# Video game market now larger than film and music combined



## rgames (Jun 16, 2015)

The video game market surpassed the film market a few years ago but this year it's poised to pass the sum of both the film and consumer music markets.

Maybe I need to start playing video games to do some market research...

https://espresso.economist.com/fd30b391 ... 7c80e6534a

rgames


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## maclaine (Jun 16, 2015)

I thought it had been that way for quite a while? I remember reading articles saying this kind of thing back when I was getting out of college, and that was in 2003. It was part of my motivation to get into games after realizing I'd never pay my rent being in bands.


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## charlieclouser (Jun 17, 2015)

Isn't it the case that games still have no back-end money for composers?


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## rpaillot (Jun 17, 2015)

charlieclouser @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Isn't it the case that games still have no back-end money for composers?



Good point.


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## Daryl (Jun 17, 2015)

charlieclouser @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Isn't it the case that games still have no back-end money for composers?


True, but I would have thought that you just have to set your fee big enough that it doesn't matter. Besides, as long as you keep the Publishing, you can release it for library which should garner some extra income.

D


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## charlieclouser (Jun 17, 2015)

Daryl @ Tue Jun 16 said:


> True, but I would have thought that you just have to set your fee big enough that it doesn't matter. Besides, as long as you keep the Publishing, you can release it for library which should garner some extra income.
> 
> D



Do you know anyone who has actually done this? On the one and only game I scored this was not an option.

Has anybody here ever been able to re-use any music they've created for a game title?


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## Daryl (Jun 17, 2015)

charlieclouser @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Daryl @ Tue Jun 16 said:
> 
> 
> > True, but I would have thought that you just have to set your fee big enough that it doesn't matter. Besides, as long as you keep the Publishing, you can release it for library which should garner some extra income.
> ...


No I don't, but Publishing must be up for discussion, so secondary usage can't be written off. So if it wasn't an option, was there an exclusivity clause written into the contract?

In any case I would have thought that the music must be registered with your PRO so that YouTube usage can generate a few pennies. As Tesco's says, "every little helps". Or is it "horses for courses"?

D


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## jcs88 (Jun 17, 2015)

charlieclouser @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Daryl @ Tue Jun 16 said:
> 
> 
> > True, but I would have thought that you just have to set your fee big enough that it doesn't matter. Besides, as long as you keep the Publishing, you can release it for library which should garner some extra income.
> ...



Very very unlikely. Games are pushing franchises/idents/branding even more now than even 5 years ago; they'd want to keep the rights to everything.


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## vicontrolu (Jun 17, 2015)

Agree. Maybe its an option on AAA games but nowadays, generally speaking, they own every art assest made for the game.


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## Daryl (Jun 17, 2015)

jcs88 @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> charlieclouser @ Wed Jun 17 said:
> 
> 
> > Daryl @ Tue Jun 16 said:
> ...


Aha. So even though a composer gets to keep the Publishing, there is an exclusivity clause is there?

D


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## jaeroe (Jun 17, 2015)

I don't know a single person who kept publishing (or masters for that matter) on a game. It's all done work for hire.

Music for games generates hardly any performance income either (ascap/bmi) and I don't know any composer who's received points in a game. I know writers who get back end, but no composers.

Re The OP - about 5-7 years about SXSW announced that the interactive portion of the festival had dwarfed both music (the most famous part) and film together. So, I would expect the real world to follow suit. You used to be able to get lunch downtown during the festival. At the point they announced that, lunch downtown became impossible during the fest - was a huge and visible change.


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## Daryl (Jun 17, 2015)

jaeroe @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> I don't know a single person who kept publishing (or masters for that matter) on a game. It's all done work for hire.


OK, so if the company takes the Publishing, don't they have a legal duty for secondary exploitation?

D


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## willbedford (Jun 17, 2015)

charlieclouser @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Isn't it the case that games still have no back-end money for composers?



It depends. For my current game, I'm getting a royalty from the game sales as well as a per-minute fee. Also, for most of the games I've worked on so far, I've been allowed to sell the soundtrack album myself.

