[Update] Changes to Asset Privacy for Audio

[BitFist (MorganT)]

If you have not already, please read through the previous audio asset privacy announcement. These changes require that you make use of the Audio Discovery plugin in Studio to review the ownership of all audio assets in your experience.

Hey developers,

We have been reading all of your feedback on the upcoming Audio Privacy changes. I completely understand your frustration with some of the changes that were outlined in last week’s announcement.

We know these changes have a significant impact on your work. We deeply regret how disruptive the changes are, but unfortunately, they are necessary. The asset privacy system on Roblox must be strengthened in order to continue to protect the rights of creators.

March 22nd is a hard deadline. We recognize that the schedule is abrupt and fundamentally changes how creators, experiences, and audio assets work together. We don’t take this lightly and want you to know that our teams, from the highest levels of the company on down, are working around the clock to do everything possible to make this transition easier.

I have a brief update to clarify a few points and talk about some of the additional steps we are taking to address the issues surrounding the March 22nd audio asset privacy changes.

Minimizing the Impact on SFX

This release is specifically targeting music. We understand your concern that many SFX assets will also be made private on the 22nd. We have a dedicated team working to keep many SFX public, even if the asset is longer than 6 seconds. This work will continue past March 22nd, until we can re-enable the vast majority of public SFX assets.

We are also fast-tracking the addition of over 100,000 professional SFX to the catalog in partnership with Pro Sound Effects. These assets will be available for public use in the marketplace tonight, and can be found by searching for “[name] (SFX)”. For example: Water SFX.

Asset Permissions

This week, we introduced asset permissions for audio. Creators who have edit access to an experience can now grant permissions for that experience to use audio assets from their account. These permissions are managed from the Configure Item page of audio assets and will help those who have uploaded audio using personal accounts avoid re-uploading to a Group in order to keep the experience’s audio functional.

You can read more about this here.

Upload Limits

When we removed the fee to upload audio, we added monthly limits that varied based on different account criteria. By default, creators can upload up to 10 audio files each month, and you can increase this to 100 with ID verification.

While the reception of free audio uploads was positive, we’ve seen concerns around limits and verification requirements. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to upload audio so please take a few minutes to fill out this survey. Your response will help us better understand the frequency and quantity of uploads that will best suit your needs in the future.

The Future of Privacy for other Asset types

Our vision is to give you full control over the privacy of your assets and how you share them with the rest of the community, other users and groups.

In a separate update, I will share more details on our long term plans for asset privacy. We are committed to doing a better job with future privacy rollouts, both by minimizing the impact to your work as well as providing longer time frames to adapt to any necessary changes.

Finally… thank you

We sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding as we navigate this difficult change. We will continue to listen and work with all of you to build the best platform for creativity together.

Stay tuned for additional updates coming soon.

[BandaidKidd (choppppppppppppppppp)]

We still have this audio update, and gladly the critisim improved it! I’m relieved that this audio update only affects music and not sfx’s. I have a better and more brighter image for this update!

[colbert2677 (ImagineerColbert)]

This update makes many things a whole lot clearer - I suspected this update primarily targeted music and that the intent wasn’t to demolish the SFX that other developers have made available to us, not to name any potential motivations for this. Appreciate the teams vanguarding the effort to keep these SFX available and not blanket wipe out all >6 second audio.

I am also content with the fast tracking of asset permissions. Knowing Roblox this was my main fear in that it would take an absurd amount of time to get permissions rolled out to us while this update is being pushed. If the intent is to roll this out later this week, that means this is one of the good times when Roblox gives us the alternatives and tools needed before a workflow-interrupting update is pushed. Please do more of that. It helps big time. I didn’t want to trouble my sound designer with having to reupload hundreds of SFX.

Something I never covered in the post I made in the previous thread is that on a whole, it’ll take a while to get used to and this is a very imposing deadline, but it’s not overall bad. Not only is it a step towards protecting creators’ rights (and hopefully Roblox protects us too by understanding we made a mistake, allowing us to take down assets in good faith without getting deleted on the fly) but rolling this out to other asset types is super beneficial, especially meshes for example. Can you imagine: this also helps against theft at an asset-level, meaning people won’t be able to just reupload ripped content because they’ll have no permission to render the asset in their experience. That’s pretty good.

