thesaucetastic
Unconfirmed Member
Austin Wintory, the composer behind such games as Journey and The Banner Saga, has just released a video about the situation some members of the game music industry are in.
Highly recommend listening to the whole thing, or at least reading the description, which is a partial transcript of the video.
Lock if old.
edit: Can a mod fix my title. Should be "for doing his job", not "from".
edit2: Another article about it
edit3: The contract in question, for those who were curious about what it says.
edit4: The man speaks for himself
Several years ago Ray Hair, the President of the American Federation of Musicians put together a Videogame Agreement working committee to develop a new game agreement.
The new Videogame Agreement was approved by the AFM's International Executive Board and went into effect December 2012. This new contract was done without allowing any composers, musicians or any of the 90,000 members of the union given an opportunity to vote on it.
"The new administration, was deeply committed to fixing the videogame mess," explained committee member and Recording Musicians Association (RMA) President Marc Sazer at the time. He also predicted, incorrectly, that "the new agreement should induce employers to sit down and negotiate with the AFM."
Nothing could be further from the reality of what happened.
The end result was an agreement that was universally rejected by every single video game developer and publisher, and has gone completely unused since the day it was created.
For almost two years now, under this contract, no union member has been allowed to work on a new video game soundtrack as a result.
Highly recommend listening to the whole thing, or at least reading the description, which is a partial transcript of the video.
Lock if old.
edit: Can a mod fix my title. Should be "for doing his job", not "from".
edit2: Another article about it
A variety article about the video and surrounding issues and debates.
http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/videogame-composer-blasts-musicians-union-for-rule-violation-charges-amid-contract-strife-1201216439/
The quote that caught my attention was...
"Composer and frequent AFM critic Michael W. Barry, who founded and moderates the 3,000-member “Hollywood Film, Television and Interactive Scoring Community” Facebook page and who has scored the popular “League of Legends” game, confirms that no publisher has used the most recent game contract since the AFM drafted it in December 2012.
“The terms are nowhere near what the industry wants,” Barry says, noting that game companies insist on owning all of the intellectual property, including music, that goes into their games. The previous AFM game contract, dating from 2007, was “very producer-friendly,” he said, and a handful of games “grandfathered” under that contract continue to be scored in L.A."
edit3: The contract in question, for those who were curious about what it says.
edit4: The man speaks for himself
The violation I'm charged with is breaking the Bylaws, which cite that I can not "perform services (whether as composer, arranger, copyist, proofreader, instrumentalist, leader, contractor, cutter, editor or in any other capacity) for the purpose of producing, editing or dubbing recorded music except where expressly authorized and covered by a contract with the AFM or when expressly authorized by the AFM."
I recorded THE BANNER SAGA, out of necessity, without union contract. And they are trying to make an example out of me because of it. I'm not the first they've tried this with.