Game Audio Project Management (Part 2: Music)
Introduction
This post will be a general guide of considerations for music that can be used to aid game audio planning. When it comes to adding music into a game, there are various options available such as licensing existing music, hiring a media/film composer, hiring a video game composer, and a hybrid approach of licensing select music along with a composer. Combination approaches and other variations also exist.
At Black Box VR, we experienced the limitations of using solely licensed music for our game. While the licensed tracks were good, there was no sonic signature to the game. They all had a similar format and, even with over 60 tracks in the game, they still became repetitive. We needed motivational, upbeat tracks, but they all followed a similar formula: little riser, main phrase variation, main phrase, and repeat - they wouldn't be misplaced in corporate ads.
To solve this, we scored the key moments in the game and created a sonic signature that was our own. This started with scoring the onboarding experience, which has six chapters for the player to learn the mechanics and lore of the game. We scored important scenes, such as when the player's companion Feathers is injured by the villain Rezzer, with the goal of amplifying the player's emotional response. We then created a theme for Rezzer that was adaptive and could be synced and adjusted based on different game states. We also scored the locker room scene, the arena entrance, and the final two minutes of combat, allowing us to begin and end the game with our own sonic signature.
Later in the process, we updated the entire music system to be fully adaptive during the core gameplay loop. This required removing most of the licensed music tracks, unless they had stems, and replacing them with around 16 adaptive tracks. These tracks stripped a song down to its core elements when the player was not performing well and added more music layers when the player was doing well. The crowd in the game could also become aware of the music and chant along to the beat, creating unique, diegetic moments. At Black Box, we are now focused on original, motivating music for our core gameplay loop, with no corporate music formula rules to follow. This means composing music and adding life to tracks by hiring musicians to perform on them, which adds something that many low to mid-tier cost licensing libraries lack, which may also explain their low cost. This experience has given us valuable insight into the different outcomes of licensing music, licensing music directly from artists, composing music, and composing music for musicians to perform.
Licensing Music
Licensing grants the buyer the right to sync music to a media project. There are various vendors covering different needs, from low cost, to mid tier through to high end and premium. There are also other possibilities outside of the traditional music licensing libraries, take for example a local band or artist who has no record label or publisher, it’s entirely possible to license their work directly.
Music licensing libraries are sometimes also referred to as Royalty Free Music, it’s important to note that the license grants you permission to use the works without paying royalties, but if the music is streamed/broadcast on YouTube, Twitch or Spotify etc, then the songwriter and publisher will still earn performance and mechanical royalties, this type of royalty is separate from the media production, it’s todo with the broadcaster (Radio, TV, Spotify, Twitch, Youtube and other Streaming Platforms) who pay a yearly blanket license to a PRO Society to allow music to be broadcast on their platform, in this case when a game is streaming with a licensed track on Twitch or Youtube, then the songwriter and publisher collect a portion of the broadcasters yearly music fee, the game developer who licensed the track pays nothing, as is not relevant in this scenario. If the game developer wanted to collect this money, then they would need a buyout license music from the songwriter, which can be every expensive as essentially the developer becomes the direct owner of the copyright works.
Direct Licensing
When working with talent (Bands and Artists) directly you are free to write a bespoke license agreement. There are however a few caveats to lookout for, if it’s a non-exclusive agreement, which means you will pay less to license the music, then the talent are still free to license and publish the music elsewhere. In an exclusive license agreement you would pay the talent more than a non-exclusive as they can no longer exploit their own works on other media projects, but they can still collect royalties from streams on YouTube or Spotify etc. There is also the possibility of timed exclusive licensing, this will cost more than a non-exclusive license, but less than an exclusive license, this of course is because the music will remain exclusive to the game for a specific amount of time, once the time has expired then the songwriter and publisher can begin to exploit the music in other projects. The exclusivity is usually only for a short period of time, 3, 6 and 12 months are common, the duration can be any amount, but the longer the exclusivity more it will cost. It also common practise for songwriters and publishers to re-negotiate the license after a period of time, usually every 6 to 12 months, but it’s not unheard of to have longer durations, in games this can be disastrous, more on that later, in games a license with no expiry date is desirable. Rhythm action games like Beat Sabre can easily add or remove music without breaking their game, if you’re game is implementing licensed songs that need to be re-neogotitated, then be sure that the music in question is easy to remove, then for whatever reason if no new license agreement can be made, then game is not going to break when removing the music.
At Black Box VR we directly licensed music with stems from electronic artist and prodcuer’s Future Twist, who were very understanding and supportive to the adaptive music making process. The agreement was a perpetual non-exclusive agreement, which meant we did not have to worry about renegotiations and losing content at a later date. When licensing music directly from a band or group, it’s important that every member agrees and signs the licensing terms (unless they have an agreed written representative), else risk a dispute if a member is not happy with the terms or was not consulted in the licensing process.
