

Indie Game Music Bundle (Pay what you want) - statenjason
http://www.indiemusicbundle.com/

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ianterrell
Quite a bit disappointed to realize it wasn't a bundle of music licensed so
that you could use it in your indie games. I'd happily pay significantly more
than $10 for 17 albums of _that_.

~~~
fragsworth
There are lots of sites that offer the kind of thing you're asking -
soundsnap.com is $1/sound, for instance, allowing you to use it royalty free.

I don't think the developers would want the music for their games (e.g. Super
Meat Boy) used in other games, especially if they paid for an original
composition, because it would dilute their brand.

I don't know what license terms the parties agreed to, though, but it's either
up to the developer or the music artist. Either way it would be fairly
complicated to bundle - I'm pretty sure the license terms wouldn't be the same
for all parties.

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petercooper
Been enjoying this since last night. Really surprised at the quality. The C418
"72 Minutes of Fame" is essentially a full, high quality instrumental
electronic dance album (some of the tracks are very _Underworld_ ).

~~~
mushishi
I just bought it, and I don't see C418 there. What is the name of the game?

edit: Nevermind, it's Minecraft.

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galaktor
He meant one of the additional goodies you get when you give more than $10.

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dgallagher
Nice, some new music to hack to for the rest of the day. :)

    
    
        - $1 - $9.99 gets you 10 albums.
        - $10+ gets you 17 albums.
        - Each album must downloaded separately as a zip file.
        - Four simultaneous downloads allowed, max.
        - I'm averaging ~100KB/s per download.
        - I've seen file sizes between 60MB - 400MB.

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wbhart
The marketing leaves me with many questions. I suspect this could be a very
successful drive if it answered some of those questions. Here are some that
spring to my mind:

What are the stats on what other people have been paying, or am I the only
person who is going to go for this? Also, why is it a "holiday sale"? Have you
been offering this bundle before? If not, that doesn't make sense. Of course
you don't need a reason to have a sale, but currently you aren't marketing
your sale. You are just saying "sale". You also basically fix a price in the
minds of most customers, 10 albums for $1 and 17 albums for $10. The second
looks like bad value against the first. Why even suggest a price? Is there any
reason for a limit of $1? Do you trust your customers that little? Or is that
the PayPal minimum or something. And what is a "game album"? I've never heard
of such a thing before. I don't know if I want to buy such a thing or not. And
where can I get a sample? And what is the license on these? Also, a little bit
of information on where exactly these game albums come from or what technology
was used to create them, or something about their provenance would help. How
do we even know that you aren't selling someone else's albums that can be
found for free on the web somewhere else? Why are we paying you for them?

~~~
zirconst
Hi, zircon here. I'm one of the musicians involved with the Game Music Bundle
(Return All Robots! OST, Antigravity). Let me see if I can answer your
questions.

1\. We will probably release more detailed stats once the sale is over, but as
of earlier today we've sold over 9,000 bundles.

2\. It's a holiday sale because Black Friday through Cyber Monday is a popular
time for there to be sales on things, especially digital items.

3\. We have not offered this sale before. To our knowledge, there hasn't been
a sale on a collection of game music like this before at all.

4\. We are marketing the sale - not just by encouraging sharing on sites like
Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, but also news stories on gaming websites like
Kotaku, Joystiq, 1up, RockPaperShotgun, Destructoid, etc.

5\. The deal is indeed 'pay what you want', a very successful model used by
the Humble Indie Bundle (all video games), for example, as well as other
musicians like Radiohead. It has just never been applied to a group of albums
like this, much less game albums.

6\. $1 is the minimum due to bandwidth costs and PayPal fees.

7\. Most of the albums here are soundtracks to independent video games. They
were produced by independent musicians not affiliated with any label. That's
what we mean by game albums or game soundtracks. Some of the games are quite
popular (Minecraft, Super Meat Boy) while others are a bit more obscure
(Return All Robots!) As for whether you would want them and how to get a
sample, you can listen to all the music streaming in full by clicking on the
album of your choice and then previewing some tracks. Thus, you can decide for
yourself if you're interested in at least some of the music.

8\. There is no particular license on these. You can listen to them, copy
them, send tracks to your friends (though ideally, we would prefer if they got
copies too) etc. If you want to use a track from any given album for some kind
of commercial project you would of course want to talk to the artist involved
with that particular album. Most of us would be cool with any kind of non-
commercial usage.

9\. As I mentioned, most of the albums consist of music used in various games.
So for example, "Minecraft: Volume Alpha" is music from the game Minecraft. A
few of them, like "Imposter Nostalgia" and "Antigravity" are simply original
albums that are stylistically similar to electronic video game music. In terms
of the technology used to create them, it varies greatly depending on the
artist. Most of us have personal websites which you can find on the individual
album pages, where we describe who we are and what tools we use.

10\. Every artist involved has some form of social media presence such as
Twitter or Facebook, and has posted about this bundle to their friends, fans
and followers. Thus you can verify by viewing these official accounts and
their posts endorsing the sale. So, the sale is completely legitimate.

