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Licensing Music For Games Big Business
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Billboard/Yahoo story discussing licensing music for videogames. As the article states, "Facing an industry-wide decline in mechanical royalties, music publishers and songwriters are increasingly turning to a new revenue source - video games." Although specially-composed soundtracks (a better way to go for a more integrated audiovisual experience?) are also discussed, licensing of existing songs seems to work as a"..flat-fee buyout that can range from $1,500 for a song from a new artist to $20,000 for six songs from Elvis Presley", with royalty-based licenses the 'holy grail', potentially bringing artists a great deal of money if their songs are featured on million-selling games.
Many games have always had good music, just look at the C&C series -- some of those tracks I still have in my playlist.
But real soundtracks for games? Offhand, I can only think of few games where the music so impressed me I bought it: 'The Longest Journey' is the most recent example, but the 'No One Lives Forever' games also had good music which really added to the experience, the original songs were exactly like the 60's songs of the world Kate Archer is supposed to live in.
As for licensing existing music -- how many games really fit with such music? There's only so many GTAs. I'd be willing to bet most movies have an original soundtrack, or at least a number of songs written especially for the movie. Why should another visual medium be more suited for 'recycled' music?
The article mentions 'Enter the Matrix' as an example of a game with a soundtrack, but I can't say the music of movie or game really did something for me.
Games are just like movies: those with great soundtracks are those where the soundtrack has been conceived as an integral part of the product from the start, but most only seem to have had some ambience painted on, perhaps with one good theme at most.
If more games come with complete --and original-- soundtracks, that will finally be a reason to buy the deluxe editions again: all too often I preorder a 'special edition' only to find some cheap addons.
An article about licensing music in games and not a single mention of GTA?
Never mind that, how about Rob Zombie / Dragula? Remember 2-3 years ago when that track appeared in every other game?
In Soviet Japan, game soundtracks are big business, just like movie soundtrack - the best known example is the Final Fantasy series (dozens and dozens of CDs!).
My personal favorite: Xenogears/Xenosaga.
Check out, say, GameMusic.com for the original Japanese overpriced releases or find the China/HK knockoffs in any number of places.
Warning: Extremely geeky. You do NOT want your [potential] girlfriend to catch you with these CDs.
I think as far as PC games go, the game industry will find that pop girl/boy band listeners and game players are largely disjoint sets. I would be less surprised to see crap music showing up in weaker game offerings for consoles, though. Hopefully, marketers are smart enough to realize that forcing inappropriate music in their games will cost them a lot of sales.
Also, there are quite a few really good composers out there writing original music for games. Jeremy Soule has had some stellar offerings in Morrowind, Icewind Dale 1, and other games. I always thought the tracks for Final Fantasies 8+ were really good, as well (though mp3s rather than sequenced music would probably have made 8's music a lot better). As for metal, industrial, and techno, a lot of racing games have had decent track selections.