Upcoming Music Changes and Copyright Related Action

[KnightGaladeld]

Greetings Developers,

We are writing to notify you about significant, upcoming changes with respect to music on the platform. We encourage you to review this in detail.

New Music Availability

We recently signed a license agreement with APM Music, the world’s leading creative music house and production music library provider. Our agreement with APM will provide our users with access to hundreds of thousands of tracks (“Licensed Music”) for inclusion in their games on Roblox. Even better, all of this Licensed Music is royalty free for use on the Roblox platform! We have taken care of the licensing for you so you don’t have to worry about synchronization, master use, mechanical, and performance licenses. And you can use all of the Licensed Music starting today!

Here are some important things to keep in mind when using the Licensed Music:

• All the Licensed Music is in Studio Toolbox and is marked as “by Roblox.”
• You can use up to 250 licensed tracks at a time in a single game on Roblox as part of the service. This limit includes tracks used in boom boxes in your game.
• In addition to using these tracks as-is from the Toolbox, you can use the Studio sound properties to create derivative works of the Licensed Tracks solely within your game on Roblox. You can find more information about these properties in the Sounds tutorial on our developer portal.
• The Licensed Music can only be used on the Roblox platform and may not be downloaded.
• For more detailed information, please refer to our Terms of Service at https://en.help.roblox.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004647846-Roblox-Terms-of-Use

Automated Process to Remove Certain Copyrighted Music

Starting June 18th, we are rolling out an automated process that will flag and remove certain copyrighted music that is currently on Roblox. It will also prevent any future use of certain copyrighted music.

To ensure that music in your games is not flagged and removed by this process, and to ensure compliance with our Terms, please check that all music in your games is owned by you or is properly licensed. If you do not own or have a license to the music in your game (or if you are not sure), you should replace it immediately. You can replace the music in your game with one of the newly licensed tracks mentioned above, with original music, or with music for which you are certain you possess all necessary rights.

As a reminder, our Terms prohibit the use of music unless you own it or it is properly licensed. If you don’t remove it, and it is flagged, we will automatically replace the flagged music on our platform with Licensed Music.

We encourage you to work with other members of the community to license their music or have them create music for you based on an agreement entered into between you and them. You can find composers through the Collaboration section on our Developer Forum, or through the #RobloxDev hashtag on Twitter. Please keep in mind that any deal with other members of the community is between you and them, and Roblox is not a party to agreements between developers.

If you have created or licensed music specifically for Roblox and you are concerned about it being removed as part of our automated process or it has been removed, then please email us at devrelations@roblox.com with the subject “Licensed Music” and provide as much detail as possible about the affected music.

Thanks,
Developer Relations Team

[BlastB00M]

Do those affected by this get any refunds? That’s a ton of robux spent over the years on now potentially flagged and removed music.

[codes4breakfast (Lucas)]

Will you notify us of any infringing assets we might have uploaded that will get removed?

[ConnorVIII]

does this mean most of the Roblox library of audio will be removed?

(this would make radio gamepasses less fun for the users)

[BULK_BROGAN]

Tbf you did upload illegally upload music

[TheAmazeman]

They shouldn’t get refunds

[centraltrains]

Nice to see Roblox take action on copyright grounds! Well done!

[SteadyOn]

This is certainly a big change that a lot of people who dont fully understand copyright will be pretty annoyed about.

Makes complete sense, though, and the new library is certainly beyond adequate for game development uses. (Speaking of which you should play my catalog game which helps you browse and rate all the new audios)

I think we all expected this at some point from the very beginning of audios on roblox. Also, this sounds like it’s going to cost Roblox a lot in server usage to trawl through all the audios

NOTE: I took down my catalog game since it allows for the playing of 250+ audios, sorry

[TheNexusAvenger (Nexus)]

@Nightgaladeld

To ensure that music in your games is not flagged and removed by this process, and to ensure compliance with our Terms, please check that all music in your games is owned by you or is properly licensed. If you do not own or have a license to the music in your game (or if you are not sure), you should replace it immediately. You can replace the music in your game with one of the newly licensed tracks mentioned above, with original music, or with music for which you are certain you possess all necessary rights.

Does this mean we can individual licenses, oh say for a company like Monstercat, for a single game? I have a few songs I am thinking about, like Terra by Notaker, for a game coming up in 2019.

[SnakeWorl (Droopy440)]

Will our copyrighted tracks that are taken down be counted as moderation action against our accounts our simply content deleted/removed?

[aeroware (hozz)]

I completely understand this situation, but what if any music is used in a game for non-profitable use? Let’s say you love a song and want to play it in a game, and its purpose is only for entertainment?

[FearMeIAmLag]

I’m interested to know how we prove to Roblox that we have a license for a copyrighted song that they may potentially flag and remove or prevent the uploading of.

[Profine (topfloorboss)]

Well boys, looks like it’s time for us to make Despacito 2. Robacito. But for real, how will the audio licensing system work?

[SteadyOn]

Since there’s no agreement between Roblox and the copyright holder, I’m pretty sure this is still against copyright law.

[Mighty_Loopy]

If you need a quick way to browser through the new music, you can use this tool I made here:

Song Picker for the new Roblox Sounds

Download it here: SorterRefactor.html (16.3 KB) If you’re having trouble playing audio (it won’t load properly) try using Edge - it has a delay where it waits a bit for the sound to load and checks it, which Chrome doesn’t seem to do. Wanted to learn a bit more javascript, and now that we’ve had this massive library of high-grade sounds released, I thought I’d make a web tool to help categorise them. You can sort songs by their genres, with the buttons at the top Clicking on the song gives…

[Spectaqual (Ivy)]

This limit includes tracks used in boom boxes in your game.

Would this mean we’d have to filter out these tracks from boom boxes, where users are free to enter in any ID they please?

The Licensed Music can only be used on the Roblox platform and may not be downloaded.

This feels like an issue to me. Two points that have been brought up are…

• Some users may wish to take tracks, and modify them to loop properly.

• The tracks look to be in .mp3 format, which adds a little pause between looping, whereas .ogg wouldn’t have that issue.

…we will either automatically replace the flagged music on our platform with Licensed Music…

Could we get an explanation as to how this would go by, in terms of what to expect as a user for such a process?

[GollyGreg]

You can find robloxian composers here!
https://devforum.roblox.com/groups/Composers

[Mighty_Loopy]

Does this mean that you’re done uploading the new music?

[chesse20 (ChesseThe FluffyWasp)]

I hope by it saying “Certain” copywritten music(in the opening post) , it’s only including music that was dmca’d or done with a similar process to be taken down, and gives radio gamepass users just enough copywritten popular songs to be happy.

[FamedChris (Stefan)]

Hey, does anyone know how to license your music? I purchased a track from @BSlickMusic before and will be using it within my game, I do not know how to go about marking this as original music.