sound - Is it reasonable to ask for all rights for music when hiring a musician?

I've made a game and now I need to add real sounds and music to it. For the first time I've decided to hire a musician to make music for my games. Before I used to buy sound packs and licenses for tracks.

The negotiations didn't go well as the price was too high for me and the artist didn't like the idea of selling me the music and wanted to only license it to me.

I'd like to know if I've made a mistake or if I've been unreasonable.

Just to be specific, we're talking about 6 tracks, 90 seconds long each. The music is chip-tune done by one musician (that's important since I understand that hiring an orchestra would cost more than hiring just one person).

What I wanted was to get the tracks with all the rights, other than the authors rights - putting their name in the credits.

I've been told that nobody does this and the musician always keeps the rights to later sell OST etc. And if I want all the rights, one track would cost me $500. And even just getting a one-title license would cost me $200.

I have no idea if that's a standard market price, it seems high for me.

1. Is the price reasonable?


2. Is it unreasonable for me to ask for music with all the rights?

Answer

When you are asking for "all the rights", then you need to ask youself if you really need "all the rights". I don't know your long-term business plan, so I don't know which of these rights you actually need:

• Use the music for your current game (ok, that's obvious)


• Use the music for any future games


• Be the only one who is allowed to use the music for a game



• Be the only one who is allowed to use the music for any form of media


• Be allowed to resell the rights to the music to 3rd parties, in case you chang your mind about the previous two points


• Be allowed to make derivative works of the music (remix or reinterpret it)


• Be allowed to monetize the music by itself, for example in form of an OST album


• Have these rights for all eternity (and not just a few years)

All these points mean that the original musician loses a potential way of monetizing their work in the future. The creator seems to believe that the amount they lose out on seems to be around $500, so that's the reimbursement they demand from you in order to give up on those business opportunities. What you need to ask yourself is if these rights are also worth that much to your business interests.

So the reasonable thing to do would be to figure out together with the musician what business needs you have, what business needs the musician has, and where you can find common ground regarding what rights exactly you buy and what rights the musician retains.

Keep in mind that none of these points need to be binary. Deals like "you can do that, but only under condition" or "only when you pay $x each time you do it" are not uncommon.

You can also agree on some form of revenue splitting agreement in cases where you both benefit from cross-promotion. For example, the sales of the OST album will depend just as much on the quality of the music as on the popularity of your game, so a revenue sharing deal could make sense here.

By the way, the more complex your agreement will get, the more useful can it be to get professional legal advise on board to draft the exact wording of the contract to make sure it really says what you want it to say.