Low Cost Licensing
For small indie games with little budget licensing music from websites services like (AudioJungle, 2022) and (Pond5, 2022) etc can be an option. The issue with this type of music is that it is not bespoke to the game experience and can feel disjointed, the music is also linear and with low cost licensed music it can not take advantage of most adaptive music techniques, it can however implement one type of adaptive system known as crossfading. This technique can be implemented to have different music play in different zones/locations or different game states by fading out one music track and fading in the next one. This type of implementation is certainly better than having one track loop throughout the game. When the player is going to be in a single area exploring for a long time, it is worth considering adding a playlist of similar tracks to reduce the repetitive nature of hearing the same piece of music over and over again.
Mid Cost Licensing
It is worth noting that some mid tier licensing websites offer stems, but only on select tracks like (Music Vine, 2022) or (Premium Beat, 2022). At Black Box when first designing the adaptive music system, we licensed stem tracks from Premium Beat, which served as a great place holder for testing our audio systems, however, they still lacked a unique sound signature for the game, with the majority of tracks coming off as “corporate sounding” which is a hard thing to escape from when searching low and mid tier music licensing libraries. When researching Music Vine, their catalogue was interesting as they house artists and bands that are actively touring and performing, some of these artists would have been a great fit for Black Box VR, but the company mainly deals with TV and Film with no quick and easy license category for games, it meant a custom license and getting approval from artists as well trying to get stems if they were not available, the big issue here was time. Unfortunately, a few weeks had passed before everything was cleared, and by then we had decided to go with premium beat and were in the process of implementation and testing. If time is not an issue, this could be a good choice for finding something unique, especially for soundtrack related works as opposed to a score.
High Cost Licensing
Services like (Audio Network, 2022) are servicing as a bridge between medium and premium cost licensing. The quality of the productions are noticeably better, and music comes with stems and variations, the Audio Network are known to use live musicians on their productions, which certainly adds a more human feel to their music. The library is catered towards score material with moods and themes.
Increase the cost again, and you’ll find libraries like (Universal Production Music, 2022) and (Warner Chappell Production Music, 2022), which has a huge collection of high quality music with a range of score and soundtrack material, access to stems and track variations. The cost to license from these libraries can be in the £1000s, limiting these libraries to productions with larger budgets.
Premium Cost Licensing
One point in time at Black Box VR we were considering licensing music from popular artists, but the cost was simply too much to justify, after a couple of meetings with music lawyers that represent the label that holds the copyright, the cost was in the £100,000’s, after for a charting artists it was in the millions, and this license only covers a limited amount of time, I was advised three months, with a possibility of 6 months, 12 months or permanent was unnegotiable. For unknown but similar artists it was going to be in the 10,000’s. The copyright holder offered discount deals by licensing multiple tracks that would come with bonus music from upcoming artists that they would like to promote. This was a mutual it helps your game by having more music content while at the same time promotes our upcoming artist. Due to the limited licensing time, which would need to be renegotiated each time it expired this was simply unaffordable for our needs and in our case at Black Box VR it was not worth the investment. Something else worth mentioning when dealing with premium licensing, the copyright holders may require that you implement their SDK (Software Development Kit) into your game, this software tracks play counts and play duration and reports back to their servers, which in it’s own right is simply a pain for development to ensure that it gets integrated properly.
Music Licensing Dangers
One issue with licensed music is that your game will lack a unique sound signature, as any other developer or media chain can also license the same piece of music for their project. It’s common that licenses to not allow for any type of remixing or alterations to music, crossfading out a track for another is technically syncing other musical elements breaking the conditions of the license agreement, syncing percussive hits for more impact is also classified as layering and syncing music ideas which also breaks the terms of most license agreements. Another issue with licensed music is the duration of the license, there have been cases were games have been pulled from steam and other stores due to an expired music license agreement, one of the more notable cases was Alan Awake, the engineering team could not easily remove the music due to the way it was implemented resulting in the game been removed from all digital stores (Gartenberg, 2017).
If you would like to know more about the music industry side of music licensing, there’s an interesting post by (Indie Music Academy, 2022) that’s goes into more detail but yet easy enough to digest.
Composer
Hiring a composer will allow a game to have a unique sound signature, by hiring a game audio composer a game can take advantage of adaptive music techniques. It is important to note that there are differences in skill between a composer and a video game composer. They are similar, however the difference being that a composer will tend to write music and pass it over the fence, this term is used when assets are delivered but there is no responsibility on the delivering party to work on the implementation of the asset. A video game composer on the other hand will use audio middleware tools to build music systems that can be implemented into the game. These systems can transition musically on time, be dynamic and subtly change by adding and removing elements to prevent repetition.
