So this is an idea that I’ve had in mind ever since I started playing this game that would frankly make it perfect, and would probably bring a large swath of new people to Tower Unite.
Allow for musicians, producers, etc to upload music that they’ve created to the workshop. From there users would be able to either -
A. Play it on various devices (TVs, radios, etc) in their condos and wherever devices are located
B. Play it on stages via musical equipment purchased from the stores in their condos (So that those stage decorations and whatnot have even more purpose!)
Along with this, the plaza could have a concert stage where users can put on either solo shows or group shows with friends, playing various music from the workshop.
It’s something that could be absolutely wonderful, and I don’t think it would be too hard to implement.
The obvious issue with is is people uploading music they don’t own the copyright to. The devs would have to screen through everything, and that’s a pretty big task.
If they could make it work, it really would be awesome. We just don’t want the devs getting sued.
Maybe they can do what ever it is that soundcloud does to stop copyrighted music from being uploaded? I tried to upload Ocean Man a few years ago and it caught onto me almost instantly.
I think a solution that could help make work easier for mods with this feature is if the person uploading the music had to provide a link to an official stream for the song they created (such as Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Spotify, etc) so that ones trying to upload copyrighted music could be removed from the workshop at first glance.
I don’t think uploading copyrighted content for music would be much of an issue. Most of the people who want to play copyrighted songs just use the Youtube / Soundcloud feature already present.
I think it would be better for allowing people to play mp3s and such, and having people upload those mp3s somewhere or something.
I’m not a musician myself but theres lots of music that the artist allows you to do whatever with that I enjoy, but the artist wouldnt take a bunch of time to upload it to tower unite.
The difference between playing a song via youtube and having a workshop upload is that the latter actually downloads the file to your computer, which is distribution.
@Andech and @Voldrak You’d be surprised how many artists would be willing to upload their music to Steam (hell, I’d upload my own discography of songs I’ve made, over 250 songs in total). Steam has a WIDE community of musicians, and I’ve talked to quite a few on Tower Unite as well. Most of them (myself included) either aren’t signed or refuse to sign to a label, so distribution isn’t as much of an issue.
Yes but most known artists wouldnt give a shit about uploading to steam. Most of my music taste is lapfox trax, which you to do whatever you want with their music as long as you give credit and dont try and pass it off as their own. They’ve got thousands of songs, they wouldnt spend the time to upload it all to TU.
@BlackMalachite I’m not talking about user created music, I’m talking about people uploading other peoples music. Things they don’t have the copyright to. I’m all for users uploading their own music for free play in TU, but there would have to be a manual screening or an automatic copyright detection, both of which are highly unrealistic implementations for a small team like PixelTail.
Again, I am for user created content being available in TU, the problem lies with the potential to abuse the system and violate copyright. PixelTail could go through and delete violating uploads, but that could prove a huge task for a small team, and if anything slips through the cracks, PixelTail are the ones liable for being sued.
(Also, I too make music and would love to share it. I’m not trying to stifle community creativity. We just have to look at what this sort of implementation entails, both work-wise and legally)
@Voldrak Sure, most known artists wouldn’t care. However, having the option for a game like this + in game concerts and whatnot. I’ve also talked to a lot of musicians who would be more than willingly to upload their music to TU.
@Andech I completely agree, but there are games on Steam that manage to allow user music uploads for others to download just fine (Robot Roller Disco Derby comes to mind) and there are plenty of Steam games in which users can play their own music (Audiosurf, Beat Hazard, etc). None of the games I mentioned are big teams, they’re smaller teams like PixelTail. I’m sure there’s some sort of feasible way to manage it.
A grand issue here would be preventing copyrighted tracks, stuff inevitably gets past content ID which in and out of itself requires tons of setting up. I get the motivation (having ie non playable outside of tower versions of music, sorta like a DRM) but it’d probably be too much work to make sure that it doesn’t become an issue of (technically) illegal distribution, which stuff like Osu (which do similar) afaik have to deal with from time to time.
As you say though stuff like Disco Dodgeball can do it, but it’s more the risk of it really, as the person above you said, PixelTail would be liable, which is probably something they don’t want to get involved with.
In the meantime, I suggest an unlisted playlist on YouTube or an unlisted track on SoundCloud for these purposes. Did it with my Eurobeat mixes and it worked like a charm.
if you’re talking about uploading music files then that’s going to 100% be abused to distribute copyrighted materials which is going to be a legal headache for pixeltail. but something like sharing note patterns for the instruments would be fine (e.g. sharing piano music sheets for use with the ingame piano item).
if you need to play music, use a media player item and load the song through youtube or soundcloud.
Starbound lets you play music on its instruments that is read from ABC files, which are basically pieces of sheet music written entirely in ASCII. It’s a pretty easy notation to learn, and there is also some free software that will generate it for you. Maybe this would be a viable compromise? (You’d have to be able to read and transcribe music to use this, obviously. Though you can always share ABC files with people.)
If the legal headache would be too much, at the very least we could upgrade the media player to allow some more sites to be embedded (such as Bandcamp, Spotify, etc).