In Tuesday’s (6/10) Variety, Jon Burlingame reports that the American Federation of Musicians has inked a new agreement covering the scores of videogames from Microsoft, one of the world’s top game publishers. “AFM president Ray Hair told Variety he hopes the new deal—which replaces an October 2012 contract that was rejected as too restrictive by every game publisher—will serve as a template for deals with other game publishers. The contract is effective immediately and runs through December 2016. It calls for basic scale wages of $300 per musician for a three-hour session and, according to Hair, ‘allows the game publisher to record a track, use it for that videogame, throughout the franchise and across all platforms for that franchise.… But if music from those games is used in a McDonald’s commercial, or in any other medium, such as movie or TV show, that requires an additional payment.’ Game publishers previously complained that they were not allowed to use AFM-recorded music outside of the original game context.… On Monday, the AFM announced it had reached a new three-year deal with the advertising industry, calling for a 6 percent increase in wages for music in commercials.”
Posted June 11, 2014
