How to enhance video game remix industry + anime music remix industry ?

[Pinksou]

Hi everyone ! Today, I have a great question that is a problematic. 

How to enhance video game remix industry ?

I am aware that this question can be difficult to answer. In the video game remix industry, we are fortunate to have GameChops as a label and OC Remix as the publishing platform. However other problems are present ... the video game remix industry is not a recognized industry, few people do video game remix. In the publishing platforms, the details are too long, it's understood they miss the staff. And then there is the taboo subject "Copyright" everyone lies to themselves and knows nothing about it. I, too, know nothing about copyright. So! How to enhance video game remix industry? It's an excellent question?

What're your waitings and what would you like to see change?

Bonus: How to enhance anime music remix industry?

Here again, the same problems are present, worse than Video Game Remix industry. Because the punishments are more important, that's why there is no record label or publishing platform... Or very bit... I do not even speak of the "copyrights"

I want to make it clear that this is only my point of view, it is not the absolute truth.

Any ideas or debates are welcome.

 

[JohnStacy]

Video game remixing isn't an industry because the concept of what makes a remix is very vague, and isn't agreed upon.

If you define it as an arrangement of video game music and released for profit, there is an industry for it. The issue is that some people refer to it as "cover" rather than "remix." Go to youtube, and you'll find thousands of remixes posted frequently, many for profit. Some of the largest channels doing it make a decent amount of money doing it. Even more, there is a record label - Materia Collective that publishes arrangement albums several times per year. These are albums of remixes, but they generally aren't called that.

On the area of copyright, plenty of people understand it just fine. The main bit is to understand is what a mechanical and sync license are. Pretty much everybody that releases VGM arrangements for profit on a large scale secures a proper license. Even then, most of, if not all of the OCR staff understand copyright on a functional level to make the site function and to keep the community in a safe place.

So then I ask what you mean by enhance? I think it's going just fine. We have significant people that are working hard to advance the industry, in many different places. Would you suggest improving education on copyright? A centralized database of artists?

I do have opinions about what I disagree with in the industry, but I generally stay quiet about them. I apply those opinions to my own work.

 

Anime is a different thing altogether. Releasing anime music in the US is difficult mainly because of the much smaller number of soundtrack releases in American storefronts. Because of the smaller number of legal releases, securing mechanical licenses (for albums) and sync licenses (for videos) is much more difficult. You won't see many people releasing anime remixes for profit because of the legal risks involved.

[Pinksou]

I like your point of view. So! I have another question? If everything is good about video game remix. Create an audio streaming platform app likes Spotify for Video Game Remixes only will be a good idea?

(I see that your arguments are interesting)

Edited November 14, 2019 by Pinksou

[walton19]

On 11/11/2019 at 9:49 PM, JohnStacy said:

Video game remixing isn't an industry because the concept of what makes a remix is very vague, and isn't agreed upon.

If you define it as an arrangement of video game music and released for profit, there is an industry for it. The issue is that some people refer to it as "cover" rather than "remix." Go to youtube, and you'll find thousands of remixes posted frequently, many for profit. Some of the largest channels doing it make a decent amount of money doing it. Even more, there is a record label - Materia Collective that publishes arrangement albums several times per year. These are albums of remixes, but they generally aren't called that.

On the area of copyright, plenty of people understand it just fine. The main bit is to understand is what a mechanical and sync license are. Pretty much everybody that releases VGM arrangements for profit on a large scale secures a proper license. Even then, most of, if not all of the https://applinked.me  understand copyright on a functional level to make the site function and to keep the community in a safe place.

So then I ask what you mean by enhance? I think it's going just fine. We have significant people that are working hard to advance the industry, in many different places. Would you suggest improving education on copyright? A centralized database of artists?

I do have opinions about what I disagree with in the industry, but I generally stay quiet about them. I apply those opinions to my own work.

 

Anime is a different thing altogether. Releasing anime music in the US is difficult mainly because of the much smaller number of soundtrack releases in American storefronts. Because of the smaller number of legal releases, securing mechanical licenses (for albums) and sync licenses (for videos) is much more difficult. You won't see many people releasing anime remixes for profit because of the legal risks involved.

I like this explanation. Love reading it

Edited August 11, 2021 by walton19
spellings

[JohnStacy]

On 11/13/2019 at 4:42 AM, Pinksou said:

I like your point of view. So! I have another question? If everything is good about video game remix. Create an audio streaming platform app likes Spotify for Video Game Remixes only will be a good idea?

This has been done before, to an extent. I think there's an online radio station that plays many things from OCR, although I don't know if it's still running and can't remember the name.
Running something like Spotify is expensive. The infrastructure needed to run it is costly and difficult to set up. You need to fund server costs and licensing fees, provided the artists didn't do this themselves. As a result, most OCR content wouldn't be legal to stream. So you could make a free service to stream these things, and hope that you don't have legal action taken against you, or you could go through the proper channels, ensure everything is licensed, and charge either some or all users a fee to help cover the costs of running the service.

As for the streaming itself, would you write your own streaming module? Or would you use one already written? You have to have some method to play the audio, involving either one very active developer, or a team of developers. Again, you have the issue of funding. Passion projects happen all the time - that's how winamp was started. And if you can find people to work on it in their spare time, you could definitely get a workable streaming platform.

So to create a vgm streaming platform of only remixes? Great idea. But there is a huge amount of work and planning that needs to happen to make it a possibility, and even more work that needs to happen to keep it in a good legal standing. If a company that owns the rights to the original work being remixed comes along and tells you to shut it down, you have to shut it down. If you license all of your content properly, that is prevented, but that costs money which has to come from somewhere.