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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.