Riot Music: Creator-Safe Guidelines

Riot Music is committed to supporting streamers and contenting creators. We have outlined some guidelines and FAQs for those who often use our music when making content.
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RIOT ASHEKANDI

Hi everyone!

As you may have seen a few weeks ago, we made a commitment to offer better support for streamers and content creators when it comes to their use of Riot Games music. We have continued to follow conversations many of you have had about the difficulties in this space, and we hope to be able to provide you with more options for music to use in your content as we move forward.

We’re excited that so many streamers and content creators have used our Creator-Safe Playlist since we put it live a few weeks ago, and, like we mentioned, we are committed to continuing to expand the options you have for music available for use in content for your community.

This is going to be a long article, but one that we plan to keep updated, and one that we hope can help provide some context, direction, and examples here to help bring a better understanding to how Riot is working in the world of music.

Context — How Riot Works With Music

The music industry is ever-changing and, even for us, fairly complex. There are built in copyright laws, governing entities, and a multitude of well established business entities within the music industry. While navigating this space, we want to be good partners with those we work with so that we can continue to create new and exciting music for our players and fans. Our partners include fellow music artists, songwriters, producers, labels, music publishers and more.

While we don’t think it would be worthwhile to explain every facet of how music is made and how deals are done, we do think that having context about why certain music that Riot has had a hand in is restricted from general use by streamers and content creators.

When a song such as a champion theme is created, these songs are usually done entirely in-house at Riot, or with direct partners of Riot. Because of that, Riot retains full rights to the composition and the sound recording itself. In this case, we can offer these songs for streamers and content creators to use in their streams, videos, etc.

However, things start to get a little complex when other artists or labels (and songwriters and publishers) are involved. There’s a bit of “middle-ground” where we have collaborated with artists on certain tracks and albums, and since a majority of the songs are remixes of compositions that Riot fully owns, we are still able to offer most of it to streamers and content creators for use in whatever way they want.

Finally, the complexities really come into play when the composition itself isn’t owned by Riot, or when Riot has collaborated closely with other artists in creating the song. This is most often seen in some of our bigger songs, most prevalently, recently with K/DA and True Damage. Due to the nature of complex music agreements and multiple ownership structure, we can’t clear the use of them to streamers or content creators.

Direction and Guidelines

Because of those complexities, we’ve worked to help curate a list of music that Riot considers to be safe for streamers and content creators to use, as well as to try to set some general guidelines that are easy to understand. You can find our Creator-Safe Playlist on Spotify for ease of listening and on Soundcloud which is download-enabled.

First, any use of our music must comply with the Riot’s Legal Jibber Jabber in all respects. You can review those terms here.

The songs on the Creator-Safe Playlist are for streamers and content creators. Without a license, Riot does not offer these songs for use to businesses or other organizations without our permission for any purpose.

To touch on platforms briefly, our music can be used on almost any online content platform such as Twitch, YouTube, etc. When it comes to Twitch and YouTube, there is also a conversation to be had in regards to monetization. In general, content that uses music from the Creator-Safe playlist only can be monetized if it adheres to Riot’s Legal Jibber Jabber, the guidelines above, and as long as your content isn’t commercially exploiting the music that is being offered (for clarity, we’ll give examples of what we consider commercial exploitation in the next section).

Music Credit

When using our music, please apply the following credit where applicable:
Song title: [ ]
Artists: [ ]
Courtesy of Riot Games [link to these guidelines]

FAQ, Definitions, and Examples

  • What does it mean to commercially exploit music?
    • To sell, monetize, or otherwise redistribute the music itself
    • Use in content that has the sole purpose of advertising or selling a product or service.
    • Commercialization is further defined in Riot’s Legal Jibber Jabber.
  • What does it mean to redistribute?
    • There needs to be a certain amount of value added when reposting a song.
    • Remixes or covers are generally fine, but posting a song that is already live on an official channel for the sake of posting it will probably end up with that music being removed.
  • I am streaming on <Streaming Platform>. Can I use Riot music in the intro/background/outro for my stream?
    • Yes, with some caveats. You can use any music from the Creator-Safe Playlist without any danger of demonetization or DMCA claims (per guidelines above). When using music from outside that playlist, Riot cannot make any guarantee that your streams or VODs will be unaffected.
  • I am making a non-live video series that will be uploaded to <Content Platform>. Can I use Riot music in the intro/background/outro of my series?
    • Yes, with the same caveats as before. But also it is important the music you use is not commercially exploited in your videos.
  • I don’t see my favorite song on the list, does that mean I can’t use it?
    • In general, yes. If a song is not on the Creator-Safe playlist, it generally means you will need a license from Riot and/or the copyright owner to use it.
    • As we mentioned earlier in the article, music that is made in collaboration with external studios or labels sometimes have more complexities in their contracts and deal structures.
  • Can I expect to see those songs on this list in the future?
    • We have plans for new projects that will be made with streamers and content creators in mind which should avoid this in the future, but for now we have the list of Creator-Safe Songs which can be used as per the guidelines above.
  • What is the process for using these songs?
    • Search our Spotify and Soundcloud Creator-Safe playlists for songs.
    • If using our music for your video or similar content, please include music credits per Crediting guidelines above.
    • No process! Just stream them from Spotify or download your favorites from Soundcloud and you’re good to go as long as they are from the Creator-Safe playlist.

List of Creator-Safe Songs

Below you will find all of the music that is safe to use while utilizing these guidelines. You can download the songs directly from SoundCloud

Spotify Creator-Safe Playlist

SoundCloud Creator-Safe Playlist