Unsigned music acts, please read!

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue May 22, 2007 1:07 pm

If you have created some ambient music and would like to hear it in a video game, specifically a graphical text adventure, please write me a PM or reply in this thread for further information.

The game I am making will be commercial in some way but I unfortunately cannot afford to pay you for the use of your song, as it being a text games means that it is unlikely that it will make any money. Anyway, I promise the game will rock.

-- Robb

Bugs · Post by **Bugs** » Tue May 22, 2007 1:26 pm

Way to sell it, Bobby.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Tue May 22, 2007 1:49 pm

I'm trying to set expectations correctly.

What are the odds that I might get a piece of music you wrote for this thing, Bugs?? Even if it has vocals, that's cool with me.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed May 23, 2007 1:22 pm

COME ON JIMMY

Bugs · Post by **Bugs** » Wed May 23, 2007 1:45 pm

Well, that would depend on several things.

What quality recording do you need?

Do I retain the rights?

What percentage of the box office do I get when it's eventually optioned as a movie script for being CHOCK FULL OF AWESOMENESS?

Vitriola · Post by **Vitriola** » Wed May 23, 2007 1:53 pm

Maybe we should both actually listen to the Velvet Cacoon disk that Mr. Full Moon there gave me as a promo. Ambient black metal! They probably wouldn't even charge you!

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed May 23, 2007 2:14 pm

Bugs wrote:Well, that would depend on several things.

What quality recording do you need?

128kb to 192. If it gets any louder than that then everyone trying to download the game on dialup will flip their shit about a 100 MB "text game."

Do I retain the rights?

Absolutely, totally and completely, yes. Even if everything else I say on this BBS is nonsense, which it probably is, there is absolutely no desire, ability or indication on my part that I am grabbing exclusive anything when it comes to other people's music.

What percentage of the box office do I get when it's eventually optioned as a movie script for being CHOCK FULL OF AWESOMENESS?

Actually, if it sells more than Gish did* then I do hope to give musicians a percentage of the profits.

*Gish is an indie game that released sales numbers. In my experience, indie games releasing sales numbers is kind of rare. Gish sold in the high 4,000s, so a preliminary agreement a musician and I came to regarding the thing I am working on is that, should the game sell more than 5,000 copies, money will flow from me to him. I basically want people who help me out for free when I am making the game to earn some money if the game is an unexpected hit. Of course, since at least two members of your band were foolish enough to leave you hanging, the profits would be ALL YOURS! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed May 23, 2007 2:21 pm

Vitriola wrote:Maybe we should both actually listen to the Velver Cacoon disk that Mr. Full Moon there gave me as a promo. Ambient black metal! They probably wouldn't even charge you!

As a matter of fact, if you know any metal acts that aren't signed it would be worth my contacting them. Although I went to a site last night that offered music for projects such as video games, documentaries, commercials and such. They want $4500 to license a song. I'm really surprised that there is no mechanism in place for people to license music for amounts in the neighborhood of $10 or so. And I am not discounting the hard work or the talent used in making music. But the effort required to write and program a video game is substantially more than a guy making three minutes of trance. The payment schemes are completely out of whack.

AArdvark · Post by **AArdvark** » Wed May 23, 2007 3:25 pm

You can have 'Feces in the Fire' if you really get desperate.

I could make a metal version, no problemo.

THE
BOTTOM OF THE
BARREL
AARDVARK

Bugs · Post by **Bugs** » Wed May 23, 2007 4:44 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:128kb to 192. If it gets any louder than that then everyone trying to download the game on dialup will flip their shit about a 100 MB "text game."

Heh... "louder." Well, let me be rephrase... Radio quality? Decent demo quality? Microcassette recorder in my pocket quality? Or, in Jonseyspeak, I guess: Radio loudness? Or demo loudness?

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Wed May 23, 2007 5:08 pm

...

... Not sure why I put "louder" there. This is what I get for writing a post at work.

Anyway, 128kbps is perfectly fine. Larger file sizes affect the ultimate game size (as MP3s don't compress in Hugo) and cause people on dial-up to complain. Which I am not too concerned about, as it's 2007 and anyone serious about grabbing stuff from the Internet has dealt with poor transfer speeds for many, many years now. I should be the last person a dial-up user is angry at, as I have at least made some games that download very quickly, with no multimedia components whatsoever.

So yeah, between a 128kbps sampled file and a .wav, 160 is a nice compromise.

hygraed · Post by **hygraed** » Wed May 23, 2007 6:56 pm

In my opinion, 128k would be a fine bitrate for game music. Most people don't have rabid audiophile ears, and there will be no audible difference between 128k and 160k. The fact that it is background music, and not the focus of the experience, further decreases the perceptible difference between the two bitrates. In terms of filesize, a few tracks at 128k would be a few megabytes smaller than the same number of tracks at 160k.

My two cents, anyway. It's not my game or my music, but it's something to think about.

Vitriola · Post by **Vitriola** » Wed May 23, 2007 7:27 pm

Vitriola wrote:Maybe we should both actually listen to the Velvet Cacoon disk that Mr. Full Moon there gave me as a promo.

Correction, he gave me a Striborg disk. I shall download VC!

Lysander · Post by **Lysander** » Sat May 26, 2007 11:07 pm

I will see about writing a song specifically for this game.

Ice Cream Jonsey · Post by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun May 27, 2007 9:39 am

hygraed wrote:In my opinion, 128k would be a fine bitrate for game music. Most people don't have rabid audiophile ears, and there will be no audible difference between 128k and 160k. The fact that it is background music, and not the focus of the experience, further decreases the perceptible difference between the two bitrates. In terms of filesize, a few tracks at 128k would be a few megabytes smaller than the same number of tracks at 160k.

My two cents, anyway. It's not my game or my music, but it's something to think about.

Yeah, I'm following you. Probably the best way to do it is to get the best quality song possible and then downsample it to 128. Some people have asked for soundtracks in the past, and being able to provide that is always cool.

itgirl · Post by **itgirl** » Sun May 27, 2007 8:28 pm

I wonder if I can find the members of my old band to see if "My Thumb is Raw and Pussy" (puss-y, as in filled with puss, not a slag term for genetalia) is available.