Popular Music on Apps:- Royalties?

pizzasmile

Hiya,

I'm new to creating apps and the process so I apologise if this is common knowledge. (I have goggled, but yet to find a good answer..)

How do apps use common/popular music from artists? So for example 'Sound Pop' I can understand must pay a large amount of royalties or has an agreement with music industries. This I can see working out for them as they have so many users and generate so much in ad revenue.

But an app like 'Guess the Intro' or 'Complete the Lyric' both by the same developer (not sure if I can link to app store here) both use popular music with and without lyrics for short periods of time. I cannot imagine it is financially viable for the developer to be paying royalties of any substantial amount, so how does he achieve this?

Many thanks for the replies!

lycettebros

There once was a 10 second rule about using copyrighted material without requiring authorisation (paying royalties) but that must be dead by now.
A lot of people take risks out there just using other people's stuff and getting away with it for a while. I think a lot of lawyers now just watch and if they see something illegal become popular they then swoop. IMHO.

pizzasmile

yeh I figured alot of people just ignored the rules as they assume their app won't become popular enough to be 'on the radar' or a problem to deal with down the line.

But what made me start thinking about this and being interested was after doing some research into music related apps. As mentioned before a couple of the quiz related apps from a few popular developers do use alot of music samples from various recent pop songs and I just couldn't see how financially they could afford the (assumed) royalties associated with it.

maybe somebody knows of a cheap(er) method these people are legally using those tracks, as opposed to what I have read in that very popular apps such as spotify and song pop have licences and deals with record companies negotiated.

Socks

@pizzasmile

As mentioned before a couple of the quiz related apps from a few popular developers do use alot of music samples from various recent pop songs and I just couldn't see how financially they could afford the (assumed) royalties associated with it.

I really doubt there are PRS or MCPS (ASCAP in the US) royalties generated by an app, it would be impossible for a collection agency to collect the relevant data, to know whether you'd played 'Guess My Pop Intro™' 6 times or a couple of thousand times . . . and who would be paying ? Obviously not the player, obviously not Apple, so it would have to be the developer/publisher of the app, who would be put in the position of being constantly terrified that their game would become so successful that millions of kids around the world would be playing it 10s of millions of times a day, constantly generating royalties that they, as the publisher, must pay to PRS/MCPS or ASCAP . . . If that were the case you'd spend all your time trying to discourage people from using your game.

Collection agencies are notoriously bad at accurately collecting data even from long established mediums like cinema, TV and radio, they've only really managed to starting looking at online music usage in the last couple of years, they are a dinosaur rooted in a decades out of date songwriter / music publisher model, they've probably not even heard of apps !! Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating, but they are not collecting royalties from apps at the moment as far as I'm aware, and I doubt they would ever be able to.

I guess a simple territory/usage term is agreed between the app publisher and the music publisher, or perhaps even the music is allowed to be used by the app developer for free as it promotes the artist, you'd be surprised at how common these kinds of free usage deals are.

lycettebros

Get legal advice before trying it.
No way I would try using the latest Beyonce single in an App.

In fact I paid a royalty fee to use the music for my latest App. Not interested in receiving any nasty letters from lawyers.

Socks

Get legal advice before trying it.
No way I would try using the latest Beyonce single in an App.

Agreed, I can give you all the legal advice you'll ever need right here and now: before using any commercial music you will need to agree terms with the publisher (or whoever owns the rights to the song) and the record label (or whoever owns the rights to the 'mechanical').

In fact I paid a royalty fee to use the music for my latest App.

Do you mean a licensing fee (rather than a royalty) ?

chrisexile

hi all - a publisher has asked to use a few of my songs in an app. it is free to download but there will be chance to do in-game purchases. anybody any idea on how much royalty we should be asking for? and/or an upfront fee? many thanks

The_Gamesalad_Guru

We have made deals with music producers before. Just like a commercial or anything like that including apps you need to strike a deal with the publisher. ASCAP and BMI track things like radio, iTunes, jukeboxes and even a club that has live acts need to pay a fee to those agencies. Royalties are alway based on revenue and or popularity of the song. The Rolling Stones got a million dollars from Microsoft to use "Start me up" based on say a lesser popular song which would be less but as I said those deals are negotiated directly with the holder of the publishing rights. I would say go with a flat fee for use. Most revenue royalties on that scale would be pennies on each purchase. In the ball park of 3 cents per dollar.

chrisexile

thanks The_Gamesalad_Guru