Music in video-games

What music rights must a video-game producer acquire?

To produce or reproduce a video game, the producer must acquire the following rights:

• Synchronisation right: This is the right to set an audiovisual work (in this case, a video game) to music. SUISA members (or their publishers) may settle the synchronisation rights directly with the video-game producer.
   
• Reproduction and physical distribution rights: These rights are necessary to reproduce a musical work on a video or data carrier and to distribute the recording thereafter. SUISA manages the reproduction and distribution rights. The new addendum provides that these rights may be excluded from the rights administration agreement (for more, see the section “New Addendum to the Rights Administration Agreement for SUISA members”).
   
• Online rights (download and streaming): Nowadays, most games are also – or only – sold on Internet for the buyer to download. In order to make a game available for downloading, the video-game producer or the online distributor (e.g. the platforms Steam or Origin) need to acquire a downloading licence.
  Certain video games can only be played by streaming on a browser, for example. This then requires a streaming licence.
  SUISA manages these online rights. Such rights cannot be excluded from the rights administration agreement by the addendum.
   
• Neighbouring rights: Neighbouring rights are the rights of the performers and the rights in the sound recording. These two rights are collectively referred to as “Master Rights”.
  Authors who play their compositions themselves and produce their own recordings may licence these rights, as a performer and recording producer combined, directly to the video-game producer for all uses. Otherwise, the owner of the Master Rights must license them separately to the video-game producer. SUISA does not manage these rights.

For this licence, please contact us in advance at the following e-mail address: customerservices@suisa.ch