Indiegamemusic.com Project Startup

[mr_lou]

Hello fellow game-developers

I'm writing you because I'm creating a site at www.indiegamemusic.com which I plan to become a link between indie game developers and musicians. This letter is an invitation to you as an indie game-developer, to participate in the design phase with your suggestions and ideas so that the site will end up being something you would like to use.

The idea
In short, I want to make it easy for the indie game-developers (you) to find good music for your games, free for freeware games and cheap for resale. A few steps I have in mind so far, is that you
* go to indiegamemusic.com
* click "Search", and input your search criteria
* listen to results and find contact information to the artist

Your search criterias may be
* a specific format (mmf, midi, mod, xm, s3m, mp3, ogg etc)
* a specific license (free for freeware? available for non-exclusive resale? available for exclusive resale?)
* max file size
* style
* category (music, sound-scape, sound-effect, loop part)
* max channels or polyphony
* max price
* maybe preferred bpm

So... That's the idea. What do you think? If this sounds like an interesting project to you, feel free to participate with ideas and feedback at mr_lou@vip.cybercity.dk

Some of the things I'd like some feedback about is
* how should payment happen? Paypal? Bank-transfer? Game-developer contacting artist and agreeing their own method of payment?
* what stuff would you like to be able to search for? are there some of the above mentioned search criterias you don't need? why?
* what formats are you mostly interested in, and why?a
* and of course: do you think you'd use such a tool like IndieGameMusic.com?



Sincerely,
Roald Strauss
Mr.Lou / Dewfall Productions
www.dewfall.dk
www.lublu.dk

 

[don]

While this certainly isn't a bad idea, there's one problem with it - if you're uploading your tunes to let the devs select them, you don't have the "I'm crafting the music especially for the game" situation which I personally always preferred. That's why I never participated in that other place (I think it was PokeParadox's blog or site or whatever), yet I have more tunes created for gamepork homebrew in my portfolio than anyone else, most probably. It's less personal and not tailored towards the game.

 

[Lineus]

I agree with don's statement - it's less personal. However, if it was a ay of contacting the authors based on samples from their portfolio, it would be a great way of connecting and discussing a comission. I'll be watching this... gonna need some tunes soon.

 

[mr_lou]

While this certainly isn't a bad idea, there's one problem with it - if you're uploading your tunes to let the devs select them, you don't have the "I'm crafting the music especially for the game" situation which I personally always preferred. That's why I never participated in that other place (I think it was PokeParadox's blog or site or whatever), yet I have more tunes created for gamepork homebrew in my portfolio than anyone else, most probably. It's less personal and not tailored towards the game.

Sounds to me like you're a musician? If so, please read this instead:
http://www.ctgmusic.com/topic.php?id=8664

A lot of good debate going on there, from the musicians point of view.

I can't see a problem with the missing "I'm crafting the music especially for the game" thingy, except that in cases where the musician do infact compose the music especially for the game, it requires a lot of time, and therefor cost a lot of money.
Meanwhile a lot of musicians do a lot of music weekly anyway. Why not put these tracks on display, and offer a low price resale license? But please participate in the debate from the musicians point of view at the CTG Music site. I'd like to keep this thread here a debate from the developers point of view. (I'm receiving feedback from a few places).

Wouldn't you, as a game-developer, appreciate such a site? I mean, is it it important for you as a game-developer, that your musician didn't specifically have your game in mind when he did the track(s)?

I agree with don's statement - it's less personal. However, if it was a ay of contacting the authors based on samples from their portfolio, it would be a great way of connecting and discussing a comission. I'll be watching this... gonna need some tunes soon.

You won't have a problem finding a musician to do music for your game, if you're willing to pay for it. But in most cases, indie game developers don't want to pay a whole lot of money for the music in their games. That's why I think this IndieGameMusic.com site is a good idea.

Buying premade music should be cheaper than buying project-work.

 

[don]

Excuse me if I'm too lazy to sign up to another forum so I can participate in a discussion, that's why I'm answering here. I agree that it might not make a huge difference to a game developer (especially if we're talking homebrew, not commercial indie games) if they're looking/listening through a list of tunes until they find something that's appropriate, or if they get something custom tailored towards their game.
Personally, I pretty much only do music-on-demand, since I rarely finish any tunes unless they're "ordered". If you're churning out massive amounts of tracks each month, it's not a bad idea to add them to a database of this kind.
Regarding Gamepork - and probably the future pandora - scene, money isn't a big issue since most games are free anyway.
I do not doubt the excellence of your idea, places to accumulate free/lowcost/alternative music are always good, but I personally have a problem with the "premade music" attitude.

 

[mr_lou]

Personally, I pretty much only do music-on-demand, since I rarely finish any tunes unless they're "ordered". If you're churning out massive amounts of tracks each month, it's not a bad idea to add them to a database of this kind.

I'm not doing loads of tracks each month, and I don't have the time nor interest in doing music pr. request (because I have a daytime job, sparetime game-development and other stuff going on as well).
But I like doing a track every now and then, mostly to take up a challenge like e.g. "Try to do fit all this into 4-channels somehow", or "Try to make a midi, xm and mp3 version of the same track". What should I do with it then, when it's done? I think I'll put it on display for game-developers to use if they want. I'm much more interested in seeing my work in some production, rather than just leaving it to collect dust on my hard disc.

