Amplify Your Experiences with New Music

[Update] September 23, 2024


Hey Creators,

As shared at RDC, we’re committed to making a great music experience on Roblox for creators, artists and users. As of last week, you can explore a vast library of new music from independent artists on the Creator Store. You can now access and incorporate new music from DistroKid’s catalog into your experiences, bringing a new level of creativity and engagement to the platform. For creators that own the rights to their music, starting in October, you’ll be able to upload your music via Distrokid.

Fresh Music

This is a subset of Distrokid’s catalog, featuring artists who own all of the required rights to their music and have chosen to share so far. In the coming months, we will be working to onboard more DistroKid artists, expand the available music selection, and introduce new tools. These efforts will make it even easier for creators to discover music within the Creator Store and integrate and share music within Roblox experiences.

Find Distrokid Music

Simply visit the Creator StoreAudio on Web or Studio Toolbox, and you will be able to discover top tracks from DistroKid in the "DistroKid Hits” section.

Music Discovery

We are also rolling out additional discovery tools for you to leverage to get the right music that matches the vibe of your game or experience. To start, we improved music discovery in the Creator Store by adding new sorts and filters, including the ability to filter search results by Audio Type (Music or Sound Effect) or what’s new or trending.

The Future of Music on Roblox

As you heard at RDC, we aim to establish Roblox as a destination for immersive music discovery. Our collaboration with DistroKid enables you to enhance your experiences with high-quality music, helps users discover and engage with your experiences like never before, and empowers musicians with a new way to get discovered.

Improving the Music Experience on Roblox for Users

Moreover, we’re committed to continuously improving the music experience on Roblox for users, creators and artists. Here’s a glimpse of what’s coming in the future:

  • What’s Playing UI: With a brief and easily dismissable toast, users can see what music is playing within an experience and “like” a favorite track to support a favorite artist. This is expected to come later this year with a roadmap on creator and user controls.

  • Top Music Charts: Our goal is to highlight popular music experiences and songs to drive discovery and engagement. You’ll start seeing the first charts later this year, with more on the way in 2025.

We’re excited to see how you will leverage these new tools to create and enhance amazing experiences on Roblox.

Shoutout to the team that made this launch possible: @GothicSubmarine, @AngelEthereal, @FriendlyAdder, @headinclouds_ash, @AZKOolKAt, @MazerStein, @flipnic13, @complexlint, @photoguy82, @d_winder, @ejmoody333, @beastieyeahs, @infusel123, @avo_kat0, @ochiitsuki, @runningfry72, @aloe_lujah, @BlueMissileCattle

Happy creating!


Known Limitations

  • To use publicly uploaded music from DistroKid, you must acquire the asset from the Creator Store and add to your inventory. If you insert the audio asset in Studio via common creator workflows (e.g drag/drop, insert etc), it willl automatically be added to your inventory, to facilitate permission assignment.

    However, there’s no change in the inventory for others in your active TeamCreate session or those re-opening the placefile later. This inventory grant is specific to the user that is actively inserting the audio.

  • Currently, groups cannot acquire audio assets from the Creator Store. We’re evaluating supporting this in future.

FAQ

Click here to view the FAQ!

How can I incorporate music from Distrokid into my Roblox experiences?

  • You can access music in the Creator Store audio tab on both Web and Studio Toolbox, where music uploaded by artists via Distrokid will be available. You can also look through our tutorials to get a better understanding of how to add sound & music to your experience.

    Here are some helpful links:

What are the key differences between music integration on Roblox today versus in the past?

  • Our renewed focus in music is around enabling artist distribution and discovery at a platform level and driving developer and user adoption of music at scale. This includes expanding discovery for artists on Roblox through upcoming features like What’s Playing and Top Music Charts. We are dedicated to making music and audio an integral part of the Roblox experience.

How does Roblox ensure the copyright protection of uploaded music?

  • All audio is passed through Audible Magic, the leading content recognition technology. All audio that matches content in Audible Magic’s database is automatically blocked. Roblox has a scaled DMCA operations team dedicated to timely processing of copyright takedown requests. In addition, Distrokid, a reputable third-party music distributor that supports other major platforms like TikTok, Meta and Spotify, provides additional moderation and fraud detection services to filter out bad actors.

    On DistroKid, all artists must declare ownership and control of all rights in the music (including both the sound recording and the publishing rights) they are uploading before it can be distributed to Roblox.

What types of music will be available on Roblox with the Distrokid Integration?

  • Distrokid is a top music distributor that has enabled hundreds of thousands of indie artists of all genres to upload their music to various platforms including a broad range of lyrical and instrumental tracks. Some top genres on Distrokid are Electronic, Rock, Singer/Songwriter, Metal, Pop, Alternative, and Hip Hop.

