Topic: Video game music rips

I have a lot of video game music, most of which is official, and MusicBrainz has been extremely helpful in getting it all tagged. The problem is that decent sized chunk of the rest of my music is stuff ripped straight from video games (mostly old SNES stuff). I have not been able to find anything like that in the database here, so I'm wondering if that's the sort of thing that allowed here? I'm planning on tagging what I can of my own files, and if I'm already doing it, I'd love to do it for more than just my own use.

Thanks in advance for your time and your response.

Re: Video game music rips

In a general sense MusicBrainz tracks released music (or widely distributed bootlegs) rather than individual's homebrew rip compilations of music. This is why MB's edit and voting system is generally evidence-based - if you can't find a listing elsewhere that confirms that data you're adding one should probably think twice about adding it.

I would check whether there is a canonical listing of the soundtrack for the games in question on major VG music websites (vgmusic.com, mobygames, OC Remix etc) - if there is and it roughly matches what you have manually ripped; you could add the canonical listing and tag against that.

Perhaps an example would help also?

3 (edited by RogueBurger 2012-06-18 04:41:24)

Re: Video game music rips

An example would be Chrono Trigger and a list of all the game tracks can be found here here: http://snesmusic.org/v2/profile.php?pro … cted=14176 . In the case of Chrono Trigger, there was an officially released OSV which contained maybe 80% of the tracks (cutting out the more ambient stuff as well as alternate versions of the same track), so a lot of the metadata can be carried over. There are many that don't have an OSV or OST to base off of though, unfortunately.

OCRemix even offers the chiptunes as a download for that particular game, and you can pull the track titles and artists directly off that. Is that enough of a source?

Re: Video game music rips

What's an OSV?
If you mean OST, then yes, add it if you can track down all the release information (Amazon is a good place to start, but I like to verify the results with independent sources when I can). I wouldn't add anything off OCRemix unless it was a documented original work.

5 (edited by RogueBurger 2012-06-18 05:46:46)

Re: Video game music rips

HibiscusKazeneko wrote:

What's an OSV?
If you mean OST, then yes, add it if you can track down all the release information (Amazon is a good place to start, but I like to verify the results with independent sources when I can). I wouldn't add anything off OCRemix unless it was a documented original work.

OSV = Original Sound Version. Many early (pre-PSX) game soundtracks were labeled as OSV (e.g. Chrono Trigger OSV). For all intents and purposes though, an OSV is the same thing as an OST; it really just comes down to what the publisher called it.

Secondly, as I already mentioned, I know what tracks are on the OSV and that metadata can be carried over. It's the release as a whole I'm asking about, and by extension the tracks that are not on the OSV. The release info of the OSV it not really relevant to the tracks being pulled from the game itself -- in most cases the game came out before the soundtrack. If anything the game release date and info would take precedence (though, artists and composers would obviously be the same as the OSV).

Lastly, what do you mean by "documented original work"? The chiptunes are ripped from the game files. They aren't original work at all. I only mentioned the OCRemix copies of the chiptunes because Voiceinsideyou used it as an example.

Re: Video game music rips

Well, if the tracks have a well defined order within the game, you can always add the game itself as a release - regardless of whether there is an OSV or OST. This is essentially what is done with audio rips of DVD concerts and such. The question is whether that listing is relatively stable - e.g if multiple sources were to list it, are they likely to do so in the same way? Or is there lots of ambiguity?

Another tricky argument is about whether this is "official" or "bootleg"... the game release itself is obviously official; but the audio rip obviously bootleg. So it's complicated. :)

I don't think I'd personally have a problem adding Chrono Trigger.

Re: Video game music rips

I think people tend to add these as bootleg.

Re: Video game music rips

Add them please (:
As long as you can more or less confirm track names/ composer etc.

Bootleg is probably appropriate, and note where you got the info/ files from (ripped yourself etc). There's a chance it may be removed later but at least people can make an educated vote on it.

Re: Video game music rips

I'm kinda uneasy about him adding the unofficial version before there's confirmation of an official release. I'm flashing back to when a bootleg Portal 2 soundtrack was released over the Internet and the official version came out later and was virtually identical (the tracks split in different places and the track names on the bootleg were all wrong). It caused a bit of confusion among fans.

Re: Video game music rips

^ it's a direct rip of the music tracks from old game files. These music tracks will never change or be updated, they are exactly as they were on the game disc/cartridge [I assume this is the type of audio rip the OP is talking about!]. The only thing is that track titles etc often have to be taken from the scene/ level they are played on, because there's nowhere to get that information from, which is kind of annoying.

But there's pretty much no way many SNES soundtracks are going to be released these days (:
Hopefully by marking these as bootlegs (and noting that they're game rips) any confusion that could arise from something like this can be avoided anyway.
I have added at least one of these in the past, in a case where there's no other way to get the audio/ music:
http://musicbrainz.org/release/d74e9cad … f062168c06
I don't really see big problems with it... in the end, it can always be removed later, or voted against imo. Meanwhile, it's useful for quite a few people.

Re: Video game music rips

HibiscusKazeneko wrote:

I'm kinda uneasy about him adding the unofficial version before there's confirmation of an official release.

That's ridiculous, to be honest. Were we to take that attitude we may as well delete the bootleg release status from MusicBrainz. No bootleg, by definition, can ever have a confirmation of an official release.

The question is about tracklist stability, as aerozol correctly alludes to, and which I mentioned in my post above.

Re: Video game music rips

I count the release as official, if the music is taken directly from the game such that it will always sound the same.

For example, MP3 files in a game folder would be official.

But I would mark it as 'bootleg' if it might sound different depending on how it's rendered -- e.g. MIDI files depend on the hardware they're played on, I imagine some video game emulators don't emulate with 100% accuracy, things like that.

Re: Video game music rips

Hawke wrote:

I count the release as official, if the music is taken directly from the game such that it will always sound the same.

For example, MP3 files in a game folder would be official.

But I would mark it as 'bootleg' if it might sound different depending on how it's rendered -- e.g. MIDI files depend on the hardware they're played on, I imagine some video game emulators don't emulate with 100% accuracy, things like that.

I wouldn't. If it's not from an official soundtrack release then it's a bootleg.

Re: Video game music rips

Some PlayStation games had regular Audio CD tracks (the game was in the 1st data track), these are not bootlegs.
But otherwise game rips as bootlegs, I quite agree… Although OK maybe it depends on the cases. The only MB link I saw in this topic is clearly a bootleg anyway.

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Re: Video game music rips

HibiscusKazeneko wrote:

I wouldn't. If it's not from an official soundtrack release then it's a bootleg.

How can the game itself not be an official source?

Re: Video game music rips

I agree not putting rips as official albums.
If they are put as official album we will start trying looking for it in stores and our life will become, because of MB, a loss of time, an endless search for something that doesn’t exist. :)

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