It all depends on who you work for and how good you are at negotiating :wink:

BTW, these were all indie games (although some of them were/are quite big). I imagine the AAA industry is completely different.


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## jaeroe (Jun 17, 2015)

Willbedford - yes, I was referring to bigger games. Indie stuff I have heard people negotiating more, but not on bigger games - like TV or studio films vs indies.


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## jaeroe (Jun 17, 2015)

...(posted I error - please delete. Can't wait for v2 of the site!)


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## jaeroe (Jun 17, 2015)

Daryl @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> jaeroe @ Wed Jun 17 said:
> 
> 
> > I don't know a single person who kept publishing (or masters for that matter) on a game. It's all done work for hire.
> ...



What makes you say that? Certainly on larger games they want to own everything related to the game. It's theirs to do with as they please, but the primary purpose is to exploit the IE in the game itself. Why would they have an obligation to exploit beyond that? Contracts generally say the publisher owns, but don't even have to use what the composer creates for them.


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## Daryl (Jun 17, 2015)

jaeroe @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Daryl @ Wed Jun 17 said:
> 
> 
> > jaeroe @ Wed Jun 17 said:
> ...


Ah, well I've never seen a contract like that, so have no opinion.

D


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## rgames (Jun 17, 2015)

vicontrolu @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Agree. Maybe its an option on AAA games but nowadays, generally speaking, they own every art assest made for the game.


The same is true of major films, too, though you do get writer's share of PRO royalties granted back to you. There's essentially none of that on games (save the pennies you might get from YouTube). So it all comes down to the up-front payment.

I wonder what the music budgets are like for games in comparison to film. I bet the major titles are pretty comparable. Are the smaller titles comparable?

rgames


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## Daryl (Jun 17, 2015)

rgames @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> vicontrolu @ Wed Jun 17 said:
> 
> 
> > Agree. Maybe its an option on AAA games but nowadays, generally speaking, they own every art assest made for the game.
> ...


That's not the case in the UK though. Legally the film company is not allowed to take the Writer's share if you're a PRS member. Don't know what happens if you're not. It would be the same for any music; games, film, concert music etc.

D


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## jaeroe (Jun 17, 2015)

I think what Richard is saying is that the money from PROs is basically non-existent on games. That's because there is rarely public performance that is covers by them.

Writer's share does go to the composer - that's the whole point of PRO splits between writer and publisher(copyright holder). But, that is defined in your contract and in a work for hire contract it is typically spelled out, technically, as Richard is describing.


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## jaeroe (Jun 17, 2015)

rgames @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> I wonder what the music budgets are like for games in comparison to film. I bet the major titles are pretty comparable. Are the smaller titles comparable?
> 
> rgames



The biggest AAA games can have quiet big budgets for music. Composer is paid by the minute of music - can be $1500+/min. And then some games have just a ton of music - hours. The production budget is is typically a separate line item. So, the biggest cames can get into the hundreds of thousands of $. But, the biggest films still have bigger budgets than that, typically (can be $1 mill+ easily between composer fee and recording budget). It's just that those aren't as frequent as they used to be.


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## Daryl (Jun 17, 2015)

jaeroe @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> I think what Richard is saying is that the money from PROs is basically non-existent on games. That's because there is rarely public performance that is covers by them.


Yes I agree with that. However, it's not impossible.



jaeroe @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Writer's share does go to the composer - that's the whole point of PRO splits between writer and publisher(copyright holder). But, that is defined in your contract and in a work for hire contract it is typically spelled out, technically, as Richard is describing.


Yes and no. Technically a film or game company can't grant you something they don't own, and if you're a PRS member, they can't own anything without the permission of PRS, which is only ever given to Publishers, and then no more than 50%, so no matter what the company says, they are not granting you anything. They are taking the maximum that they are allowed.

Which is sort of why I was interested in this subject. Because if they are taking the Publishing, then they would have to satisfy PRS that they were a legitimate Publisher. Normally a sister company to a film company does this by doing the bare minimum, which is usually releasing a soundtrack album. So I was wondering whether or not the game companies wee actually Publishing the music, in which case there would be 3rd party usage, or they weren't, in which case the composer would own all the Copyright, but then an exclusivity clause could stop them exploiting it themselves.

