OUT OF SYNCH WITH GAME DEVELOPERS

Labels and publishers want their songs in video games, but their licensing agreements are getting in the way

WHEN 21-YEAR-OLD SINGER ericdoa released the song titled “>one” last March, he had an unusual collaborator: Valorant. That’s not another artist; it’s a popular shooter game that attracted 17.8 million players in February, according to gaming stats platform Tracker Network. Riot Games, the company behind Valorant, used “>one” — which references the game in its lyrics — as a synch for a trailer that introduced a playable character named Gekko. The result: “>one” is now ericdoa’s second-most-popular track on Spotify, with over 35 million streams.

“That was a huge spiritual win,” says Maria Egan, global head of music and events for Riot Games. She adds that the company’s executives are now asking themselves, “How do we unlock our platform and other gaming platforms to be the new place that new artists can find audiences?”

It’s a question often asked in the music business as well. Labels and publishers need reliable ways to ensure their songs reach as many listeners as possible, and the gaming community — which is massive, youthful and interested in music — represents an ideal opportunity.

So why are they making it so difficult for game developers to use their music?

Despite the potential upside, there are few recent instances of games driving music discovery on a mass scale. The headline-grabbing stories are often one-offs and typically involve superstar artists, such as when Travis Scott’s 2020 virtual concert in Fortnite drew over 45 million viewers and helped boost his total on-demand streams 136% the day after the performance.

“Like music, gaming is global and has significant cultural relevance, but scalability at this intersection is still a challenge,” says Geoff Sawyer, an agent in gaming and esports at UTA. “The music industry would need to upend its licensing model to truly achieve scale in this category.”

That’s because the system for licensing songs is notoriously complicated, time-consuming and opaque to outsiders. “Every time I speak to a games publisher, they’ve always got at least one horror story about trying to navigate music rights,” says Ben Sumner, managing director at Feel for Music, which helps games and brands with music supervision. One recording may have multiple master owners and writers, and gaming companies have to get everyone’s approval. Vickie Nauman, who has licensed music for many games in addition to founding the music-tech consultancy CrossBorderWorks, once had to get 143 agreements complete to clear 20 songs.

The music industry also usually requires large upfront payments to license songs. “Incorporating music is often an experiment for games, and they don’t want to pay millions of dollars for an experiment,” says Alex Tarrand, co-founder and COO of STYNGR, a company that offers games precleared music.

Though the gaming industry, which raked in an estimated $184 billion in 2023, according to research firm newzoo, isn’t strapped for cash, many developers find it far easier and more fiscally prudent to commission music in-house. “If anything creates more cost in ways that aren’t really driving what a game is going after, they tend to think, ‘We probably shouldn’t be spending time and resources on that,’ ” gaming consultant Toa Dunn says.

Sources in the gaming business say a new system for music licensing would result in developers more frequently seeking synchs from labels and publishers.

Tarrand says STYNGR is working to reduce the friction between gaming and music companies by putting blanket licenses in place with all the major labels and publishers so game developers can come to STYNGR and pull music into their titles. Instead of paying STYNGR upfront, developers cut revenuesharing deals.

Another company, Game Over, takes a different approach. Partner Zach Katz contends that artists and labels can achieve similar results in other places where gamers congregate, such as serving as the soundtrack for montage videos featuring gameplay highlights and for gamers who livestream their button-mashing — both of which are popular on YouTube.

“The victory,” Katz says, “is ultimately to get the gaming audiences.”