Artist tells Rockstar to "Go f**k yourself" after lowball offer to use band's music in GTA VI

[fadingfool]

Seems a bit short sighted by the band - getting your music out to a new generation will be worth far more than a few royalty cheques in the long run. I would have taken the cash as long as they threw in a half dozen copies of the game at launch (that you could stream on the socials - with your song on the in-game-vehicle radio). And release a greatest hits album to coincide - money for old rope and a new fan base in one.

 

[Puiu]

Oh well, their loss. The only “exposure” they will receive now is from this article.

Quite the mouth on those guys BTW…and their song sucks…

exposure to what? even if more people listened to the song online, it would barely make a dent.

 

[Rudyduu]

Oh well, their loss. The only “exposure” they will receive now is from this article.

Quite the mouth on those guys BTW…and their song sucks…

Their loss? They would basically be giving their music to Rock Star for them to use as they see fit forever without any additional revenue going to the people who created the music.

Music is highly subjective, but it appears their music is good enough for Rock Star to want to pay for it.

Really bad take on your part. Super negative just like all the others, and myself, who just like to complain about everything all the time calling everything garbage.

I think Rockstar did it right. It's not a key song for the story, just filler for the radio. Make offers to 1000 artists, even if most reject if 100 say yes that is 100 songs for the radio. From this story, 7500 per writer (3x), plus what the publisher is surely pocketing, is 50-100k per song, and 5-10 million $ is not pocket change.

I don't see what other commenters are thinking, car radio is a tiny part of the game, they'd be crazy to pay 100s of millions.

Where do you get $50k per song? They offered $7500 per writer with no residuals. That's nothing in the music industry and certainly not $50-100k per song x 100 songs.

 

[mbk34]

There's a separate discussion around how long it takes to write a song and if $22,500 is really an insulting pay for that work. I'm going to guess the development team has large numbers of talented people who were paid say less than 10x that number, while working far more than 10x the number of hours it took to write one third of one song.

In the building trade you're paid by the hour. In the artistic world artists tend to live in poverty for years until they finally write a song that finally put them into the big time. Sometimes they're not "discovered" at all.

You're paying for the years of hard work (and risk of failure) that led up to that song. Apparently "Blowin in the Wind" by Dylan, "Dreams" by Stevie Nicks and "Jolene" by Dolly Parton all took under 10 mins to write. If we say they get paid at say $1K/hour, would you say it's fair to offer each of them $170 for the rights for those songs?

 

[Lowhangingfruit]

poor old rockstar only made hundreds of millions in profit per year off of GTA online for over a decade, they cant afford more then that!

Frankly, such an attitude is personally offensive, morally questionable, and socially dangerous. I'm sure you've got at least a few hundred spare dollars -- should Starbucks charge you $500 for your next cup of coffee? You can afford it, after all.

The value of an object is what someone's willing to pay for it. Nor will this rather banal tune increase the value of Rockstar's product by substantially more than the $7,500. Or are you going to argue that millions of gamers around the world will line up to purchase a videogame, simply for the opportunity to hear an old '80s pop tune once more?

That's not how royalties work. Please educate yourself on the subject https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/royalty.asp

Music is not a physical good. It is a piece of copyrighted material. To use copyrighted material you need to purchase a right to use that material which often involves ongoing payments to be able to keep using it. It's why you can't make copies and sell them yourself. How do you think Disney is still in business? In this case Rockstar wants to pay a flat fee to use the copyright as they see fit which no sane person would ever agree to.

Also royalties are almost always calculated as a percentage of revenue of the derived product, so how much money Rockstar made is very relevant to the discussion. Another example: if a mining company digs on your property and discovers gold, you get a share of the profits. That's what "royalties" are.

Except that was never true. Even in the heyday of album sales, nearly all artists made far more off touring and personal appearances than they did direct song sales.

Again you are 100% incorrect. In the "hayday" of Album sales musicians got funded almost exclusively through album sales. It is only in the digital streaming age where music is basically given away for free, that artists have shifted to touring and merch for income.