Thanks for participating in this conversation. I'm afraid I find this sort of stuff interesting. :oops: 

D


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## rgames (Jun 17, 2015)

jaeroe @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> The biggest AAA games can have quiet big budgets for music. Composer is paid by the minute of music - can be $1500+/min. And then some games have just a ton of music - hours. The production budget is is typically a separate line item. So, the biggest cames can get into the hundreds of thousands of $. But, the biggest films still have bigger budgets than that, typically (can be $1 mill+ easily between composer fee and recording budget). It's just that those aren't as frequent as they used to be.


Interesting. If the trend holds true for non-AAA titles then I bet there's still more money for music in film than in games.

Here's another thought: films have a long history of generating buzz for songs that become hits (and generate performance royalties at that point). Do games do that? I can't think of a song I've heard introduced as "From the game xxx".

And what about soundtracks - how does the game soundtrack market compare to the film soundtrack market? I'm guessing there's no comparison.

So my hunch is there's still a *lot* more money in music for films than for games. Maybe it's a generational thing (which might be a bad thing for future composers).

rgames


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## jaeroe (Jun 17, 2015)

Daryl @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Which is sort of why I was interested in this subject. Because if they are taking the Publishing, then they would have to satisfy PRS that they were a legitimate Publisher. Normally a sister company to a film company does this by doing the bare minimum, which is usually releasing a soundtrack album. So I was wondering whether or not the game companies wee actually Publishing the music, in which case there would be 3rd party usage, or they weren't, in which case the composer would own all the Copyright, but then an exclusivity clause could stop them exploiting it themselves.
> 
> Thanks for participating in this conversation. I'm afraid I find this sort of stuff interesting. :oops:
> 
> D



I'm in the US, so I don't know too much about PRS. But, in US copyright law, the publisher is simply the owner of the copyright - the person/entity exploiting the copyright, or the person/entity who holds the rights to do so. Be it using the music in a game, syncing it to a film, what have you. Sometimes copyright holds will simply grant someone the publisher's share of PRO income, but that is separate from actually owning the copyright. The PRO system in the US was setup as a mechanism to allow performance royalties to be collected and split for the writers and those who own the copyright (publisher). That allows for composers to still collect royalties on work-for-hire materials.

In the studio system, you typically get a rider in your contract for re-use and applicable payment schedule. So, if they go and use a score the you wrote for them and put it in the trailer of another film, or even another film itself, you get an additional re-use plus whatever PRO income applies as the writer. But, they are under no obligation to do that. They're not even under any obligation to let your work see the light of day.


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## jaeroe (Jun 17, 2015)

jaeroe @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Daryl @ Wed Jun 17 said:
> 
> 
> > Which is sort of why I was interested in this subject. Because if they are taking the Publishing, then they would have to satisfy PRS that they were a legitimate Publisher. Normally a sister company to a film company does this by doing the bare minimum, which is usually releasing a soundtrack album. So I was wondering whether or not the game companies wee actually Publishing the music, in which case there would be 3rd party usage, or they weren't, in which case the composer would own all the Copyright, but then an exclusivity clause could stop them exploiting it themselves.
> ...


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## Daryl (Jun 17, 2015)

*jaeroe*, that's interesting. I need to read my PRS guff again, but I don't think it is the same here. From what I remember, all a member's music is assigned to PRS and they give a perpetuity license to the film company for the specific film. They can also grant Publishing, providing that the company is a legitimate Publishing company. I think if they want to re-use music on another project, they need a separate license to do so. Obviously the recordings, if performed under the PACT agreement, can't be re-used without paying a further fee to the musicians. I don't know what happens in trailers.

D


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## maclaine (Jun 17, 2015)

rgames @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> Here's another thought: films have a long history of generating buzz for songs that become hits (and generate performance royalties at that point). Do games do that? I can't think of a song I've heard introduced as "From the game xxx".



