new Roblox-DistroKid deal leaves indie artists “unpaid” –

Roblox appears to be awash with money at the moment – recent financial results showed that 16.5 million users spent money on its Robux currency and subscriptions every month, and the average in-app spending per daily active user was $12.01. Digital creator/experience/gaming platforms like Roblox are where young people – particularly the Gen Z and Gen A markets that the music industry is endlessly keen to court – are spending their time. Labels and teams are thus eager to get their artists (like Bebe Rexha or even… Slick Rick) and songs into the platform to connect with these young users, conscious that music consumption is rapidly changing. As Lickd’s Mark Cantwell put it in a recent interview with Music Ally, “there are kids born now that will never ever use any streaming service,” because they consume music in platforms like Roblox instead.

Indie artists will be looking at this large, young, desirable audience, who are eager to listen to music while spending real money on virtual money, and may investigate how to get their music onto the platform too. According to a new report by MBW, they might want to consider their options carefully. Roblox has created a partnership with distributor DistroKid, MBW says, which will allow Roblox developers (i.e. users creating digital experiences in Roblox) to use their music. This is a good thing, in the sense that one plucky developer could catapult a song to an enormous audience (top Roblox games have steady user numbers measured in the tens of thousands.) But, MBW says, there’s a catch in the Roblox-DistroKid partnership: the opt-in form for independent artists to submit their music to the beta programme makes it clear that artists won’t be paid when their music is used, saying that “Music use on Roblox is currently not monetised: you are granting rights for Roblox developers to use [their] music on a gratis basis”. Artists who want to take part must also not be part of a PRO.

Sebastian Wolff, co-founder of music-rights firm Loudr and game music rights firm Materia Music was blunt in his assessment: “There is so much to fix with game music and game industry’s valuation of audio.”

This year both UMG and WMG announced ways of monetising their music on Roblox  via a tool called ‘Boombox’  which creates royalties and plays count towards the Billboard chart.  And in 2023, Roblox paid out $740.8m to its community of developers. Indie artists may be forgiven for feeling a little confused: after all, they are the “developers” of digital works that can be experienced inside Roblox too. Indie artists are like any other: they just want to get paid when their music is used. Roblox and DistroKid have not yet commented on the news report.