Contract Sound Designer keeps rights to music/SFX? Or Developer gets full rights?

Hello,

I'm in talks with a sound studio about doing a very small piece of music and the VO/SFX I need for my game. It's a relatively small job and we've agreed on everything so far, but they supplied me with a list of things they want present in the contract, all standard stuff, except for this note:
- The rights of all work supplied by SOUND STUDIO belong to SOUND STUDIO. Nothing can can be used again unless given express permission by SOUND STUDIO.

What is the most common way that ownership rights tend to go. And I know that unless otherwise stated, contract work tends to be owned by the party commissioning it. I'm curious about practical experience. Do big studios tend to get rights, but it's not that way in indie?

I plan on this being a franchise (kind of) and am not comfortable not having full ownership of the audio in the game, either for web page, or ads, or future versions.

What is the standard? What are some of your experiences?

Thanks so much.

 

It all can be negotiated in the contract. As far as what's most common if it's being made specifically for your project a commissioned work is normally owned by the person doing the commissioning. If it's something in a studio's existing library already you are usually just purchasing a license to it and they'd retain ownership.

That being said everything is negotiable in business, just discuss the terms and the price up front. If they want to retain ownership the cost to you should be less than if you obtained ownership. If the piece never got used again anywhere it wouldn't actually matter, but if either party is making that a contingency then likely they want to resell it. After all, if they were just keeping it for there portfolio and not planning on selling it, I would think that you'd be happy to grant them a license for non-commercial use that way they can show it off all they want and yet you wouldn't need to worry it'd appear in a competitors project.

The cost of ownership is usually many multiples higher than just the cost of a license. Think carefully if you actually need ownership too, often for indies if you can get a cost break on a license that is more important than it being exclusively yours, especially if you didn't plan on reselling it on the store yourself.

 

Indie or not, I think it is not unusual for the creator of music to only grant permission to use the music and not hand over ALL the rights, especially if it is a popular title. For example, the artist makes an album and later grant permission to use songs from that album to various games. I think I remember several games that licensed the same audio tracks by Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, etc.

However, if they do not give you full rights, then i'd expect it to cost less.
Basically, I'd expect "you get all the rights" to cost more than "you can use the music in any title you want" which would cost more than "you can use the music in one of your titles".

 

There are all sorts of lisences common in industry. If it's a unique theme song, you'll probably want to purchase the rights outright. If you are just purchasing background ambience, a simple lisence is fine.

The more right you get, the more you will pay.

 

I would be pretty reluctant to buy an asset I could only use once, unless it was very cheap. It's one thing to buy something you can't resell 'as is', since it's understandable for a company not to want to supply a direct competitor, but a one use asset just seems really restrictive.

I would definitely research the cost of a similar asset on a less restrictive license from other sellers and decide then whether it would be really worth it, you would expect a pretty extreme discount.

 

I dunno. Including a hit pop music track in your game would be worth it for a once off.

It all really depends on what you are trying to do.

 

I suppose it probably means the asset hasn't been used a million times already, at least.

 

Like people mentioned, there are all kinds of contracts and licenses. Ownership for creative rights and material is usually negotiated as a part of the cost.

You normally have to pay more if you want ownership to creative rights and all the resulting material. You pay less if they own it. So no harm in that sense that they want to keep ownership, that is probably their default approach. They basically want you to hire them to produce the material and then license it from them.

What do you / they mean with "nothing can be used again unless given express permission by SOUND STUDIO" ?
It is normal that licensed content is limited in usage but it must be crystal clear what you can and cannot do with it. Can you cut, edit and change the content? Can you use it for commercial use? Can you use it for marketing material? What happens if you want to make DLC, any potential problems? And the list goes on...

If you intend to make a franchise and this is important content like a theme song, then creative rights and ownership to all the produced material should yours as a part of the contract but that also cost more. You will otherwise have to normally license the theme music again for Space Hogs 2 : Intergalactic Barbecue. The problem that might appear here is that your previous game was popular and they now want more money for the license and they can also license the song to other third party companies that aren't affiliated with you directly unless... you guessed it, it is controlled withing the contract

 

Is this a real project? It should be a real project.

 

The original Space Hog was pretty decent. I'd play a remake.