I understand this change is difficult for both Roblox and us as developers but I’m sure a lot of us thank you too for taking the time to communicate to us en masse rather than keeping us in the dark about a change that will permanently change our workflows. This transparency is very important, as is assisting us in getting back on track.

Also a big thanks for fast tracking the SFX. Already took a look through the library and there’s some amazing stuff in there. I was looking forward to the SFX uploads the most.

[ButterrDev (Butter)]

I big step in the right direction! Good to see DevRel taking our feedback under consideration. I am still concerned about the verification queue, is any information going to be provided about this?

[benpinpop (Ben)]

I definitely appreciate the fact that Roblox Staff is working hard on SFX, as that is one of my main concerns. I’ve seen when looking for sounds, that there aren’t many Roblox provided SFX, which is why I’m grateful for an update to this. I definitely agree this will likely make things better, (Referring to the addition of SFX) but I’m concerned about the limit on uploading audio. Many people have made the suggestion of forcing you to pay the normal rates after reaching your free limit, just like the new badge update. Without that, it will likely limit people who are unable to afford Premium, or don’t want to get premium. Any who, I think this is a step in the right direction that Roblox will be creating its own sounds, and that we will have a better Music and SFX collection, though I wish we would have more time to prepare. I also wish music could be set to public. (Not sure if this is an option as no one has talked about it), but it would allow technology companies to continue operations, and without this option, a lot of tech companies will be having issues.

[MTWTech]

Is there a way to make audio avilable to everyone like completely public

[ValiantWind (Val)]

First off, I want to say thank you for finally responding to the frustration regarding the audio privacy update.

Although this will still affect lots of games, its great that we get to have another way to get more audio uploads without age verification. I’m sure lots of us also appreciate you guys trying to make this as bearable as possible for us.

Let’s hope we can upload the audios in time before the deadline.

Edit: Few concerns:
If our response in the survey gets us more audios, then how much more will we get?

Why is the deadline have to be March 22?

And why did you decide for all audios above 6 seconds to be privated? Why not 7? or 5? or 8?

Lastly, will we be able to unprivate our audios?

[sjr04 (uep)]

@BitFist

Upload Limits

When we removed the fee to upload audio, we added monthly limits that varied based on different account criteria. By default, creators can upload up to 10 audio files each month, and you can increase this to 100 with ID verification.

While the reception of free audio uploads was positive, we’ve seen concerns around limits and verification requirements. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to upload audio so please take a few minutes to fill out this survey . Your response will help us better understand the frequency and quantity of uploads that will best suit your needs in the future.

I still wish it could be made clear what grants a limit of 2000 for some users, or if this is even intended at all.

[Dylan56202 (Dylan)]

There is a bigger reason this change is being made instead of “protecting the rights of creators” and I wish that was made more transparent to the community.

A better way to protect the rights of creators would be to set all offsale audio to be blocked from being able to be played in games made by someone other than the creator of the audio. If someone wants to make their audio private, they can just keep it off sale.

But this change is clearly being made for a much bigger reason and it’s frustrating on why this isn’t being made transparent to the community. Maybe it has something to do with copyrighted audios being bypassed onto the platform, and even if this is the case why not be outright transparent about it?

I completely support protecting creators rights but it is very unfortunate the way this is being dealt with. There also needs to be better ways to sort through the massive library of free to use audio uploaded by Roblox. It is impossible to find sound effects or even a specific genre of music that was uploaded by Roblox from the APM library.

[fan1gIam (tyler)]

quite the shame

atleast it won’t be nearly as unbearable for group games now

[UItraEX (UltraEX)]

Roblox responded! Amazing. Thank you so much roblox, we know how stressful this was

[Anteraska]

As much as it’s still not a fantastic outcome I absolutely understand, and appreciate that you’re doing everything in your power to make it as bearable as possible.
The new sound effects aren’t half bad and I think I’ll absolutely be using them!

[Axyanz]

I am happy you actually took the time to read the feedback and criticism that we told you, even if not everything could be fixed we still appreciate that you even noticed and decided to change things for the community.

[Dat1nubIy (dat)]

Will we be able to unprivate audios once its privated though?
Or atleast tell us when you’ll allow us to unprivate audios.

