[Action Needed] Upcoming Changes to Asset Privacy for Audio

If they aren’t copyrighted, I’m sure you can just re-upload them, which is now free.

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Though I do like the addition of free audio, I definitely do not like the automatic privacy settings being applied.

Currently, when a developer uploads audio to Roblox they know full and well that that audio would be going out for everybody. For this reason, I feel that all existing audio should stay public and that if a developer wants it to be private, they must go and change it to private.

Perhaps we can have it so that all the developers for a place receive a notification when this happens and there is a grace period of a week or so to allow them to implement a new sound, although I would be fine with it being instantly inaccessible.

The point of this is to ensure that old audios are still available, and not as many games are broken because I can think of several games that would not have a good time with this.

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I would name it the Great Audio “Purge” of 2022, the Third Audio “Purge”, or Experimental Mode 2.

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This update is painful, when my game have a function that player can choose any song from library to play. Now, they’re limited ;(

Question - Will other users be able to hear audio that I upload and put into my game?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

This a Terrible update. Please read a few lengthy replies.

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So many questions behind the decisions and lack of transparency behind this update. Obviously there’s the good, but the bad is god awful. And we’ve been given only 2 weeks to process it. This must have been foreseen by staff for a while, right?

I see the intention for private audios, but this is executed so horribly and now TONS of games are going to be destroyed and harder to manage. Just read through all the problems devs have mentioned everywhere and in this thread ^^

With this news, I think it’s important that I should mention my experience with UPLOADING LICENSED MUSIC and why it makes this news even more demotivating.

The guide to uploading licensed music (from my personal experience)

  • I purchase the license to a song from a music website (Bensound | Music Licensing for Creators | Pricing)
  • I upload the song to Roblox. ((Removed for copyright) - Roblox)
  • The song gets denied by Roblox.
  • I email Roblox Support, providing info and proof that I own the license.
  • Roblox Support replies, stating that uploading copyrighted music without permission is a violation; ignoring the info and proof I provided.
  • I email Roblox Support back, pleading that they listen to me for once.
  • Roblox support replies, stating that any audio flagged for copyright will be blocked, independent of personal use and exceptions cannot be made.
  • I contact the music site I bought the license from and told them about the problem I’m having with Roblox. After a few days, they reply and say they are working on clearing the false copyright claim.
  • I wait a couple weeks.
  • The music site replies, stating that the fradulent claim has been removed from the database of Audible Magic (“the third party that provides the automated systems used by Roblox”).
  • I upload the same music. It works this time. ((Removed for copyright) - Roblox)
  • I’m appreciative for the support the music site provided to me and thank them.
  • Fast forward about 3 months to now.
  • The music gets removed for copyright ((Removed for copyright) - Roblox)

So what now? I can’t upload music that I own the license to without it getting removed. I don’t want to go through that whole process to get it fixed again. Roblox states that there are NO EXCEPTIONS to uploading “copyrighted” music, so even with proof that I have permission to upload it, they’re not going to allow it. I can’t use other users’ audios and I can’t use my own.

This is super annoying and confusing and stressful and absolutely demotivating to deal with. So for those who haven’t dealt with uploading licensed music, that’s what you possibly have to look forward to ^^

68 Likes

A funny thing called DRM – you have purchased a license to a product(s), but you do not actually own it.

More info

You can’t know how thankful I am, you are trying to represent how bad this update is for roblox devs but also for the SFX community. I am really thankful.

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Although the turnaround is rather quick, I am greatly encouraged by this change. My only concern is the upload limit. 100 uploads is generous but I would still like to see different limitations for when the developer is uploading sounds in that ‘under 6 seconds’ category. If one is preparing all the sounds for a game at once, I can imagine it is easy to approach the 100 with a large collection of sound effects.
Overall though, protecting IP and removing cost barriers to creating games are critical steps in moving Roblox to a more professional-friendly platform and I am happy to see this dedication to helping everyone involved in the industry.

I mean yeah, I knew that, I think you missed my point.

This is completely mental. An entire catalogs worth of audio will be going down the drain! This hits hard, especially for the game jam that’s going on. Having background audio for different events for ambience will be painstakingly difficult to find.

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I might be incorrect about this, but does this mean there’s now four types of audios?

These being:

  • Free
  • Offsale
  • Archived
  • Private

If someone could explain me the difference between the last three in specific, you’d be a great help

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This is ridiculous, this will create MANY MANY problems for my experiences

Every sound I have used is uploaded under someone else’s profile and I have relied on the goodwill of other users uploading sounds for me to use.

Not only will this cause many problems for me and I imagine other users as well, but it also creates additional issues for public domain music.
If I wanted to use a Kevin MacLeod song in my game, now instead of just simply searching for it in the toolbox and using that ID, I now have to upload it to roblox myself and go through that process.

I understand this will allow users to protect their experience’s sounds, but this will create massive issues for other user’s who rely on the sounds uploaded by players.

Please do not set all sounds to private, this will create so many problems for me and many others.

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Finally, uploading audio is something that when I thought of games, that I would have a hard time with because of costs. It being free is a much welcome change.

As for audio going private… that to me sucks, especially when you gotten it from the market place and that user may no longer be active or be bothered to update their stuff that was previously free. I can think of a few of my builds that used free audio from other users. I feel this is going to do a bit more harm then good.

Not to mention, this would lower the amount of users free audio and sounds that was already there.

I hope the new sounds and audio uploaded by roblox are good, as I found that while looking for jungle sounds or water, I’d find stuff that was not sounds but more so just music, and a lot of it not even being jungle theme.

I really appreciate the thought and consideration that went in to how this would affect projects - large and small - ahead of implementing this change.

If you couldn’t tell, that was peak sarcasm.

Thanks for shooting your developers in the foot. It’s already annoying enough getting animations uploaded for testing in various branches.

Thank you for adding another barrier to streamlined asset management on your platform.

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Very based of you to do this to us Roblox… Very based indeed…

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Sadly, monstercat is a decent quality audio, hence why the composer and SFX community is complaining, even tho we have high quality, why would roblox dev pay for bit higher quality while they can get bit lower quality for free. So yes, the sounds and audio are good quality, to answer your question.

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The update’s just making us all closer to the people behind this update. Unable to hear anything.

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You guys provide a major update that could severely damage games with hardly ANY notice whatsoever. You guys should be ashamed and this will severely punish developers.

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