executive puts it, “the business model for games doesn't need to support music.”
And even in popular games that feature music, the field remains extremely competitive. “There are still a limited number of slots FClimited number of slots NBA 2K“, says Steve Schnoorchair of music for Electronic Arts (EA).
The music industry would obviously benefit if there were more games with more slots for their songs. But gaming executives say the opaque licensing system makes that unlikely. “Every time I talk to a game publisher, they always have at least one horror story about trying to navigate music rights,” he says. Ben SumnerCEO of Feel for Music, which helps games and brands with music supervision.
A recording can have multiple principal owners and writers, each of whom could work with a different publishing company, and gaming companies must get approval from all of them. Vicky Naumanwho has licensed music for several games in addition to founding music technology consultancy CrossBorderWorks, once had to complete 143 deals to delete 20 songs.
This can just take up too much time on a game's timeline, he explains Gavin Johnson, director of sync and partnerships at electronic music label Monstercat. “Typically a game developer creates content that's quarterly or bi-weekly or even weekly,” he says, especially in the world of “live service games,” which are free and dynamic, updated on the fly to rekindle the interest of players and maintain a steady commitment. (Several of the most popular games of 2023 — as measured by monthly active users — were live service games, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Minecraft.)
Additionally, the music industry typically requires large upfront fees to license songs. “Embedding music is often an experiment for games, and they don't want to pay millions of dollars for an experiment,” he says. Alex Tarrantco-founder and COO of STYNGR, a company that offers precleared music games.
Between multiple rights holders impacting schedules and high upfront fees, many game developers find it much easier and more financially sound to outsource music in-house. “If something creates more cost in ways that don't really lead to what a game is after, they tend to think, 'We probably shouldn't be spending time and resources on this,'” gaming consultant Toa Dunn says.
Tarrand's company STYNGR is working to reduce the friction between gaming and music companies by setting blanket licenses across all major companies and publishers so game developers can come to STYNGR and pull music into their titles. Instead of paying STYNGR up front, the developers cut revenue sharing deals.
Another company, Game Over, is taking a very different approach, targeting gamers who watch live streams on Twitch or enjoy video game montages on YouTube or Instagram. This allows them to bypass the industry “arm's race” around rights altogether, according to the partner Zac Katz. Labels still believe that winning in the game space is linked to interacting with the [gaming] platforms,” says Katz. In his view, this is “wrong”. “Winning is ultimately about attracting the gaming audience” and serving them music, which can be done in other places where gamers congregate.
However, executives in both music and gaming dream of more in-game opportunities. “Licensing needs to be made easier and more scalable for games, so it's not just huge franchises that can do it,” says BandLab CEO Meng Rou Kwok.
“What I'm hoping to do is create a dialogue where we can understand that while synchronized relationships bear enormous fruit, they still limit us,” Schnur adds. “Let's take a look at what the term 'synchronization' means and what it should mean in the future.” He acknowledges, however, that music rights holders may be content with the current system – and is wary that any calls for change could mask a campaign to devalue music.
At the moment, many creative ideas to bring more music to gaming “simply aren't coming to market,” Nauman says, “because of rights issues.”
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/video-games-music-song-licensing-system-out-synch/
