Music licensing for video games: Make it work for your business
Music is a core part of the video gaming experience. If you work for a game developer, you’ll know how delicate the licensing process can be — let us help.
Gamers of a certain age know the Grand Theft Auto radio stations by heart, while others have waking nightmares about Trent Reznor’s Quake score. If you’re involved in game development, you’ve likely tried stirring similar emotions in your audience.
Gamers of a certain age know the Grand Theft Auto radio stations by heart, while others have waking nightmares about Trent Reznor’s Quake score. If you’re involved in game development, you’ve likely tried stirring similar emotions in your audience.
That’s because video game music is more than just background noise to a shoot ‘em up, bigger than a distraction or nice-to-have. Done right, music moves gamers like a film score or a swelling symphony.
Carleton University Professor KC Collins notes that music is essential to “envelop players in the game space.” This statement is supported by a 2010 study from Sanders and Cairns, which strove to highlight music’s immersive qualities in the gaming space.
Subjects reported that gaming with a ‘bad’ soundtrack decreased immersion, while it rose with a ‘better’ soundtrack. In this case, we find that a badly designed soundtrack makes it tougher to bring players into a game’s world.
The magic of music in games
Whether it’s the diegetic, old-timey ditties from Fallout; the feel-good, peppy themes across various Pokémon games; the dreamy, Stewart Copeland-composed soundscapes throughout the Spyro series; or something else entirely, music gives games something more.
And that’s just traditionally soundtracked content. Once you scratch the surface, you have games like Guitar Hero basing their whole identity on popular music. Tracks can be used less as narrative lynchpins and more as general vibe-setters, like in FIFA and the Tony Hawk series.
The tricky world of music licensing for video games
Licensing music for games has never been easy, and it’s made even more thorny in an online-first world. Let’s take Grand Theft Auto, given we name-checked the series at the top of this article. The games are beloved for their radio stations, which players can toggle as they drive around and cause mayhem.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City included Michael Jackson’s Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ — until it didn’t. The game was temporarily removed from online storefronts in 2012, due to licensing issues around the track. When Vice City returned, the track was gone.
The licensing issues cited for the track’s removal were never explained, but other examples are more clear-cut. Sticking with GTA, the game’s publisher, Rockstar, reached out to synth-pop band Heaven 17 in 2024. They wanted to license the group’s iconic 1983 track, Temptation, for the still-unreleased GTA 6.
Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware described Rockstar’s financial offer as “pitiful” and “pathetic.” Ware wasn’t the only rights holder involved, and we’re guessing his bandmates didn’t talk him round.
Ware clearly felt that his song was worth more than Rockstar were prepared to pay, which begs the question: how much is a license worth? There is no right answer, and the practice is far from transparent.
Moreover, a track’s worth will differ from person to person. If Ware’s fellow rights holders were happy with the sum, it would make no difference unless Ware agreed. His objections may be valid, but are also an example of why traditional licensing deals can be so difficult to close.
The value is based largely on perception, after all. It takes time to produce an agreement everyone’s happy with, which can make it hard to predict the total costs associated with the license over time.
Likewise, one rights holder withdrawing, altering, or selling their rights could result in a similar situation to the Michael Jackson track. This makes the booming remake/remaster gaming market even more murky, as developers try to secure song rights that may have changed hands multiple times over the decades.
The uneven legal landscape also makes it harder for streamers to engage with their audience and attract potential new fans to games. Sync licenses rarely cover streaming — this means that creators playing, sharing, and promoting a game on platforms like Twitch could see their content muted or removed.
In these cases, streamers may be forced to replace their chosen music with a last-minute, ‘safe’ option. Gaming giant Blizzard arguably holds the gold medal for this, when they muted actual Metallica during a BlizzCon stream. The footage is silly, but it makes a compelling point: music licensing agreements for gaming and streaming are complicated.
How do you safely license music for games?
Synchronization licenses with public performance rights are the key to music usage in video games. Some games producers hold out for the elusive perpetuity license, which allows a track to be used forever within the terms of a specific agreement.
That sounds like the golden ticket, but securing a perpetuity license often requires a lot of time, energy, and money. Indie developers don’t stand a chance here, and even household names struggle to snag these licenses — the time could be better spent developing the game.
And once you pile on the task of negotiating and keeping track of rights, it all seems overwhelming. Each artist may be signed with a different Performing Rights Organization (PRO), meaning more paperwork, more complexities, and more margin for error.
Or, you could choose Epidemic Sound.
We offer one licensing agreement
Our direct licensing model means that all rights are included in our agreement. No PROs, no extra rights holders swooping in, no unexpected costs — it’s just you and us. We can do this because we own all of the rights to the music in our catalog of more than 50,000 tracks.
Our licenses are forever
That perpetuity license we mentioned earlier? We’ve got that covered. Regardless of platform and media switch-ups in the future, your gaming content is safe — as long as you don’t change the terms under which you use it, we won’t change ours.
No strange changes to the terms, no pulling the rug from under your feet and demanding more money — what we agree to is what we agree to. Bespoke, watertight, and future-proofed, our license is tougher than an end-of-level boss.
We offer fair compensation to our artists
We already discussed Heaven 17’s reaction to the GTA fee, and we see where they were coming from — artists should be fairly compensated for their work. That’s why Epidemic Sound pays a fixed fee of $1,500-$8,000 per track, plus a 50/50 split on all music streaming royalties, and a share of our near-$3 million yearly Soundtrack Bonus. If you’d like to learn more about how we work with our artists, click here.
See what our gaming clients say
Ubisoft chose Epidemic Sound as their soundtracking partner for The Crew Motorfest, a fast-paced racing game. Our partnership allowed players to livestream and publish their gameplay online, all without fear of their content being muted or taken down.
“The Epidemic Sound team was able to create a first-of-its-kind music solution for our gamers, where they can both access high-quality music in the gameplay but also use the music in their live streams and safely publish it across all social media platforms,” said Delphine Dossey, brand director at Ubisoft Ivory Tower.
Our catalog has also featured in music-based games like Starwave and Beatstar, the latter of which also included tracks by Billie Eilish, Post Malone, Nirvana, and more.
“Adding Epidemic Sound artists to the game allows our 70 million worldwide players to interact with music and artists they potentially wouldn’t have discovered,” said Jessica Ashton, music licensing lead at Space Ape, the game developer behind Beatstar.
Music licensing for games is complex, but Epidemic Sound’s Enterprise solution can simplify it.
We offer everything a brand needs to soundtrack their work. Our dedicated digital rights management team works tirelessly to ensure our licensed users don’t encounter issues when publishing content online. Our team is also ready to help out if you receive false claims from a third party.
On top of that, our expert music curators are on hand for everything tactical and strategic: theme tunes to in-game sound effects and sound design, radio, and anything else you can think of. We’re with you every step of the way, from concept to delivery.
Whether you’re an established games publisher or a burgeoning startup, we’ve got you covered. Join Epidemic Sound and take your content to the next level.
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