Video Games And Music

Do video games have an effect on popular music?

Absolutely, and popular music has an effect on video games as well. It's very interesting to see many games switch to having soundtracks that come from popular tracks of the day. "Grand Theft Auto", "Guitar Hero", "Elite Beat Agents" all have pretty popular songs. And the music industry, it makes a lot of sense to them to get them in games because rather than having the song played on the radio maybe twice a day you get a game: a kid might play a level seven, eight hundred times, depending on how much they love the game, so they're hearing that song constantly, and it ends up as really great marketing for the music industry, and great for them, but sometimes not as great for composers who, I mean, back in the day when you'd make a game you'd hire a composer to come and do a soundtrack for you, and it seems like maybe they're getting the short end of the stick now, but the music industry is doing exceedingly well going through games just because of the exposure.

What are some influential video game soundtracks?

I think that "Final Fantasy" and "Zelda" are really known for their music and influential in terms of video game soundtracks. I also think that people today still identify with a lot of the old songs from video games. Everybody knows the "Super Mario Brothers" theme. When you hear that music, you kind of reminisce back to old SNES and NES game titles. I think now, notable soundtracks would be from "Guitar Hero". People remember that. Immediately, when you hear "Grand Theft Auto", you immediately start thinking Flock of Seagulls right away. But I really think the classics; the music soundtracks from "Final Fantasy" and "Zelda" are some of the best.

Does the music industry benefit from being involved with video games?

The music industry absolutely benefits from involvement with video games. The exposure that they get from a song being played multiple times during gameplay is really great for them. Aside from the fact that a lot of people from bands - rap stars - have their own games, with the whole Def Jam series, the exposure, and the amount of times you hear a song when you play a game, is really important. Games like Guitar Hero have sold so many copies and done so well. When they started, it was just them trying to get bands to do this experimental game, and now large labels, large artists, are begging them to put their tracks on it.