~~~
raoulette
I would certainly not buy music if I can't listen to it first, so I looked for
a way to listen to samples or something and found the same "looks like a play
button but really an image" everywhere.

Wondering why someone would put fake "play" button that do nothing at all,
apart maybe hurting sales, so I headed to the support page and I was not
disappointed to see this <http://i.imgur.com/7M1GH.png>

How can I trust you with my money when your website doesn't even work properly
? Apart maybe from the part I truly dislike about nowadays web a.k.a. "google
spy-alytics" and "we'd like to track your every move outside our networks
social buttons".

I don't know why your site is broken, maybe it's because it doesn't like
debian linux, maybe it doesn't like opera and iceweasel as browsers, maybe it
requires a proprietary plugin I don't have, what I know is that I'm now
heading to the closest bittorrent tracker to look for this music.

And sorry but as much as I like to support indie games and music, chances are
I'm not coming back to give you any money afterwards mostly out of sheer
laziness, but also lack of trust in broken website and refusal to support
broken websites.

But I just realized that even I wanted, I can't give you my money as I don't
have the required paypal or google account (I do have bitcoins though).

~~~
andrewfelix
What a ridiculous diatribe. The site works fine, as do the audio previews.

You're complaining because the site doesn't support iceweasel and bitcoin? I'd
wager this isn't the first site you've had those issues with.

~~~
raoulette
No, I'm complaining because I'd like themto take my money and it is not
possible for me to do so.

And no the site does not work at all on any of the computers (linux, mac and
windows) and browsers (opera firefox, iron, rekonq, safari) combination I
tried. Didn't work on ipad or smartphone either.

The cause of the problem: it requires adobe flash plugin I dont have and fails
to make any mention of it or to provide a fallback alternative.

Not that it would be difficult to provide an alternative way to play those mp3
for which you can find the direct link in the source of the page.

When someone wants to give you money and your website or process prevent them
from doing so, the only conclusion is that it is badly thought and designed.
But only offering support through flash is plain stupid, how can anyone get in
touch to tell them about a problem with the flash plugin when this very plugin
is required to get support ? Suddenly email and web form are not good enough ?

~~~
andrewfelix
You're trolling. I know it, you know it, the rest of the readers know it.
That's why you've been downvoted. Next time you respond to an article have a
think about the issue and how best to communicate your specific problems.

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shinratdr
Anyone else notice that Track 76 of the Super Meat Boy soundtrack seems
mangled or cut off? It calls itself an extended cut along with two other
tracks, but the other two tracks are 3:20 long, whereas the seemingly cut off
"Can o' Salt (Ch 3 Light World Extended Cut)" is only 35 seconds and cuts
abruptly at a nonsensical point.

I tried mentioning this to the GameMusicBundle Twitter account, but they
seemed less than sympathetic and just suggested I contact Danny Baranowsky
directly on Twitter. I have done that, but he hasn't responded yet. I just
figured there might be other people who noticed the same thing, it would be
great if you could mention it too and help me get it fixed.

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galaktor
I do not like the limited amounts of "downloads". I see why it's there (people
might share links with friends etc.) but it feels a bit like punishing me
because of some cheapskates. Problem is, this does not count "downloads", it
counts hits on the download link. Accidentally hit cancel in the save file
dialog? Too bad, one "download" wasted. Same thing when I tried to get it from
my cell phone (which sucks), it did not work, there went another attempt.

I probably could live with say 20 downloads in a month (or some timeframe),
but this feels very limiting.

~~~
zirconst
We're happy to refresh your count if you run out prematurely. We just have to
keep bandwidth costs in mind.

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ralphsaunders
Just purchased and look forward to listening but requiring me to only download
4 albums at a time is rather poor.

"Please only download 4 files at a time or you may be disconnected from the
file servers."

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zirconst
This is primarily an issue with how Amazon S3 works, unfortunately.

~~~
oblique63
Have you thought about giving the option to just torrent them? (Like how the
HumbleBundle guys do)

~~~
ralphsaunders
Yes, would have much preferred a torrent with a passworded .zip or something
similar. Would have been faster too.

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shinratdr
Super Meat Boy soundtrack and the VVVVVV soundtrack? I'm actually more excited
about this than the last couple humble bundles I participated in.

~~~
galaktor
I remember being very close to buying this exact version of the SMB OST a few
months ago - it was I think 30 dollars, just that one. This bundle is a dream
come true for me right now.

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galaktor
4 albums have been added to the pool. I purchased for over $10 yesterday but I
don't seem to be able to get those 4 new ones...anybody have success at this
yet?

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andrewfelix
If you buy one indie game soundtrack buy the Machinarium soundtrack. Insanely
good as an album in its own right.

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shocks
I'm a sucker for these...

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hahla
Bundles, bundles, bundles - I knew this was going to happen sooner or later.
I'm actually surprised it took so long.

