The Game Composer’s Blog

Your music, out of your control!

Watching the presidential debate today reminded me of a story from a few months ago. Back in June, John McCain used some music from a video game in one of his ads. It was all fine and dandy until the composer of that music came forward and said he doesn’t support John McCain, and is in fact an Obama supporter. You can read more about it here. Sounds like a horrible scandal, right? Except the way our business is set up right now, this sort of thing is bound to happen and is legally and ethically fine.

Unfortunately today it is common for a composer to completely sign their rights for their music over to the developer or publisher they did the work for. This is called “work for hire” and benefits the developer or publisher greatly. If a cartoon series develops based on the game and they want to use your music for it, they can. Or if they want to use your music to advertise the latest greatest rat trap, or for any other reason, they can go ahead and use your music for that too. Once you sign that contract, your music is out of your control.

The composer of the game music used in the McCain ad, Christopher Lennertz, was upset that his music was used for something with which he does not agree. Sadly for any composer who signs such work for hire contracts, the composer’s thoughts on the matter are almost completely irrelevant. Legally the music is the developer or publisher’s to do with as they please. As long as McCain or anyone else buys a license to that music, it can appear anywhere. You’ve got to just roll with it. You decided to sign the contract, so accept that it just may appear somewhere you may not agree with.

I said above that the composer’s thoughts on the matter are almost completely irrelevant because the Lennertz case shows that it can backfire at least a little bit if the full background of the music is not considered by those using it. Even though nothing illegal or inappropriate happened, the McCain campaign still got some negative press because there is at least the appearance of some disharmony within the campaign. The question could be asked, why couldn’t they find some music by a McCain supporter?

This is in fact one of the risks inherent in using library assets for anything. It bit Hillary Clinton’s campaign in their infamous “3am” commercial. In that, they used some stock library footage of a little girl sleeping soundly during the night and asked who the viewer would trust to protect the country if a catastrophe struck late at night. It was a wonderful, fear-mongering ad that would stick in people’s minds. The problem is, the girl in the ad is now 18 and a fervent Obama supporter. Read more about that story here, it’s actually pretty funny.

So what do we do to keep people from using our music in the next project that we personally find offensive? It’s all about who owns the copyrights. The contracts are still weighted heavily in favor of the companies we do the work for, but we can do our best to change the terms. Keep 100% of our copyrights if possible, or at least keep any of the rights we can… like “ancillary rights”. That is, for any project that comes from that game (cartoons, spin-off games, sequels, TV shows, etc.), they will have to get our permission to use our music again. That increases the possibility of making more money from your music, which is only fair. If the game springs further revenue streams, the composer who is partly responsible for that success should share in the rewards.

Of course, it is a compliment when our music is found to be of value by anyone other than the people for whom we originally created it. But sometimes we don’t like the people giving us that compliment. That’s just part of being human. Not everyone gets along. All we can do as composers is keep on fighting to get fairer copyright terms in our contracts. That way, we don’t need to apologize for our creativity being used for purposes we do not agree with. Now if you don’t mind, I need to go finish a PETA ad with licensed music by Ted Nugent…

October 7, 2008 - Posted by thegamecomposer | Career Advice | contracts, copyright, game music, John McCain, licensing