Here are some things to consider if you are a composer or when hiring a composer.
Budget for live players?
Even a single player can add so much life and continuity to a piece of music when compared to tracks that only use sampled instruments. Don’t dismiss services like (AirGigs, 2022) for hiring talented musicians at an affordable price and within short notice. For example, Gareth Coker, the composer of the Ori Video Game Soundtrack, hired Kelsey Mira for the vocals. The score went on to win awards, including the Ivor Novello Award (Wen, A. 2021). Kelsey, who is a fantastic singer, is available to hire on AirGigs at an affordable rate.
Time for live players?
Depending on exactly what you need, the time will vary greatly. A single player live performance could be completed within a few days if you know the player and have the music notation prepared. Most session players can record remotely and send it to you, or you could use something like VST Connect to engineer and record the performance live, which can be a benefit as you can offer feedback and suggestions along the way.
Small bands and instrument ensembles can be fairly flexible and help with short notice deadlines, but you will more than likely still need at least 2 to 3 weeks to organise and prepare to pull it off without a hitch. Larger sessions need to be planned for months in advance as you’re working with orchestrators, studio engineers, multiple ensembles, and need to book out the studio space.
Clockwork Sessions based in Scotland is a great resource for budget and time-sensitive cases. They have different orchestras booked throughout the week for various sessions, and it’s possible to get minutes of your score added to existing sessions through their service (Clockwork Sessions, 2022).
Musiversal offers various services tailored to composers, including a subscription credit service that allows you to use their service to record a full symphony orchestra. Musiversal can organise the transcriptions, ensure that everything is proofread before the recording session, provide a conductor and recording engineer, and allow you to sit in on the session remotely and collaborate with the conductor or studio engineer to get the most out of the session (Musiversal, 2021).
Tuning Issues
Be careful when working with live players remotely, it’s common for tuning issues to happen that are easily avoided when players are in a room together because they can hear each other. If for example a remote violin and cello player are recording remotely and apart from each other with nothing to
reference for tuning, there will likely be tuning issues. One way to prevent this is to use a sample mock-up for the players to reference when tuning their instruments. Another option is to provide stems for the players to overdub, allowing them to mute the parts they are supposed to play which can help with performance on solo parts. It is important to be proactive in addressing tuning issues when working with remote live players to ensure a high quality final product.
Adaptive music
Adaptive music refers to music that changes or adapts in response to the events or actions occurring in the game. There are several different approaches to adaptive music, including stinger approaches and vertical mixing.
The number of tracks required for adaptive music will depend on the complexity and scope of the music system being implemented. It is important to consider the budget for the number of minutes allowed, as well as the type of adaptive music being used and the number of tracks required.
Composer Rates or Direct Employment
It is common for media composers to charge per minute of music, with rates depending on the budget and the number of instruments they need to write for. For example, writing for strings (violins, violas, cello, and double bass) can be more expensive than writing for a single instrument. if they are hiring live players, which may be included in their per minute rate. It's important to be upfront about the budget with the composer so that they can maximize the potential of the project.
For smaller budgets, the composer may use sample instruments and a few session musicians to layer key parts, or even record their own instrument performances. For larger projects, the composer may handle the composition, hire a studio space, recording engineer, orchestrator, transcribers, conductor, musicians, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer, among others. The size of the composer's team can range from just the composer themselves to hundreds of people depending on the project. It's also not uncommon for music composers to work in-house and be a direct employee of the company on larger projects or in game studios. These types of composers are skilled in audio middleware and often enjoy experimenting in the implementation process.
The per minute value can vary significantly from project to project, so it is important to be up front with the budget when working with a composer. They will aim to maximize the potential of the budget, and may use sample instruments with a few session musicians to layer key parts if the budget is low. On larger projects, a composer may handle the composition of the music, hire a studio space, recording engineer, orchestrator, transcribers, conductor, musicians, mixing engineer, and mastering engineer, and potentially more, depending on the needs of the project.
In larger projects or game studios, it is also not uncommon for the music composer to work in-house as a direct employee of the company. This type of composer is often skilled in audio middleware and enjoys experimenting with the implementation process. An example of this is Marcin Przybyłowicz, a music composer who discussed his role as in-house composer at CD Projekt Red on the Game Makers Notebook podcast (2020).
As mentioned in the introduction, Black Box VR composed adaptive music that motivates the player and creates a unique sound signature for the game, spanning various genres such as EDM and rock. However, because Black Box VR is a live game with seasonal content updates, licensed music was initially used until enough bespoke music could be composed, produced, and implemented to disable previously licensed music (although a few favorites were kept). This process took about 12 months due to factors such as working on other audio systems for the game and updating the existing music system.
