Of course Jeremy Soule is doing it, and he's completed over 60 minutes of music.  That's crazy huge for an expansion pack.  I wish Bethesda had requested more music from him for Shivering Isles, it would have made it so much better.

http://www.music4games.net/News_Display.aspx?id=682

- Jayson

Good news of course, but I honestly wish they would release a non-download soundtrack. I realize in some respects it's easier to have the downloaded release, but I prefer to have an actual hard copy (of course you do get burn rights). Plus, it costs the same as a normal CD, which seems like a lot for what you get... but yeah I know, I really shouldn't complain since this is infinitley better than getting nothing

cheers,

-avatar!

I'm not a big fan of pay-to-download services like that. If I'm going to own and listen to music, I would like to have a physical copy of the disc so I would be able to dictate what bitrate and file format I rip the files at, instead of paying a good amount of money to have stuff that is of subpar quality compared to what a compact disc would sound like.

Then again, I'm not a big fan of Jeremy Soule, so I'm just complaining about Directsong and stuff like it.

Agreed, DLed content has no resale value either.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  I think if pirating VGM wasn't so rapant, digital content would be a lot more appealing.  If nobody knew how to get ahold of the stuff through other means, and digital was the only distribution, everyone would jump on it.

100% disagreed. If I pay money for something, I want a physical object, not a small bunch of digital files. Nevermind the whole lossy argument. Digital content is a great deal for the seller (no stocking costs, no packaging costs, automated sales)...Um, not so great for the consumer.

I think digital downloads can be decent, but they should cost much less than the physical disc.  Let's face it: it costs the seller much less to present the music in digital format, and as Ashley said, there is no resale value for the consumer.  From an old Rolling Stone article regarding the cost breakdown of a CD, here is where the money goes for a $15.99 CD:

$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead

Switch to digital, and you knock out the packaging/manufacturing, retail profit, distribution, and retail overhead pieces, knocking out $6.39 from the price, bringing it down to $9.60.  You could also argue that royalties, union costs, and label profit should be flat percentages of the selling price, so you might be able to squeeze that down to under $8.  If music is going to be provided in a downloadable fashion, it could be half the cost.

Interesting.  Where'd you get those numbers?

At the end of this article:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/ … nts_10_cds

Well, I suppose it depends on the circumstance.  I know that Jeremy Soule does all the work at DirectSong on his own, which includes, obviously, composing, editing, encoding, graphics, etc., so it takes a lot of time.  Since he has the rights to the music, it's likely he gets paid less for the scoring the project as well.  If not, it's likely the publisher takes a chunk of the profits.

I listen to most of my music on my computer, so I don't see digital distribution as such a bad thing.  It'd be better if it was cheaper, yeah, but there are a lot of costs associated with digital music too.  iTunes like takes a cut of every sale, I'm sure.  I mean, I prefer a physical object too.  You can't really collect MP3s or have your MP3s signed or anything like that.  I wish there were CD releases too.  However, it's better than not having the music at all.  Also, MP3s take up less space and are better on the environment.

Also, the rest of the world doesn't necessarily think like us.  Many would say we're pretty materialistic.  In Korea, for example, everything is digital in gaming, from music to games themselvse.  In fact, I can't even get ahold of Korean game soundtracks in most cases because people there wouldn't buy the physical product, there's no market for it.  Not to say there aren't gamers who want the music, but it's all digital.

Digital seems to be a growing trend that I'm not too particularly fond of.  All the Tower records closed here in Vegas and now I have nowhere to go (physically)  for what I want.  (Best Buy is limited at best and don't get me started about Target)

The great thing about Directsong is that you are not only provided with high-quality tracks (heck, they all sound perfectly crisp and clean to me... I'm not gonna' get nit-picky over minor bitrate differences that my ear can hardly differentiate between) but also with gorgeous cover/back art for the CD which the licensing rights on the tracks allow to be burned in full.

Hard copy problem... solved. 

If you've got the technical savvy to print out a high quality version of the cover art then you've got the where-with-all to get yourself a hard copy of any of Soule's excellent soundtracks.

-Jockolantern

And it's a damn fine soundtrack, too.

We have a review:
http://www.music4games.net/Review_Display.aspx?id=87

And a small interview with Soule regarding the score:
http://www.music4games.net/Features_Display.aspx?id=164