• Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 month ago

        and there’s no way Rockstar is going to be paying $99 million dollars for just songs.

        GTA V/Online produced $8.5 billion in revenue.

        I mean, I guess you’re not wrong, (how else could they be milking it for this much money but being cheap?) but it still makes them fucking cheap bastards.

          • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 month ago

            should’ve asked for a sliver of a percentage

            I think it’s really clear that Rockstar is trying to avoid a repeat of past soundtracks and licensing issues and they want these up-front with no royalty payments to make in the future, so they don’t have to keep re-negotiating licensing (and having to remove/replace songs in old games).

            I still think this guy was being smart for asking more, even if he asked too much. You’re right, he shouldn’t have high-balled, but he was smart enough to understand getting a percentage or royalties was probably almost assuredly out of the question.

            • stardust@lemmy.ca
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              1 month ago

              I’m glad Rockstar is taking the route of trying to only get songs that they won’t have to remove down the line. Should be the move forward for all games. Wish same would happen for racing games too. Would rather have knock off brands over delistings.

          • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 month ago

            Actually, yeah I can. Every time a fucking bean-counter makes a living humans life worse at their job to save the company a buck is a great time to blame accountants for doing their fucking jobs.

            • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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              1 month ago

              Accountants don’t make decisions, they are just paper bitches for real people along with shit like lawyers and marketing. They just present the numbers to business leadership who makes decisions on which expeses to approve.

      • SuperSaiyanSwag@lemmy.zip
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        1 month ago

        I love Lemmy, but the general consensus of “fuck big corpo no matter what” attitude is kinda tiring. This is completely reasonable for Rockstar to reject the counter offer. Not to mention, Heaven 17 is not some big band to begin with.

        • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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          1 month ago

          Agreed. As I understand it, $50k-$100k is on the high end for a TV show to use a clip from a very well known song in an episode. Some band I’ve never heard of being paid $22k for their song to be played in the background of a game might be a little on the low end, so it’s totally reasonable for the band to counter, but it’s also totally reasonable for Rockstar to turn down a 10x counter. Publicly crying about it seems childish. The game is gonna happen with or without your song.

      • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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        1 month ago

        Especially when they’re kind of a 1 hit wonder.

        https://youtu.be/mpPFxqgfBAI

        But asking for as much as they did, you’d think their songs were much more popular. They’re no Billy idol, Depeche Mode, Tears For Fears, etc.

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 month ago

          If they’re a 1-hit wonder, maybe that’s why they want more up front: In case they gain no new listeners from the GTA 6 soundtrack and continue to be a 1-hit wonder.

          It’s like why football players have insane-sounding contracts: Because in the future they won’t be able to make the same kind of money.

          Sounds to me like homie was smart and thinking long-term.

          • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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            1 month ago

            Yeah but their an 80s new wave band. I don’t think they’re making new stuff these days.

              • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
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                1 month ago

                I just heard some of their tracks and I feel like it wasn’t a huge loss not being able to hear a Duran Duran or Depeche Mode wannabe band while I’m murdering hookers in GTA6

              • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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                1 month ago

                I don’t see the logic in that though. They can’t really expect to be paid so much more than groups who offer greater recognition. It’s like charging more for the Walmart brand over the name brand product.

  • stardust@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    I’m tired of games getting songs removed, so I am actually glad Rockstar and hopefully others are going the route of trying to only get songs that won’t end up having to be removed down the line. Not cool getting an update getting a song removed.

    • Jimbo@yiffit.net
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      1 month ago

      Or a game removed from being purchased entirely because of music licensing issues

      • stardust@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Yeah has happened to Alan Wake. Now they decided to just remove the song to hopefully not have to be delisted again.

  • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgOP
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    1 month ago

    it’s interesting to think about the logistics here. How much money should Rockstar have allocated for the soundtrack, to offer a better deal to artists? The article mentions that they licensed over 240 songs for GTA5. At $7500 a song (who knows what they actually paid), that’s $1.8 million. The total budget for GTA5 was around $265 million, so that $1.8 million is less than 1% of the total budget. Some songs surely cost more than $7500 to license, so let’s assume it added up to 1% of the budget by the end. Evidently GTA6 is looking like a $2 billion budget game atm (absolutely bonkers), and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to allocate at least the same percentage to the music licenses, given how central the soundtrack is to the GTA experience.

    If they allocated 1% of $2 billion to the soundtrack, that would give them $20,000,000 to play with, or average $83k per song if they are going for about the same size of soundtrack. Now, this is all just my quick napkin math based on the assumption that Rockstar paid about $7500 per song for GTA5, but I think this indicates that either A) they are massively underballing Heaven 17 here, or B) Rockstar senior management has not allocated a music licensing budget that matches the size of the game they are making.