Conclusion
When it comes to adding music to a game, there are various options available to game developers. These include licensing existing music, hiring a media or film composer, hiring a video game composer, and a hybrid approach that combines licensing select music with a composer.
For small indie games with limited budgets, licensing music from low cost services like AudioJungle and Pond5 can be a good option. However, it's important to be mindful of the licensing terms and to ensure that the music license does not expire, as this could result in the game being pulled from digital stores.
For larger budget games, hiring a composer or video game composer may be a better option. A composer will typically write music and pass it over, while a video game composer will use audio middleware tools to build music systems that can be implemented into the game. These systems can transition musically on time, be dynamic, and subtly change by adding and removing elements to prevent repetition.
When working with a composer, it's important to consider factors such as budget for live players, time for live players, tuning issues, and the type of adaptive music being used (such as stinger approach or vertical mixing). It's also important to consider the number of tracks required and the budget for the number of minutes allowed.
Composers may charge rates per minute of music, or they may be hired on a direct employment basis. When working with a composer, it's important to communicate clearly about the project's needs and goals, and to ensure that the composer has the skills and experience necessary to deliver the desired results.
Sample libraries, such as those offered by East West, can be a useful tool for composers looking to produce convincing mock-ups. However, samples are also limited, and composers may need to write music that plays to the strengths of the instrument samples to avoid sounding fake or unnatural. Hiring a single musician to play lead lines or blend into existing lines can add life and uniqueness to a piece of music that is difficult to achieve with samples alone.
It is always a good idea to consider all options when it comes to adding music to a game. Licensing music can be a cost-effective solution, but it can also be limited in its ability to provide a unique sonic signature for the game. Hiring a composer, whether they specialize in media or video game composition, allows for the creation of original music that can be tailored specifically to the game and its needs. The use of live musicians can add a level of authenticity and personality to the music that may be difficult to achieve with samples alone. It is important to carefully consider budget, timeline, and desired musical outcomes when deciding on the approach for adding music to a game.
References
AudioJungle. (2022). Royalty Free Music & Sound Effects. Available at: https://audiojungle.net/category/all [Accessed 14 Oct. 2022].
Audio Network. (2022). Search Our Music | Audio Network UK. Available at: https://www.audionetwork.com/search [Accessed 14 Oct. 2022].
Pond5. (2022). Royalty-Free Stock Video and Music Library. Available at: https://www.pond5.com.
Music Vine. (2022). Music Vine: Music Licensing For Video Production And Film. Available at: https://musicvine.com [Accessed 14 Oct. 2022].
Universal Production Music. (2022). Universal Production Music | World’s Largest Music Catalogue | Library Music | Music For TV | Music For Films | Music For Advertising. Available at: https://www.universalproductionmusic.com/en-gb.
Warner Chappell Production Music. (2022). Warner Chappell Production Music. www.warnerchappellpm.com. Available at: https://uk.warnerchappellpm.com [Accessed 14 Oct. 2022].
Gartenberg, C. (2017). Alan Wake is getting removed from digital stores due to expiring music licenses. The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/12/15631624/alan-wake-digital-stores-expiring-music-licenses-steam-sale. [Accessed 1 Oct. 2022].
Clockwork Sessions. (2021.). Clockwork Studios. Available at: https://clockworksessions.com/clockwork-studios [Accessed 1 Oct. 2022].
EW Orchestra. (2021.). Top Orchestral & Symphonic Instrument VSTs | Plugins | EastWest. Available at: https://www.soundsonline.com/orchestral/ [Accessed 3 Oct. 2022].
AirGigs. (2022.). Hire Pro Studio Musicians, Vocalists & Audio Engineers Online | AirGigs.com. Available at: https://www.airgigs.com.
Wen, A. (2021). Gareth Coker wins Ivor Novello award for ‘Ori And The Will Of The Wisps’ score. NME. Available at: https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/gareth-coker-wins-ivor-novello-award-for-ori-and-the-will-of-the-wisps-score-3052013 [Accessed 14 Oct. 2022].
Indie Music Academy. (2022). How Does Music Licensing Work? Available at: https://www.indiemusicacademy.com/blog/music-licensing-overview.
Game Makers Notebook (2020). The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook: Cyberpunk 2077 Composer, Marcin Przybyłowicz. Available at: https://interactive.libsyn.com/cyberpunk-2077-composer-marcin-przybyowicz [Accessed 14 Oct. 2022].
Musiversal (2021). Available at: https://www.musiversal.com [Accessed 5 Dec. 2022].