[TheH0meLands]

Thank you for responding. Although the update is still bad, you guys definitely made it imporve. Thank you.

Although there’s more of a reason of “improving creator’s rights”. There is most likely another factor with this update that isn’t in the perspective of the developers. Like a 3rd party company forcing roblox to do this(most likely due to the lawsuit.).

Now we just need to be able to share audios + a larger upload limit for unverified creators.

[BravenwolfTFS (Braven)]

@BitFist

The asset privacy system on Roblox must be strengthened in order to continue to protect the rights of creators.

I do really think a bit more transparency here would be welcome, but I won’t push since I don’t know the full nature of the situation.

@BitFist

Creators who have edit access to an experience will be able to grant permissions for that experience to use audio assets from their account. These permissions will be managed from the Configure Item page of audio assets and will help those who have uploaded audio using personal accounts avoid re-uploading to a Group in order to keep the experience’s audio functional.

Please tell me, can we allow certain account-bound experiences to use group audio? Or can we only make this change for audio that is on an account? It would be nice to keep a “library” of audio that our group members can use in any of their games, and if this isn’t planned, I highly encourage for you to push for this to be added.

Lastly, I appreciate the update on the situation and the fact that we are being listened to. I was worried our backlash may have been falling on deaf ears, and I’m very happy to see that isn’t the case.

[BlockyToby (Toby)]

I’m glad that this update is not targeting the large library of SFX as this was an area that the APM library was lacking severely, and the new partnership with Pro Sound Effects is great news. Although, I am concerned about the length of time this might take because as mentioned in the post

@BitFist

This work will continue past March 22nd

If the system won’t be able to detect all of the SFX by then why keep the March 22nd date?
Can’t you delay the date to a time when you are sure that NO SOUND EFFECTS will be affected? This basically means that it’s like a coin-flip if the sound effects in our games will be public or not… What is the rush for? You should take your time to ensure no experiences are ruined from the update.

TL;DR if all sfx wont be public by the 22nd then just delay the change till they are all ready

[Y_VRN (Y_VRNDLL)]

I’m certainly happier with the clarifications, and much more the response. I really thought there wouldn’t be any, given how long the asset privacy post was up, and having 4k+ replies already. I’m looking forward to the audio upload limits too!

I might not have to worry about that one SFX sound file I found that is literally 6.1 seconds long anymore lol.

[ittrgrey (Ittr)]

As a foreword to this critical, but I feel necessary post, I think I speak for many in saying that many managerial heads need to roll for the utter disaster in both the scheduling and announcement of this update. It is clear that this has been rushed out the door, for some reason or another (many suspect due to a recent lawsuit, though the wording of the OP in this thread with relation to other assets makes me begin to doubt this…), and is NOT in the best interests of Roblox developers.

@BitFist

We deeply regret how disruptive the changes are, but unfortunately, they are necessary. The asset privacy system on Roblox must be strengthened in order to continue to protect the rights of creators.

Why are they “necessary”? Why must the system be “strengthened”? What reason genuinely is there for fundamentally breaking and destroying years worth of pre-existing games dependent on the current system - why can’t there, internally, be another legacy asset state that preserves the current permissions and usability of the asset, changeable to the new system by the asset owner? No one asked for this.

@BitFist

March 22nd is a hard deadline . We recognize that the schedule is abrupt and fundamentally changes how creators, experiences, and audio assets work together.

It’s more than abrupt. And why is it a “hard” deadline - what manager decided to plough on with this, as-is, in spite of an overwhelming community response? Whilst I don’t use many sound effects in my own experiences, this is simply not good enough notice or a sustainable timetable for millions to update their places.

@BitFist

Our vision is to give you full control over the privacy of your assets and how you share them with the rest of the community, other users and groups.

In a separate update, I will share more details on our long term plans for asset privacy.

If there is anything specific to audio having to be made private (e.g. lawsuit), we need absolute certainty and clarity on backwards compatibility for other asset types. It would be outright unacceptable to completely rid millions of places of their assets because they rely on the current permission system, and I deeply fear that the decision with audio is going to set a bad precedent which will irretrievably damage Roblox development.

Once more, I must repeat my call for greater transparency on decision-making from Roblox, and I do find this deeply disappointing.