How come you never release the game soundtrack under the music section of iTunes?

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by TheEvilRobot, Apr 5, 2013.

  1. TheEvilRobot

    TheEvilRobot Well-Known Member

    Apr 4, 2013
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    Just wondering. There are so many cool soundtracks that games have but I can only listen to them while playing the game.
     
  2. EvilArev

    EvilArev Well-Known Member

    Mar 24, 2011
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    Poeple don't buy it. Probably becuse it's hard for them to spend ~10 bucks for a music from a 3 dollar game.
     
  3. rickermortes

    rickermortes Member

    Apr 2, 2013
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    Game developer.
    Minnesota
    From what I gather, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, it's more difficult to get music onto iTunes than it is to get an app into the AppStore.

    I have one friend in a band on a major label and they're on iTunes. My friends who're independent do not. A lot of it, I believe, has something to do with licensing what whatnot. They want you to be a part of ASCAP or some other major music licensing system, but for many small bands it's not financially worth it.

    So, it would be easy, in a sense, to put out music on iTunes for indie game developers, but they'd have to roll through all the same troubles that indie bands do.
     
  4. One Side Software

    One Side Software Active Member

    Mar 4, 2012
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    Game Developer
    Atlanta, GA
    Many games don't have original soundtracks; in these cases the game developer licenses the music for in-game use but not stand-alone resell.
     
  5. TheEvilRobot

    TheEvilRobot Well-Known Member

    Apr 4, 2013
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    Thanks for the replies everyone :)
     
  6. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    Wellington
    We've released several of our soundtracks in several places including iTunes.

    You can preview/download most of them here http://pikpok.bandcamp.com/
     
  7. rickermortes

    rickermortes Member

    Apr 2, 2013
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    Game developer.
    Minnesota
    What sort of steps did you have to go through in order to do this? Was it very difficult? I'm curious not for my own games, but others as well as people I know.
     
  8. drelbs

    drelbs Well-Known Member

    Jun 25, 2009
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    It could also be that with many games, the audio files are right there in the IPA file... ;)

    That being said, I have bought game soundtracks, and am still waiting to throw my money at BBB if/when they ever get that Thumpies soundtrack made...
     
  9. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    Wellington
    You can set up an account on Bandcamp fairly easily at http://bandcamp.com/artists

    For distributing a soundtrack or individual music tracks to numerous stores, it is probably best to use an aggregation/submissions service like Tunecore http://www.tunecore.com/
     
  10. GlennX

    GlennX Well-Known Member

    May 10, 2009
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    I did it the other way round, sort of. In Ground Effect I used a song from a band that had been managed by a friend of a friend, I heard it and said "that'd be good game music without the vocal" and she got me a version made from the original mix tape before the vocal went in. All I paid for it was an iTunes link to the album it was from in the game. I have no idea if they made any sales but it seems like a good way of working, a band could get a lot of sales on a game that sold in the millions.
     
  11. spacecowgoesmoo

    spacecowgoesmoo Well-Known Member

    Sep 4, 2008
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    Composer / Level Designer @ Bovinedragon Software
    Los Angeles, USA
    Tunecore is very easy to use, but they charge $50 per album per year. For some people (me), that's much more money than the album would profit, so we just don't put it up there. I used to use Tunecore back in 2008 when they only charged $20 per album, but I was only making about $25 per year on each album, so the move to $50 would have put me in the red. Especially so considering that I only had 2 albums at the time, and any new releases would just make things worse.

    I moved all my stuff to Bandcamp last year; I figure if it's good enough for all the big name composers like C418 and BGC then it's good enough for me. They charge around 7% (I think) on all sales, but there's no fixed price upkeep like Tunecore has. And you don't have to pay the iTunes 30% fee on top of that. Unfortunately, my sales have gone down to zero since the move.. but I don't really care to be honest; they were selling near-zero in iTunes at their peak, and I've got my share of the app revenue side of things. I'm actually planning on making Trace 2 OST free for a while once it's released, to try and give the app a boost in the charts.

    BTW, if a dev has a soundtrack that you want but isn't up for sale, send them an email. We (composers) have archives of all our music just sitting on a hard drive somewhere, and would like nothing better than to throw a quick zip file together and send it to someone who will enjoy it :)
     

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