This happens occasionally, but it's rare. The biggest example is probably this, which was met with mixed emotions. I happen to like it, but I'm a huge McCartney/Beatles fan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=163_C5UVU-I

For the game I work on, we tried to do something similar when the game launched, but with a much less (read: not at all) high profile singer. For the record, the deal was in place before I started at the company and well before I started writing music for the game, so I had very little to do with this. The song caught on with dedicated fans of the game, but had little traction outside of that. We launched the game in China last year and tried again with a more notable Chinese singer, a former winner of the Chinese version of The Voice and a rising pop star in that country. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtcY27Utu08 

It still was not quite as popular as was hoped, though the reception was better in China than in the west for the original. We got a cool looking video out of it, at least.


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## charlieclouser (Jun 17, 2015)

rgames @ Wed Jun 17 said:


> I wonder what the music budgets are like for games in comparison to film. I bet the major titles are pretty comparable. Are the smaller titles comparable?
> 
> rgames



Besides the Quake score that Reznor did back in the 1990's, and to which I contributed somewhat by dropping sounds and rhythms on the server from the safety of my attic lair, I did exactly one video game score back in 2008 or so. I don't know if it qualifies as AAA, AA, A, B, C, or what, but it was an Activision first-person shooter that used the Unreal3 engine and was released on PS3, 360, and PC. The IP was developed out-of-house, then brought to Activision for staffing up and development. Big project, eighteen months from the time I was hired to final music deliveries. I think there was around 80 minutes of music maybe at around $1,500 per minute, which is technically a higher fee than the B-movie features and network tv series I was doing at the time, but it was all electronic so there was no orchestral or other recording budget.

Even though the project stretched out across a year and a half, I could have done all the music in a couple of months, max. The long development process on their end created huge gaps on my end - I'd do some music beds, hand them in, then put it aside while they caught up to me and come back to it a couple of months later, then do some cut scenes, then put it aside.... drag. 

When all was said and done and you factor in the royalties I didn't get, it was not a great investment of my time. Not terrible, but not great. The same two months of work on a network show or horror franchise would have generated royalties that took the cumulative earnings WAY beyond what the game fees paid. 

I think in their mind it was like, "This is a dream gig for a composer! You don't have to score to picture, you can just write tracks that fit a mood, and you have time to work on other stuff along the way!"

My feeling at the end was sort of the opposite: "This was not an ideal gig for a composer! You don't have any picture to score to, and you've got to create music beds that fit an ever-shifting written description of a sci-fi world with no clear characters or story line, that you can't see or experience except in the most crude, mocked-up fashion until most of the music has already been delivered. Plus, you can't just go and DO the damn thing, you've got to chip away at it in bits and bobs, so each time you put it aside and come back to it you've got to recall the setup and re-familiarize yourself with what the hell you did on the last batch... as well as tweak older cues that you thought were finished."

The cut-scenes / cinematics were the most like conventional cues - they could usually be scored to picture, usually played for a specific amount of time that never changed, and could usually be delivered as final mixes as opposed to stem groups. The load screen cues needed to loop smoothly after about a minute or two, so that if the player just sat there eating Doritos™ and scrolling through weapon choices for half an hour the music wouldn't run out. These, and much of the gameplay music, had to be formatted as at least three stems so the game engine could assemble music on the fly based on player activity. But these weren't just your normal "perc, strings, brass" stems - each stem was like "Layer A, Layer B, Layer C" and there would be situations where Layer A plays from the start of a level, and when more monsters attack Layer B would un-mute and play on top of Layer A. When the big fire fight kicked in, Layer C would go on top of both of those - but sometimes you'd be hiding behind a wall or whatever and they'd want Layers A and C to go away, leaving a "tension hold" mode with just Layer B playing. This creates all sorts of compositional and logistical issues as you try to divide up the music into layers that make sense in this format.

The logistics of creating cues that loop seamlessly at the two-minute mark means that they're all just "beds" with no "arc" and no development - they need to just sit there, and the rise and fall is created by the game engine mixing the music layers in real time. Between always creating looping cues, and the logistics of the multi-layer format, it was a HUGE hassle above and beyond just scoring to picture, where the timeline is fixed, and you can just dive in a start laying out markers and tempo maps against a fixed road map.

