[Cyborg17]

Small, extremely small tip: I actually recommend for anyone modding the usage of Nine Inch Nails' album Ghosts, which is comprised of 36 all instrumental songs that are just awesome for soundtrack purposes, and the whole album is licenced under Creative Commons so yeah.

And we could also build a quick list of known sources for Creative Commons music and post it on a stickied thread or a page on the wiki.  That would be a very easy action that could help this problem.  We could reduce our time searching for music and play closer to the letter of the law.

[Luis Dias]

I will add this nice news I got today: Sam Hullick, one of the Mass Effect composers, is gonna start publishing his new songs for free in the internet if you just support him via his patreon account. And I totally agree with Cyborg, that would be extremely useful for any modder and would at least be an useful quick response to the concerns raised.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Honestly, we have no excuse for this. It's been my primary complaint with the modding community here as well, and claiming fair use is a gray area that we shouldn't have to cross.

It's a shame that finding equally good royalty free music is not as easy, but I think that by starting the search with royalty free music first is a better step at avoiding legal grays than starting with copy right and looking for a substitute.

Edit: Wow, I'm disturbed by the apathy in this thread. This isn't a legal issue. This is an ethical one, and only a few people seem to get that.

As for you copyright reformists, it's not only mega corporations that are having their music used in modding. Smaller producers are downloaded too. What about their rights, or are they suppose to starve because that's what artists do?

I don't know about anybody else, but I've actually bought music just because it was used in a mod. Hell, I bought an entire album because somebody suggested one song from it as a potential song for a mod! So I can actually point towards an actual increase in revenue as the result of modding on HLP. Can you point towards a guaranteed loss of revenue?

I don't care what goes on outside of HLP. But the fact that we're condoning it here is just sad and hypocritical. Like, torrenting FreeSpace is not okay, but downloading gigabytes of copyright movies is?

Firstly, I seem to recall that, back when nobody was selling FreeSpace, people were pretty okay with people torrenting it. Secondly, you're making an awfully big jump from "let's use this copyrighted song as background music in our non-commercial mod because we don't have any legal alternatives" to "pirate all of the movies!"

[swashmebuckle]

Yeah, low/no budget projects using ripped professional music directly impacts musicians, disproportionately those of the starving variety. Getting their work used in unpaid/low paying projects is how composers start out. If amateur filmmakers bypassed amateur composers in the same way people here are trying to justify modders doing, there would be no new blood in film music outside of personal acquaintances of established artists and everyone would be worse off for it.

This is already pretty much the case for really high budget movies, but at least in film there is a pipeline for bringing up new artists. An amateur director using music they didn't have the rights to in a finished product would be like squeezing that pipeline at the source and would be rightly frowned upon. Commercial stuff in mods should be treated like temp tracks: use them as a tool to aid in your creative process, but replace them with legit material before release.

Musicians struggle with the general public's attitudes towards music all the time. Please don't be the guy who feels entitled to do whatever they want with other people's work because "it wants to be free" or you hate Disney or something. The fact that the lifeguard and the jocks are in cahoots isn't a legitimate excuse to drop a deuce in the pool.

[Scotty]

Yeah, low/no budget projects using ripped professional music directly impacts musicians, disproportionately those of the starving variety. Getting their work used in unpaid/low paying projects is how composers start out. If amateur filmmakers bypassed amateur composers in the same way people here are trying to justify modders doing, there would be no new blood in film music outside of personal acquaintances of established artists and everyone would be worse off for it.

In an interesting counterpoint, if you switch "musician" or "composer" with "modder" and vice versa, this paragraph reads exactly the same!

[swashmebuckle]

Not sure I understand...I would agree that amateur musicians inserting their music into professional video games they don't have permission to modify and distributing the resulting product illegally would be similarly messed up, but I wasn't aware that was happening here.

I've definitely seen people who write trailer music just replace the soundtrack of hollywood trailers for their demo reels, and I agree that that work represents missed opportunities for aspiring filmmakers and contributes to the top-heaviness of the industry.

In either case, the issue is still obtaining consent from the people whose work you're using. If you have permission, by all means, go nuts.

[Scotty]

What I was getting at is that both of the groups you mentioned (low/no-budget musicians and modders) are in very similar situations, both with respect to professional agencies they may (or may not) be hoping to attract and in respect to the expected audience and the expected return on the particular piece of work.

Unless your point is to say that modders should only use low/no-budget composers' music as a way to provide a leg up to said composers (which, while laudable in spirit perhaps is neither the responsibility nor to expectation of a mod), then I honestly fail to see what you're advocating here.

[Phantom Hoover]

Swash, the fact that the mods on HLP do not and *cannot* make any money off their work kind of obviates your line of reasoning here. Upstart composers would have to be willing to work for free if they wanted to make their names off the success of our mods; and, well, if there were all these amateur composers out there we would be using them.

[swashmebuckle]

I hear what you're saying, but just because the mods can't legally make money doesn't mean that they lack the means to commission work. The fact that many mods are using the work of amateur composers who have contributed for free is a pretty good indicator that you don't have to go far to find musicians to work with, and that's going beyond all the stuff that's already out there.