    What do y’all think? Is $83k per song a reasonable rate for the kind of license Rockstar is asking for? Or is even that too low?

    • 100@fedia.io
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      1 month ago

      everyone now knows what a money maker this property is so they should be asking for their regular price times ten

    • DdCno1@beehaw.org
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      1 month ago

      TIL that game has a rumored budget of 2 billion.

      Sometimes, when I play a AAA game and something expensive is visible on screen (e.g. half of New York getting destroyed during that long quick-time event in Spider-Man), I like to shout “Production value!” at nobody, like that director self-insert kid in “Super 8” (2011).

      I get a feeling I would ruin my voice doing this every time in GTA 6.

      To answer your question, I think we would have to look at what music licenses usually cost. Some quick googling tells me that $7500 is hardly an outrageously low sum for a song from a middle of the road '80s band. They aren’t exactly Depeche Mode. I think they would have benefited far more from the inclusion of their song in this game financially (since it would cast them into the limelight again, providing streaming revenue and perhaps gain them new fans) than the little and likely very temporary publicity they gained from rejecting the offer.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
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      1 month ago

      But your assumption is that every artist gets the same deal. Some maybe more valuable and expensive than others. Then the question is, if this group was valued very low and that is whats upsetting. But come on, 7500 for lifetime rights is really bad payment. I wonder what the deals with prior games and songs was.

    • ravhall@discuss.online
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      1 month ago

      I’ve never heard of Heaven 17. On GTA V, there are a lot of bands than I had never heard of too. Rockstar introduced me to those bands, their other work, solos from those members, and other artists in those genres.

      Frankly, if I was a musician that wasn’t already a huge star, I’d do it for FREE because of the massive GUARANTEED exposure.

      • coyotino [he/him]@beehaw.orgOP
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        1 month ago

        artists die from “exposure”, because it doesn’t pay the bills. I think you are right that the exposure has value, but it definitely doesn’t have $83k worth of value, because musicians simply do not make money from album sales anymore. Most artists barely break even from doing concert tours.

        • ravhall@discuss.online
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          1 month ago

          Artists die from not getting exposure. This isn’t one of those “play my wedding for exposure” things. It’s being a regular song playing in one of the world’s most popular game franchises.

          They should get paid, sure, but telling them to fuck off because the rate wasn’t what they want is dumb.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 month ago

        Exposure doesn’t pay the bills.

        It takes upward of 200 streams of a track on Spotify to earn a single penny. 20,000 streams to earn a dollar.

        (For me and my personal expenses, this would mean I would need 40,000,000 streams per month to pay rent/pay bills/eat. I’m dirt poor and live a dirt poor budget. 40,000,000 streams to pay $1400 in rent is INSANE.)

        That “exposure” can still add up to “not paying the bills.”

        Also, if he gains no new listeners? He would have made a huge mistake not angling for more money.

        This guy is being smart, and the rich just want people to THINK that exposure is worth it. Even Oprah pays in exposure and its bullshit. The company has got the fucking money to pay it they just don’t want to.

          • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 month ago

            You, as an individual, buy enough of their stuff to support them month-to-month? How generous of you.

            Now that the snark is out of the way: Clearly an individual doesn’t make enough money to do that, and if you’re the only new fan they gain that’s still nowhere near enough to make a living.

            • ravhall@discuss.online
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              1 month ago

              You could have responded without being an asshole. If we had discussed this politely we probably could have reached an acceptable middle ground and both learned something from the other person’s experiences and ideas.

              • LukeZaz@beehaw.org
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                1 month ago

                You’re coming out here arguing in favor of a megacorporation keeping even more money for itself instead of artists getting paid for their work. I feel like you should have expected to have upset people.

                • ravhall@discuss.online
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                  1 month ago

                  It’s the internet. Calm down. Not everything has to be a fight. Use that energy to yell about something more important, like genocide or climate change. Goodbye

      • hisao@ani.social
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        1 month ago

        To be fair, they were smart enough to get some exposure even without accepting the deal. This is not the first place I see this discussion and some people are definitely going to check their stuff now out of curiosity.

        • ravhall@discuss.online
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          1 month ago

          But this exposure is short-lived with an incredibly limited audience Who may or may not listen to it. I did not look them up. I don’t have the time right this moment and I will definitely forget.

          I just think that in this particular video game franchise, even if they did not receive the amount of money they wanted upfront for royalties, They could not pay for this kind of Marketing opportunity.

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    People say Rockstar just “Isn’t a rockstar anymore”

    No, this is pretty much how I expect from washed up rockstars who’ve sold out and only care about reliving the glory days. Constantly shouting “Don’t you know who I am?” when anyone gives them any grief.