AM/FM radio pays either no royalties or very little royalties due to an unfortunate law passed in the 1980s that basically gave them permission to use any music because it provided "exposure". At the time this was tolerable because most sales did come from album sales. However today that's no longer the case and there are proposals to overturn the law https://variety.com/2023/music/opin...ors-alex-padilla-marsha-blackburn-1235650283/


Anyway I'm not sure why you felt a need to comment on this post with such an overconfident attitude when you clearly know absolutely nothing about how the music industry works.

 

[nitebird]

Where do you get $50k per song? They offered $7500 per writer with no residuals. That's nothing in the music industry and certainly not $50-100k per song x 100 songs.

Article clears says the $7500 per writer figure comes from his Publishers. When there is money coming in, writers don't get it all, far from it. There is publishers/rights owners, singers, instrumentalists, and writers. It's probably closer to 100k.

Using Youtube's payment mechanics, that's equivalent to prepaying for 50 million views.

 

[ruddevil]

I was going to comment my thoughts when I realized this is not the New Order one. Never mind then.

 

[waclark]

$7500 for a perpetual license is highway robbery. But poor old rockstar only made hundreds of millions in profit per year off of GTA online for over a decade, they cant afford more then that!
Imagine unironically arguing that "exposure" is worth anything in 2024. Everyone with an IQ higher then a potato figured out that "exposure" was total BS as compensation a LONG time ago.

snip

But getting paid, endlessly, for a song written in 1983 is OK? At what point has the artist made enough money on the song? That's what you're saying about Rockstar. They've made millions and should pay more. When you go out to eat, does the server ask how much you make and then set the meal price accordingly? No, a meal or the use of a song has a value, and RS felt the value was $7,500. I wonder how many other offers they are getting to use that song?

 

[waclark]

Unless the company that offered it is so filthy rich that it indeed sounded like an insult.
I think they should have offered him a % of the profit. Offer him a solid sale number for the game, and then
he would get a generous reimbursement.
On unrelated note, I hate it so much that music and other things in games have limited time.
And it gets so much worse with "you will own nothing." Pay full price, play the game, then we trim it a bit here, and a bit there. Thank you for being our supporter.

Why would he deserve a percentage of the profit for the use of one song? How would you assign the value of having the song in the game? It's not like the song is driving sales above and beyond what they would normally get. When you buy a game, do you look at the song list in the game and buy games with songs you like?

 

[brucek]

In the building trade you're paid by the hour. In the artistic world artists tend to live in poverty for years until they finally write a song that finally put them into the big time. Sometimes they're not "discovered" at all.

You're paying for the years of hard work (and risk of failure) that led up to that song. Apparently "Blowin in the Wind" by Dylan, "Dreams" by Stevie Nicks and "Jolene" by Dolly Parton all took under 10 mins to write. If we say they get paid at say $1K/hour, would you say it's fair to offer each of them $170 for the rights for those songs?

There's a difference between accepting the highest bid(s) and being insulted.

If the agents for those songs said, "thanks for your offer, but I've got a stack of 50 offers here each for much more, so I'm going to go with some of them instead", that sounds like an obvious choice (although even there, as long as they are all non-exclusive, at some point extra money is extra money.)

But yes if instead of going with that common sense reasoning the agent said "hmm you've offered only $1,000 per hour of work, I'm going to make a stink about how insulting that is", then I'm going to think that agent is an out of touch jerk who doesn't realize 99% of the global population would be very happy to get $1,000 per hour of work.

 

[usernamerequired]

Could think of a few bands that would be a reasonable starting offer for, or at least a basis for serious negotiation:
Profanity, Wormed, Cytotoxin, Origin, Sonivinos, Gorod, Exocrine, Death****ingCunt, Obsidious, First Fragment, Archspire, Brain Drill, Deviant Process, Ophidian I
come to think of it, those together would make for a great station

 

[mbk34]

There's a difference between accepting the highest bid(s) and being insulted.

If the agents for those songs said, "thanks for your offer, but I've got a stack of 50 offers here each for much more, so I'm going to go with some of them instead", that sounds like an obvious choice (although even there, as long as they are all non-exclusive, at some point extra money is extra money.)

But yes if instead of going with that common sense reasoning the agent said "hmm you've offered only $1,000 per hour of work, I'm going to make a stink about how insulting that is", then I'm going to think that agent is an out of touch jerk who doesn't realize 99% of the global population would be very happy to get $1,000 per hour of work.

