Putting in music for video games has come a long way since the 1970’s. Today, licensing music for video games is both a complex and profitable field of streaming revenue for music producers. Kris Giampa, a Senior Head for Sound Designing at Electronic Arts (EA), knows a thing or two when it comes to licensing music for video games. Giampa started his sound designing career in 2001 and worked for electronic gaming companies Activision and Interplay. Some of his previous works landed on the installments of Mercenaries and Spiderman. He’s currently working on a soundtrack for “The Saboteur”.
A lot of music producers and DJs are often wondering how to license their music for video games. Here’s good news: There are many productive ways on how an artist or producer can get themselves involved in this business. However, the following requirements must be considered first:
• Signed with any recording label authorized to license music for video games.
• An experienced composer or musical scorer for video games.
• A sound designer specializing in making sound effects for video games.
Before licensing music for video games, you need to understand first the difference between electronic game developers and publishers. The latter are the “big bosses” or companies who permits the use of license properties in hiring a team of developers from any reputable studio (EA and Activision are among the few examples of video game publishers). Some publishers are hiring multiple game developers to create the games for them. The developers (Ex: Trevarch and Pandemic Studios) meanwhile usually comes from studios affiliated with the publisher.
In licensing music for video games, it’s about being aware of the people you’ll be sending the material to. In general, many video game publishers have their own music supervisors to do the task of negotiating with the singers or bands interested in writing songs for a video game. Once the negotiation is done, the supervisors will seek approval from the publisher.
The licensing services in music for video games are no different from the ones in TV, film and advertisements – except that it’s royalty fees may vary depending on the scope of the video game. Upon submitting your music directly to the developers, take note that there are certain video games requiring certain musical genres to perfectly suit the action on screen. For example, club and urban music works best in rhythm-based, racing and ball games. The NBA Live game series are notable for putting in Hip-Hop and RnB songs. “Open-world” video games like BULLY and Grand Theft Auto have “built-in” radio stations that plays a lot of dance, jazz and classical music.
Small-time developers are hiring audio developers in taking charge of the game’s overall sound and music production. Many audio developers are usually getting demos from recording companies or composers. The demos are their ultimate source in creating sounds for electronic games. The developer or publisher’s audio director is in charge of composing the song or musical score for a video game.
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