It would have probably been worth it if there was some participation on the revenue stream. You KNOW that the game studio knows EXACTLY how many copies were sold new, how many were bought and sold used at GameStop, how many players were online at any moment, etc. - so any argument the industry gives about not being able to track this stuff for the purposes of calculating composer royalties is absolute bullshit. Nowadays, with the Steam Store, and pretty much every game talking to the central server for multi-player online mode (which they all are), it's even easier for the developer to get incredibly detailed info about the players use of the product. They can track, down to the second, how much time is spent by how many players on what level, in what mode, how long they each spend "in the lobby" waiting for their online friends to log in for a multiplayer raid, etc. That stuff, and the rise of after-the-fact DLC (downloadable content) that is sold to the player via online stores for extra weapons, armor, etc. means that the developers have created a revenue stream that goes way beyond the initial purchase of the title.

I was hired to do another game a couple of years ago. I quit in frustration after a solid year of meetings, conference calls, 30-page PDF files describing "moods" and what they wanted the player to feel through the music, and absolutely freaking ridiculous flow charts showing how all of the music cues, game levels, load screens, cut scenes, etc. were laid out. I tried to print one of the flow charts, since it was so detailed and huge that it was unviewable on a 30" monitor, and even at max zoom out with SIX-POINT font sizes, my printer requested a 60" x 48" sheet of paper! Anyway, after a year of back and forth like this, but still having not received a single QuickTime movie of typical gameplay and having not been able to deliver a single piece of music, I walked. 

When the game eventually came out (two years later!) it was so hobbled by massive amounts of DLC that the gamer community SAVAGED it in the online forums. Absolutely REKT. The title cost like $80 and right off the bat a typical player needed to spend another $90 on DLC to up-armor and up-weapon enough to be competitive with both other players and the in-game foes. The concept was innovative and unique, and players loved the online beta versions, but the final product got ripped on, BAD, by all but the most devoted fan base. The next CSGO or COD it was NOT. 

So one way of looking at it is that these gigs are like, "Just give me the cash and we're straight" because you never know whether a title is going to sink or swim. But if it turns out to be a hit, and thousands of players all over the world are online at any given moment, for years on end, racking up hundreds or even thousands of hours of play time (and, yes, they do put in that many hours), and buying DLC every week or so - it's kind of natural to want a piece, even a tiny one, of that revenue stream. I really wish I could say that BMI / ASCAP were on the verge of cutting a comprehensive deal for a royalty structure in the gaming world, but sadly this does not seem to be the case. 

On the other hand, there are SO many people involved in the thing - hundreds of artists, coders, and sound designers doing the grunt work of creating levels, character designs, weapons, etc. - that, from the developer's viewpoint, a music team of one to ten people just seems like a minuscule part of the team. Their investment of time and money is so huge, no wonder they just want to throw a few bucks at the music team and be done with it. It's not like there's a shortage of game composers out there. 

I know that Harry Gregson-Williams did at least one big AAA game score, but I have no idea what kind of deal a guy like that is able to cut, or how much he had to hassle with all the logistics like looping music beds, multi-layer stuff, or whatever. I would think (hope) that when you're at Harry's level you can probably just write the stuff, do the orchestral sessions, and let your minions do battle with the game developer's audio team to get the logistics worked out.

I think, in the long run, that doing music for the big game titles is best suited to the team approach, where you have three or four composer / programmers who all chip away at it while one person takes the lead and wrangles the assets and deadlines across the year or two that the gig might take - and ideally, that team would be working on multiple titles at once, so that there's always something to be done to fill the overlapping gaps and long lead times in delivery schedules.


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## jaeroe (Jun 17, 2015)

Great post, Charlie. Thank you!


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## Peter Costa (Jun 17, 2015)

Lots of composers for indie games will keep publishing to release a soundtrack. Lots of times the revenue generated from the soundtrack will double or triple even the original fee. If you are working with any AAA games you'll most likely sign any rights over to the publisher.


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## Greg (Jun 17, 2015)

This is so exciting!! Especially with the VR technology so close to being launched. That aspect alone opens up so much opportunity for new and unique approaches to score.


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## rgames (Jun 18, 2015)

Great insights, Charlie - thanks.


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