Video Game Music Now Available on iTunes

That's right -- your favorite video game music will now be available on iTunes. That is, your favorite music from EA games.



Old-school gamers like Pete and myself have more than just a fond place in our hearts for the music in our games of yore. Whether it's the early 8-bit "bleep-blop-bloop"-style of Super Mario Bros. or the sweeping Wagner/Götterdämmerung orchestration of Final Fantasy VII (a recurring theme on this blog), we're down with the oft-ignored musical subgenre known simply as "game music". What a coup, then, that the general public can get into the same sort of music we've been fans of for ages!



Well, sort of. Don't expect any of the video game music you know and love -- unless it's from the past couple of years.

EA has contracted artists such as Good Charlotte, Scissor Sisters, and Franz Ferdinand to record music for their games.



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"If it's in the game, it's now available for fans to own. We consider this to be the next major step in evolving the music discovery experience," said Stever Schnur, music and marketing executive at EA.

Crap! This just means the music licensed for (or, in some cases, produced for) EA games will make it onto iTunes. Old-skool gamers, you're out of luck: No 8-bit music for you.



The plan also seems, to me at least, to be another key selling point to encourage music labels to shell out cash to get their artists featured in games: sign with EA, get your music hyped in a major title, AND get a cut of iTunes sales. Of course, the cynical observer would note that handing over so much control of in-game music to the biz-dev folks -- away from the game developers -- takes away from the creative focus of a title, and there by becomes another reason why games aren't as good as they used to be, why they're chock-full of mediocre-but-big-budgeted musical artists, why major labels typically get premium placement on AAA titles, why the Apocalypse is on its way, etc. etc. etc.



Oh, and get this bit of inanity:

[EA] even signed on The Black-Eyed Peas to re-record some of their songs in the nonsense language known as Simlish for its popular "The Sims" franchise.

I guess I'm not surprised that the B.E.P.s would stoop so low. But, man... What's the point?



Also of note is that EA evidently already offered some sort of CD-purchase service on its Web site, dubbed "Trax". Sounds vaguely familiar. Has anyone heard of this?



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