I personally do free musical work for the mods I am a part of and would happily work for peanuts for others, and I'm pretty sure if you wave even a couple hundred dollars around in a public space, you will literally have your door beaten down by composers willing to do the same. Music composition is a field that is loaded with talent and starved for paying jobs. It's the king of buyer's markets.

@Scotty I'm not saying modders are responsible for using anyone's work, but they are certainly responsible for not releasing work that they haven't obtained consent to release.

It's definitely harder to do things the right way, and I am very sympathetic regarding the amount of work it takes to get the music you want, but I also live and work in a world where people gladly pay $30,000 for their wedding and then expect the band to play "for exposure", so I'm trying to offer a little perspective here.

[Spoon]

Oh, we just gotta wave a couple hundred dollars around then. Well, if it's that easy, I don't see why not all modders do that then. Problem solved, everyone go home.

[An4ximandros]

If you are not willing to put blood, sweat, tears and your lifetime into a game, you should not even try to make one. That's what several folks I know that work in the industry have told me. Battuta spent his hard earned money to finish the VOs for BP2. Maybe you should give that some though.

Here's an idea: Remember the FRED/Modeling competitions that gave out prices? How about making a competition or two for making music and audio.

[IronBeer]

Well, that's about the response I expected. Carry on. Let me know if you actually accomplish anything here.

[Scotty]

I remember that competition being received rather poorly.  That one would probably be even less warmly received, simply because I can't even name five people who would be able to enter with any real quality.

HLP does not have a great deal of composers.  Off the top of my head I know of Belisarius and... yeah that's about it.  And BP's music needs occupy damn near all of his creative output.  I don't think it's practical either financially or in terms of being remotely possible in HLP's current state to expect a mod to have all its own or licensed music.  At the very, very least, it'd be a harsh, imposing expectation for a budding new mod.  Expecting all of these various modders to pay out of pocket to create something for which they are legally (in more real terms than the potential lack of sales legally) unable to make anything in return is the worst kind of entitlement.  It's even worse than expecting a band to play "for exposure".  It's asking a band to pay for the privilege of exposure.

[Spoon]

If you are not willing to put blood, sweat, tears and your lifetime into a game, you should not even try to make one. That's what several folks I know that work in the industry have told me. Battuta spent his hard earned money to finish the VOs for BP2. Maybe you should give that some though.

[swashmebuckle]

Yeah, you would have to go to a different forum to commission a piece of music if you want your offer to be seen by a variety of potential collaborators, but that's not exactly a high hurdle to clear.

To clarify, the expectation isn't that modders should have to pay out of pocket to have their own music, it's that they should find legit music at whatever level fits their means, whether that's doing something new with the music that comes with the game (which is excellent), finding a freely available piece (which there are a lot of), asking for someone to waive their royalties to use their music (never hurts to try), commissioning something (moderately expensive, but dirt cheap compared to other forms of skilled labor), or paying the normal licensing cost (no idea what that would cost for the pieces people have used). Redistributing someone else's work without their consent is the only one out of many options that is problematic.

[swashmebuckle]

On second thought, getting music through slave labor would also be a problematic option, but you get my point.

[Dragon]

HLP does not have a great deal of composers.  Off the top of my head I know of Belisarius and... yeah that's about it.

There was another guy on BP, pretty good. Also, there's Blackhole (Eric McClure), though I haven't seen him around lately (I love his music, it's free to use and some mods already took advantage of it).

[AtomicClucker]

Long story short, music takes blood sweat and tears to make.

The worst part of copyrights? The original creators don't hold the rights or sign away aspects of performance, enforcement and sale. So even if the music creators endorse the use of their products in fan-made mods and such, they actually don't have legal rights to it.

One such example of kooky copyright is Japan, where big content distributors have been working to ever vigilantly to trump Publisher rights over creator rights or build frameworks where content creators have no option but to surrender their distribution to the big players. Despite the problems, the Doujin scene remains vibrant for both fan luv and fap material.

[Scourge of Ages]

Royalty free music, you say? jamendo.com
I found the site years ago, and discovered huge piles of really really great music. I don't know quite how the licensing works for mods, but as far as I can tell, as long as it's for non-commercial purposes, you're free to use and distribute with attribution. The vast majority of music seems to use the creative commons license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

On topic: I can see both sides of the issue. On the one hand, the blasé attitude toward ripping of copyrighted assets does disturb me. On the other hand, I do understand that it is technically not hurting anybody, and in some cases can actually lead to sales.

Ultimately, I think that it's just a matter of attitude. Just show a bit more remorse and hand-wringing when you say, "I wish we could make all original content, but couldn't spare the time and resources to make what already exists and happens to work perfectly for us. Here's a list of exactly what we used, go support the creators of whatever."

[Flipside]

As someone who, at least until recently, did music for some of the Mods in here, I will say I understand the problem with having on-board musicians, as we can be a somewhat unreliable and sporadic lot. However, on the other side of the coin, I know that if I saw another BSG mod for another game that had pinched the music from Diaspora, I'd be a bit narked. Not because of the use, it's actually quite flattering, but more because of the assumption that we wouldn't mind or notice, rather than simply writing to the team and asking.