Regarding Gamepork - and probably the future pandora - scene, money isn't a big issue since most games are free anyway.

How is money not an issue when games are free? I think you'll have more trouble finding a musician that'll do music for free, than one that'll do it for money.
But game developers releasing freeware games could benefit a lot from IndieGameMusic.com, since I'm sure many musicians will offer their music for free to freeware games.

I do not doubt the excellence of your idea, places to accumulate free/lowcost/alternative music are always good, but I personally have a problem with the "premade music" attitude.

Fair enough, thanks for sharing. I do need to know your opinion.

May I ask what kind of music you do? Do you have a site anywhere? What formats are you doing? Can I hear an example of your work anywhere?

 

[don]

How is money not an issue when games are free? I think you'll have more trouble finding a musician that'll do music for free, than one that'll do it for money.
But game developers releasing freeware games could benefit a lot from IndieGameMusic.com, since I'm sure many musicians will offer their music for free to freeware games.

Of course you can convince more musicians to do music for you if you decide to pay them. That is not the question. However, If someone in the gamepork dev scene decides to do a freeware game, chances are very slim that he's ready to shell out cash for the music - he'd simply use something he can find for free (CC music, classical music like nickspoon did for Mr. Block or whatever it was called, and so on). I do not have a problem with supporting the homebrew game scene (well, any homebrew game scene, no matter if gamepork, PC or something else) with tunes made for that occasion only. Keep in mind that I still don't think your tune database wouldn't be beneficiary to devs. This is just my personal opinion.

May I ask what kind of music you do? Do you have a site anywhere? What formats are you doing? Can I hear an example of your work anywhere?

I'm doing pretty much any style that i'm asked for. I did music for various GP32 projects (woogal's lacuna, grapefrukt's pizzaworm, my own games unimerc, flipover, cavecopter, liquid seawolf...), GP2X projects (mostly joyrider's games like blockdude, znax, blips..., a few unreleased ones like Orkie's puzzle game, can't remember the name atm...) and one flash game so far (grapefrukt's eater of worlds). Some of them being chiptunes, others being mods with 'proper' samples, and some also being mp3/ogg, which is my preferred format these days. I have been meaning to do a portfolio page forever, but i couldn't be arsed yet.

 

[mr_lou]

If someone in the gamepork dev scene decides to do a freeware game, chances are very slim that he's ready to shell out cash for the music - he'd simply use something he can find for free (CC music, classical music like nickspoon did for Mr. Block or whatever it was called, and so on).

Aah, of course. That's what I didn't think about. So we agree that finding free music isn't a problem.

I'm doing pretty much any style that i'm asked for. I did music for various GP32 projects (woogal's lacuna, grapefrukt's pizzaworm, my own games unimerc, flipover, cavecopter, liquid seawolf...), GP2X projects (mostly joyrider's games like blockdude, znax, blips..., a few unreleased ones like Orkie's puzzle game, can't remember the name atm...) and one flash game so far (grapefrukt's eater of worlds). Some of them being chiptunes, others being mods with 'proper' samples, and some also being mp3/ogg, which is my preferred format these days. I have been meaning to do a portfolio page forever, but i couldn't be arsed yet.

I did have a look at your page (btw, link to Cavecopter download is dead), but I only have a GP2x device so I can't run GP32 stuff (right?).
Anyway, downloaded Blips and Znax. Nice 4-channel mod music there. B) Exactly the kind of stuff many composers have put to collect dust on their harddisks.

Well, if you ever by some unexplainable phenomena or accident happens to compose a mod without anyone requesting it, you could consider making it available at IndieGameMusic.com when it's done.

Thanks for your feedback. Much appreciated.

 

[zacaj]

Have the music sorted into catagories by what kinds of games it sounds good with, and wether it relaxes you or gets your adrenaline pumping(look at the different music is Tetris for the NES, MUSIC 1 gets you 'woken up' and MUSIC 3 relaxes you, it actrually does affect gameplay), and have multiple licences(freeware, commercial) available

 

[mr_lou]

Have the music sorted into catagories by what kinds of games it sounds good with, and wether it relaxes you or gets your adrenaline pumping(look at the different music is Tetris for the NES, MUSIC 1 gets you 'woken up' and MUSIC 3 relaxes you, it actrually does affect gameplay), and have multiple licences(freeware, commercial) available

Yes, the different categories is a must. I'm thinking about which ones to choose. I think the Proud Music Library has a really nice search GUI similar to what I had in mind, but it's a bit too stuffed with options though. I'd like something similar to that, only scaled down. e.g. by excluding "mood" and including "character".
I figure "category" should be used to define whether the track is
music, soundscape, soundeffect, loop part or maybe a sound-logo.

What do you think?

 

[mr_lou]

Alright. I have now put the first version of the search function online.

I'd appreciate feedback. What do you think? What's missing? What could be left out?

http://www.indiegamemusic.com/gdsearch.php

Thanks

 

[Sphinxter]

I salute your efforts, great site, search engine worked when I selected everything. I think dj style, "beats per minute", might be a big help, finding the right tempo is my biggest problem

 

[mr_lou]

I salute your efforts, great site, search engine worked when I selected everything. I think dj style, "beats per minute", might be a big help, finding the right tempo is my biggest problem

Thanks for the feedback. I've put your BPM request on my LookInto list.

 

[mr_lou]

I've added BPM and price search now.

The site is online now, so you may add your tracks now.