EA Themes, Songs, Remixes on iTunes

That obnoxious techno remix of the Tetris song. Indie video-game tribute band The Advantage. That Japanese guitarist on Youtube shredding all over the Super Mario Bros. theme. What do these fringe music sensations have in common? They understand the universal appeal, and in some cases, the sheer genius of video game music.

In a notably sensible marriage of commerce and popular demand, Electronic Arts has just announced that every song, theme, and remix from their games will be available for sale in the iTunes Music Stores. Yes, that means you can finally own Snoop Dogg’s remix of the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm”. Of course, many of the songs and themes will be available as ringtones as well. Ch-ching! 

According to EA music & marketing exec Steve Schnur, the planned next step is allowing users to upload their OWN songs into games, personalizing them to possibly hilarious effect. Imagine, Madden’s new ‘touchdown’ song could be your favorite slice of terrorcore from Wolf Eyes, a wistful Beatles ballad (“For No One” for all you irony fans out there), or your own Garageband-created bedroom pop masterpiece. Smart move, EA. Here’s hoping other companies with musically-memorable titles (Nintendo, LucasArts, Rockstar, etc) follow suit.

Comments

[JonB]

While this is one of my favorite blogs, this post missed the mark. The ability to put your own music into games has been around for some time. Most 2K titles and even GTA (from Rockstar) allows you to load your own music into the games. Additionally, Rockstar has been selling the CD soundtracks from their games for some time now. This is a great move for EA, but not a "cutting edge" endeavour.

[ilya]

Thanks for the catch Jon! I forgot about that GTA feature. Though I do believe that selling entire game scores (rather than just featured pop songs) over iTunes is unprecedented.