Videogame Soundtracks: An Untapped Resource?

Streamline Studios says publishers are missing out on opportunities provided by videogame soundtracks by failing to make them available to gamers as separate products.

Streamline joined with Black Hole Recordings in December 2008 to launch an audio division that will offer "comprehensive music and audio services" to developers and publishers, and also release game soundtracks under the Streamline Records label. The studio has previously helped develop original soundtracks for games including Gears of War, Unreal Tournament and Saint's Row.

"If you think about how much music is made in the games industry, the investment that goes into it compared to general game budgets is about 2-4 per cent, it's pretty small," Daniel Kozlov of Streamline said in an interview with GamesIndustry. "But at the same time big publishers who have so many IPs have libraries of stuff that's just sitting there not doing anything."

"Some people love that music - I remember the Heroes of Might & Magic series had beautiful music, some of which was licensed, some was original, but I was wishing I could download the tracks, but I couldn't find them anywhere online," he continued. "That's exactly where a company like this comes in and offers to put that library online, which is virtually cost-free, and even if you only have five hundred people buy it you'll probably break even. It just makes so much sense."

Does it make sense? PC gamers have the advantage of usually being able to extract in-game music with little difficulty, but for console gamers this could be a real boon. Videogame music has had a cult following for years, but high-profile game soundtracks are growing increasingly viable as stand-alone products for the mainstream market, and while major companies like Electronic Arts have the wherewithal to release their music independently or bundle it as a bonus, smaller developers and publishers often do not. But the obvious market here is gamers, and predicting whether they'd view this as a boon or a cheap cash-grab is tricky, to say the least.

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I find myself importing soundtracks from the land of the rising sun every time the rare moment comes when I have money to spare, I'm definitely all for western companies delving into the OST market.

You may want to have a look at Sumthing Digital, too; they're offering iTunes-like distribution for a lot of game soundtracks. (Most notably the Halo series, which is how they came to my attention, but they also have Gears of War, Bionic Commando, Fable, Brothers in Arms, Devil May Cry...) I haven't heard too many complaints of this being a "cheap cash-grab" myself.

I'm glad to see more companies doing this; there's a lot of great art mouldering unused despite pent-up demand, a big reason (IMO) that the Video Games Live idea succeeded as greatly as it has. Digital distribution just makes sense for this even if you end up with low-volume sales... and there's always the chance you'll hit it big.

-- Steve

I would be on this like Godzilla on Tokyo.

Malygris:
Does it make sense? PC gamers have the advantage of usually being able to extract in-game music with little difficulty, but for console gamers this could be a real boon. Videogame music has had a cult following for years, but high-profile game soundtracks are growing increasingly viable as stand-alone products for the mainstream market, and while major companies like Electronic Arts have the wherewithal to release their music independently or bundle it as a bonus, smaller developers and publishers often do not. But the obvious market here is gamers, and predicting whether they'd view this as a boon or a cheap cash-grab is tricky, to say the least.

I could have extracted Still Alive from Portal, sure...but I bought it from The Orange Box soundtrack on Amazon MP3 instead, because I could.

Look at sites like vgmusic.com and the use of video game themes as ringtones. I think a lot of gamers would appreciate the chance to grab their favorite tracks legally, especially in an a la carte form like iTunes or Amazon MP3 (no DRM, please). Small developers could release their music for digital distribution too, from their websites, using infrastructure they almost certainly already have.

Personally, I was super excited that my copy of Crono Trigger DS came with a soundtrack CD, and I often spring for the collector's edition version of games if it includes a music CD. I really hope more game developers release the music - it's a shame to put that much artistic effort into music, something that's got lasting appeal, then never give people the chance to enjoy it outside of the (generally) finite hours of gameplay the game itself provides.

Susan Arendt:
I would be on this like Godzilla on Tokyo.

Same here, plus it would be great gifts as well. It is really hard to find some really good video game music that was put in the game or an artist that is making music around video games.

Whenever i go to italy for the holidays, i download my music from limewire. HA. Take that, governments who want people to pay for their music. Especially you britain.

I'm always on the lookout for game soundtracks. They don't easily show up, but I recently bought the the "Megaman 9 8-bit" and "Orange Box" soundtracks.

Sadly though, many only come with the games' limited editions.

As for now, I'm still pursuing that "Patapon" soundtrack.

