I’m building a new platform for musicians and a lot of the guys I’m signing up say they really enjoy making music for games. I guess its another notch in the belt so to speak for them. 
My question is, where are you finding your music for your games currently? How are you giving incentives to your musicians ($/equity?).
For a guy like me, how can I get these guys in front of game designers?
Can you tell us more about the plattform you are building? I’m interested mainly from the casual-composer point of view.
Basically I buy some tracks on APM for the background music, asset store for others and a few other sites for sfx etc. Possibly it may be worthwhiile looking at how VoiceBunny offers the service of Voice artists which may suggest a way forward.
I write my own.
Me too. This is why none of my games can ever be released.
We’re automating a lot of the functions a record label does without charging huge fees. A part of this would be building interfaces for commercial licensing that can be purchased without human interaction (no middleman). We’ll do digital distribution, licensing, and booking. For now we just have a matchmaking service in early Beta that’s being developed. I can show it to you if you PM me. Its not ready for public consumption 
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve never actually heard of VoiceBunny. This is similar to how we’re planning to set up our service for purchasing rights to music. Direct competition to APM with simpler pricing. Any complaints about APM?
LOL nice.
As an artist the most important thing for me would be that the licensing paperwork and payment methods are transparent and easy to understand. If you limit the way I can license or use my music somewhere else, then I wouldn’t submit music to your service.
You should look into the legal aspects of what happens if an artist puts up music on your site, someone licenses it and then the artist decides to release the same songs on his website under creative commons noncommercial or something like that. I’m not sure if a piece of music can exist under different licenses at the same time.
I have never used APM but from what I have read pricing and complex licensing are the main complaints. Seems like you go into a good direction, but you should definitely read the threads about APM here on the forum to get better data.
Some background: I’m thinking of making a patreon account where devs can fund me making music and in return get licenses to use the music in their games. The only way I see this working is if I also sell the music somewhere else at a higher price and the patreon functions as kind of a “bulk buy” rebate. I’d want to cross promote between patreon and conventional music licensing portals.
Side note: I’m not sure if you can do anything about this at all, but do you have any options to help against false DMCA takedowns on youtube based on the music licensed from you? The way it currently works I see how people could license music from you, get a copyright strike for the music on youtube and then think it is your fault. I’ve seen music composers get DMCA takedowns on their own music, so this isn’t something that would never ever happen. The system is screwed, I’m just wondering if you have thought about it.
Why do we need another platform for music? There are literally HUNDREDS of free sites to house your music. There’s indie, professional, and everything in between. For me, I go to known sources, like www.incompetech.com.
And, this was in the wrong forum. So, I moved it.
Gigi
Licensing is a huge pain in the ass for everyone. I’ve never been on the artist’s end (why I’m not the only one involved in this project), but I’ve been on the other side. Trying to find a way to have some good music on a YouTube video, or play music for a podcast for a beginner is nearly impossible to do correctly.
When I first started my first podcast I was looking to pay to play music… but after looking at BMI’s licensing fees I very quickly said “F that”. I’d have gladly paid the artists to play their stuff, but all of the up front fees forced me to start contacting artists directly for permission. That is a huge pain in the ass.
Same with YouTube. I would have music in our podcast that we had direct permission from the Artists that would get flagged. They were at a loss on how they could tell YouTube to let me play it (monetized) as they went through a 3rd party to license.
We’re approaching it like my boy Ronald Jenkees. He doesn’t register his music with YouTube, but makes licensing super simple right on his website. Want to play my shit on your YouTube videos? Sweet pay me $X and we’re good. https://www.ronaldjenkees.com/licensing/ You can’t tell me the thousands of artists out there will ever get more than a few bucks back from YouTube in this fashion.
Our solution is to work outside the licensing structure setup now. We want a panel of commercial offerings:
Games - $X
Podcast Plays - $Y
YouTube - $Z
All Rights (you own it) - $XYZ
Click buy it now, add some information, and it gets added to your account. Artists get reporting and a paycheck.
That’s the idea anyway… I’m sure there are other out there doing it in bits and pieces, but we’re aiming to do it better. Plus I’m starting with totally different services so its a work in progress.
Everyone is still bitching about not making money from music and licensing still sucks. Competition is good my man. Thanks for the reply anyway.