Could integrating this music result in my experience being moderated?

  • No. All music in the Creator Store has already gone through moderation, and songs with explicit language have been removed.

Can I use music incorporated into my Roblox experience elsewhere?

  • All music on Creator Store is meant to be solely used on Roblox.

    If you use music in your Roblox experience and then upload or livestream it to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, or Facebook you will be subject to the copyright policies of each respective platform.

121 Likes

This topic was automatically opened after 10 minutes.

Great to see we are getting new music and new ways to find fitting music!

10 Likes

So, why should we consider using Distrokid for music if it puts video creators at risk of copyright claims? To me, it sounds like using this music will just wipe away anyone making videos due to the fear of demonetization under YouTube Content ID, effectively wiping away our best source of marketing. I’ve heard this was already a problem with Monstercat music.

56 Likes

I do believe, if my memory is correct, that you can select what type of enforcement action you want for content detection for your media via Distrokid’s interface as a creator - allowing for you to ensure the music is credited but choose to disable any removal of ads/content/taking a portion (or all) of video revenue.

10 Likes

maybe its best update for music in roblox!

4 Likes

While this is great for highlighting established and up-and-coming artists, the fact that artists will not be paid and instead only given exposure doesn’t feel like this is worth it.

If a song blows up on Roblox and is used in a bunch of different games, there’s no way for artists to organically earn royalties from that song. There’s no guarantee that players will listen to their songs on DSPs outside of Roblox (which would generate them income), so I can’t see many artists wishing to apply knowing they only get paid in exposure. I hope this system can be revamped to fairly compensate musicians for their work.

38 Likes

Interesting system. If that is the case… I’ve got a feeling that most will just not bother unless the game is insanely trendy or something. If your options are work + lose some revenue or pick another game to play/stream, the second option sounds easier, especially if you have more games to record than you can play.

Based on what I’ve heard about Monstercat and Content ID, even if you pay $7.50/month or $75/year, it can still be a pain. I don’t know if Distrokid is any better, or if this anecdote about Monstercat is just wrong.

4 Likes

games using copyrighted music that gets video creators copyright struck is not by any means new to the video game industry. Video creators are accustomed to muting music in AAA games, roblox creators will just need to provide the same option. It seems a stretch to me to construe this as a negative

7 Likes

This is definitely the proper solution. So many of the non-chart-topping games don’t from my experience, which is a problem (Innovation Inc Thermal Power Plant, a <100 CCU game, isn’t getting this until the next update :upside_down_face:). It is much easier to implement these days with SoundGroups, but it is so annoying that Roblox would reduce a lot of pain for us if this was somehow an in-engine feature. That and making it remember that setting is more work, and making it synchronize between games (more important for streams) is impossible.

6 Likes

agreed. I had assumed before writing my response that muting music across platform is planned and was quite surprised when i went to the updated experience controls post to see that it seemingly isnt.

7 Likes

By toast, I assume there may be a popup when a track starts? If so, will this be disable-able? Ideally I don’t want players to be annoyed by constant ‘What’s Playing’ toasts if I’m changing tracks frequently; while I understand that the purpose of this is to provide exposure for the artists, a toast may be problematic when a user is moving between different zones which have different playing tracks (and perhaps even multiple different simultaneously playing tracks); the option to supress the toast is a must-have for experiences who are planning on using the soundtracks for anything except global background music as tracks can nearly always switch rapidly otherwise.

4 Likes

cmon let zero project in, hes the goat of music

2 Likes

Will there be a toggle for this?

It doesn’t fit my current project as all the music is made by me and there’s an in-game music playing feature in my custom settings menu.

2 Likes

WOWWW this will be VERY nice! :smile:

1 Like

Okay, hear me out. Roblox usually releases some pretty bad music updates but this actually isn’t that bad.

it has freakin peaches!

2 Likes

While this is great news, there needs to be more search filtering options. It’s already hard enough finding audio that fit games correctly.

The studio toolbox + Web interface also need to be unified as they have differences in features. But I imagine most users look for audio in studio, I know I do.

Earlier it was difficult but still manageable since most of the music library was uploaded by APM music. And every publisher has their own type of music they prefer to distribute.

The interface for combining filters is also a bit faulty at times as they tend to reset one another under certain circumstances.

APM is generally more cinematic, DistroKid is more trendy/pop, and vice versa.

Then you also got user song uploads (coming soon(?))

It’s becoming too much to handle without putting hours into finding the right audio.

3 Likes

Will we be able to play Kevin MacLeod’s music soon?

4 Likes

Still waiting on Public audios :pensive:

7 Likes

We already have been able to do that, all of his music is non-copyright.

2 Likes