I'm honestly not sure whether you're pretending to not understand or whether you simply don't see my point. In either case, I don't think I can explain my point any better. If you're happy selling your best idea or song or whatever for $1000 then good for you.

I will agree that it wasn't worth being insulted but then that's easy to say when I'm not involved. Maybe, by being a little more public, it warns other artists to be careful when dealing with Rockstar.

 

[Endymio]

you are 100% incorrect. In the "hayday" of Album sales musicians got funded almost exclusively through album sales.

Oops! Even in the 1970s-1990s the portion of an artist's revenue from touring usually exceeded 75%, sometimes much more. Take TLC -- the biggest all-girl band of all time who sold 70 million albums yet only earned $75K each off those sales. Or Toni Braxton, who sold 40 million albums in the 1990s, and earned a grand total of $2,000 off all of them.

Let's go earlier: the Jackson 5. In 1984, their Victory album was one of the best-selling of that year, earning them more than $11M. But touring netted them more than $75M that same year. The disparity would have been far larger, had they not -- after their initial success in the 1970s -- been able to renegotiate their contract from the standard 2.8% rate up to an industry-leading 20%.

Even further back: The Beatles, who in 1964, who, from their 2% royalty rate with EMI, earned just over $100K off album and single sales for "Please Please Me", and the year's biggest single "Love Me Do" -- but earned over $1M on their first US tour. Or Little Richard's monster hit "Tuti Fruti", still played countless times today. He received a flat fee of $50 for that one.

You can find counter-examples among highly successful bands, who eventually had the star power to negotiate better contracts. But early bands and those who never made it huge, many earned little to nothing but "exposure" off their album sales.

That's not how royalties work. Please educate yourself on the subject https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/royalty.asp

Absolutely nothing in that link contradicts my original post.

In this case Rockstar wants to pay a flat fee to use the copyright as they see fit which no sane person would ever agree to.

Why spread disinformation? The contract was not to use the music "as they see fit", but specifically limited to inclusion within one videogame.

Also royalties are almost always calculated as a percentage of revenue of the derived product, so how much money Rockstar made is very relevant to the discussion. Another example: if a mining company digs on your property and discovers gold, you get a share of the profits.

Was this a joke? When a mining company digs for god, gold is their sole source of revenue. Your argument is like claiming that the person who designed AMD's new logo should receive a large portion of all AMD future revenues.

 

[Endymio]

AM/FM radio pays either no royalties or very little royalties due to an unfortunate law passed in the 1980s that basically gave them permission to use any music because it provided "exposure".

LOL, what? There was no "unfortunate law" passed in the 1980s. The US has always paid royalties to the songwriter rather than the performer, due to it not being signatory to the Rome Convention. Write *and* perform your song: you get the royalties.

Nor do radio stations have some sort of blanket authority to use any and all music. They can play *only* what's listed with a PRO ... if you as an artist don't like the deal, don't list your music. Of course, that means it'll receive exactly zero airplay at all.

 

[Gars]

I guess Heaven17 need more for their outstanding work thru all this years
I read for them right here right now and I believe its for the last time before they go boom boom
on the other side, indi bands will be exploited on the while from the big corps just for that - nothing depends on you - and youll be fktup as they wish

 

[rhdevries]

Dat song was insulting TBH.

 

[waclark]

LOL, what? There was no "unfortunate law" passed in the 1980s. The US has always paid royalties to the songwriter rather than the performer, due to it not being signatory to the Rome Convention. Write *and* perform your song: you get the royalties.

Nor do radio stations have some sort of blanket authority to use any and all music. They can play *only* what's listed with a PRO ... if you as an artist don't like the deal, don't list your music. Of course, that means it'll receive exactly zero airplay at all.

Actually, there are Master rights that are paid to the recording artist. Publishing rights and live performance rights are more often paid to the writer of the song.

 

[Northy]

They should have asked for hella GTA VI merch and swag, an invite to the release party, and called it a deal.

Now they get nothing for their lame 80's song. lol

 

[Tinderbox]

At what point has the artist made enough money on the song?

When the artist dies.

 

[waclark]

When the artist dies.

For the most part I agree, however, what I don't like is that I have to pay over and over for the same music I have already paid for. So, yeah, the life of the artist, not my entire life.