Gaming Music


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Is gaming music illegal?

Lets say I own FF7. I can extract the psf files off the game and convertit to MP3. When i buy the game doesnt that give me the right to the music on it as well? I know they sell the audio tracks to that but thats just a ripoff, $40 for a lousy game soundtrack, doesnt even include battle music.

I have Lunar Silver Star Story Complete, and I want to dowblaod the battle music which isnt included in the Music cd. Woudl this be illegal? Anyone know what are the laws on Gaming music?

I seriously doubt the RIAA woudl be out after my ass, but you never know, they are leaning towards nazism...

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is it possible to get the music from games? where do u look for it n stuff? sum jst have .wavs or stuff but if it's not in a recognisable format is the only left to do download it?

o .. i'd agree with you, i'd say it's not illegal, i mean you own it..

;)

riaa are recording industry aren't they... so what do they have to do with music regarding pc games?

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There is a free utility that can recognize, extract and convert most modern game music formats. I won't tell you its name here for obvious reasons. Suffice to say the name is quite logical and consists of three words. ;)

As for the legality of game music, I can't be sure so I won't say, but I'll tell you this: If the soundtrack is available on CD, I'd go for buying a copy of that set instead, as they are likely to have better quality sound than the ingame music which is most likely sampled at 8 bits or 22kHz or both just to save space.

Here's a little something interesting for you all, though:

In Sweden, one of the most popular national radio shows (called "Syntax Error", formerly called "M-P3") plays ONLY computer music, both from the 'scene' (the european demo community) and the games industry. The show has been on the air every week for over two years, and have managed not to get sued by the composers - I believe this is largely because this is the only national radio show (at least in the Western hemisphere) that runs playlists exclusively made up of scene/game music (most game music composers/game programmers are well-known 'sceners' as well, at least in Europe). The show even arranges live performances and music compos from time to time.

They use the original game music format for authenticity (and brief info on the formats is provided) whenever it's possible, so when doing a special on the music of Chrono Trigger and Yasonuri Mitsuda (bad speeling?), they didn't use the CDs which are available, but simply used tunes ripped from within the various games using emulators or ripping tools.

The show was created as part of an initiative from the Swedish Radio to let listeners create and host their own half-hour shows. Most shows were 'one-timers', but M-P3 was quite different because the creator had so much material to draw upon. After the first half-hour "episode" was aired as a test, the listeners were invited to tell the Swedish Radio if they wanted this show to stay on the air - the response was, according to Swedish Radio officials, quite unlike anything they'd expected (considering the first episode consited almost entirely of SID music and 8-bit MODs). There were over 50 positive mails in the first week, and only 2 negative ones. So the show stayed on the air, but was only aired once a month in half-hour episodes. Since then the shows popularity has gone up, it's being aired once a week in 15-minute episodes, the show's creator has been hired by the Swedish Radio, the public has been made more aware of the world of game music (even back to the days of the C64) and the show now has fans from all corners of the world - check the fan mail on their webpage. :)

You can check their playlists (the homepage always lags few months behind in updates) at their website where you can download the individual tunes in their original formats if available (from the Playlists sections) or the entire show - in real Swedish (not "Bork Bork Bork" :D ) - as high quality (224kbps) MP3 files.

This show is now the only reason I listen to radio at all. :woot:

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I'm pretty sure the RIAA only has jurisdiction over the record companies that it has partnerships with.

Does Sony or Vivendi or Universal print and release video game music in the US? No. Anything you find in the US is likely imported from Japan so they'd have to be real big ###### to go after video game music.

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Actually, most PC games are licensed to you, not sold. This means you bought the right to use it, not to own it. This usually includes all the components that came with the game -- including the music.

But hey, like dougkinzinger said, you know you're going to do it anyway, so yea. Shh, I won't tell.

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