I've always loved grabbing good videogame music, I'm listening to the soundtracks of Final Fantasys 6-12 right now.

Yeah they should at least digital distribute music. Who wouldn't jam out to the Mario song or Links Overworld theme?

Susan Arendt:
I would be on this like Godzilla on Tokyo.

You took the words right out of my mouth.
And then made them better.

My iTunes has over 2032 tracks from video games. While I love my collection, the fact that I had to attain them through... less-than-legal means always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I would so jump at the chance to get them legally.

Painkiller had one of the best soundtracks and its available on a cd in the triple dose bundle.

Look at the amount of work they put into the music of Super Smash Brothers Brawl. About 250 or so distinct tracks, some remixed, some original, and not a one was "bad". I found myself listening to tracks in the sound test while cleaning the house or doing homework more than I found myself actually playing the game.

Audiosurf comes with The Orange Box Soundtracks in wonderful MP3 format, and I'm enjoying them immensely. To get them, simply go to C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\engine\Orange Box Soundtrack. It has all the songs from The Orange Box, as well as Half Life 1. Enjoy it if you have it!

I like it when the game music is freely availible in a folder in the game files. With the Unreal Anthology, you get a bonus disk with the best tracks from Unreal, Unreal Tournement & Unreal Tournement 2004 (not Unreal 2 for some reason). I use 'fightcastle' as my alarm in the morning.

Thank god I don't have to keep listening to game music from Youtube.

Every big film released nowadays has a soundtrack CD released with it so it was only a matter of time games rightly followed suit.

This would be incredible. I've imported a few soundtracks in the past (mostly JRPGs), but it's an annoyance I'd rather not deal with. If I could get game soundtracks locally I absolutely would. It's one of my favorite things when games come prepackaged with soundtrack discs like the last several Personas have.

Simply: Yes.

While plenty of noteworthy game soundtracks are already available (Michael Giacchino's classy and brassy Medal of Honor scores were early, noteworthy releases), a lot of seemingly great scores are still unavailable. When the costs to release these things electronically via Amazon and iTunes appear to be so low, I can't figure out why this is.

Sometimes these soundtracks are held up by rights issues, as I understand is the case with the formidable amount of music produced for Lord of the Rings Online. (The gist of it, as I understand it, is that Turbine simply doesn't have a license to sell music derivative of Tolkien's works - but they gave quite a bit of it away online not long ago.)

Some companies seem to regard their soundtracks as hyper-niche value-add items only, when in fact they're maybe only regular-niche. I'm thinking, right now, of UbiSoft, who have thus far only released the new Prince of Persia music as a menu-item in a grab-bag bonus DVD in the Limited Edition product. What music is there is good stuff, but what we're given is brief, much-cut, and poorly presented - it's like letting a DVD menu play so you can hear the music on it. That's not a soundtrack.

Compare that to Amon Tobin's stellar work for Ubi's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which got it's own release that is, as mixed and released, a great stand-alone album on top of being a great soundtrack.

John Debney's killer score for Lair (a game I have not, and don't expect to, play) is a terrific work - one of my current-favorite soundtracks to write to - but if I hadn't read on a blog somewhere that it was available (by searching) at the iTunes store I would never have found it. I get that the market for soundtracks is small, and game soundtracks smaller, but it still seems disproportionately hard to find some of this music.

Meanwhile, the biggest offender of 2008 when it comes to withholding soundtracks, must be LucasArts. Mark Griskey's score for The Force Unleashed is excellent - nuanced, mature, and seemingly wonderfully produced. I'd love to hear a good reason why the 11 tracks released on a promotional CD (and at the excellent Tracksounds blog here: http://tracksounds.blogspot.com/2008/08/listen-to-11-tracks-from-force.html) aren't available at the iTunes store right now. I'd be even more delighted if they expanded that track list with cuts (call them remixes, if you like) that mash up elements of the John Williams cues with Griskey's work, as the game itself does during play.

I am eager to give LucasArts $7.99 or so for something like 31 minutes of Star Wars music. Why don't they want my money?

I agree, I get a good chunk of my music from games like NHL 2009, Saint's Row, Burnout, Need For Speed, and other games with actual songs, because I know they put songs in that I like, and if they actually put these out in disk form, I might just be inclined to buy that instead of downloading them off the internet like I do now.