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High Score: The Rise of Video Game OSTs on Vinyl

As vinyl’s popularity continues to rise, the video game industry has shifted to meet demand.

By Angelica Frey

Video Games and Vinyl Cover

Big Bang: Music From The Universe Of Genesis Noir
Skillbard
2023
Cool Jazz, Soundtrack, Video Game Music
2 x Vinyl, Album
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Scoring the game “Genesis Noir” was the first video game project for the London-based music and sound design studio Skillbard, which specializes in scoring for Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, MTV, and various museums. The original soundtrack was recorded with a live band to reflect the jazz and film noir-inflected atmosphere of the game’s visuals. 

Skillbard released the vinyl for the original soundtrack, or OST, in the fall of 2023, almost two years after the release. Two of the three owners, Vincent and Tom Skillbard, were unaware of the resurgence of vinyl as a medium in the video game music marketplace. 

“It’s funny… coming from the music industry with limited knowledge of video game music releases, we’ve been gobsmacked by the support of the video game music community and the fan’s insatiable hunger [for vinyl],” said Vincent Skillbard. “In music, it’s near impossible to get anyone to listen to a new act, let alone pay for it.”

Vinyl versions of video game OSTs are not purely a recent result of retromania, but the demand has skyrocketed recently. It began in the 1980s, although Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra hinted at the promising partnership by using samples from “Space Invaders,” “Gun Fight,” and “Circus” in their late-1970s work. In 1984, YMO frontman Haruomi Hosono released the first generally recognized video game soundtrack album — a collection of mixed and remixed tracks from Namco games — Video Game Music, followed by highlights such as Namco’s Video Game Graffiti, and Koichi Sugiyama‘s orchestral covers of the “Dragon Quest” series.

For the next few decades, game OSTs shifted from CDs to digital until the late ’00s and early ’10s. Thanks to video game developer tools becoming easier to access and digital game marketplaces at the time, a wave of indie game creators began publishing new and inspiring work, revolutionizing the medium. Unsurprisingly, these new critically acclaimed games boasted highly-praised OSTs, like the ambient sounds of “Journey,” the purposefully bit-crushed whimsy of “Fez,” and “Minecraft‘s” lulling pastoral music.

Hunger for physical releases of these scores led to a horde of video game music-oriented labels, such as Iam8bit, Laced, BraveWave, and the vinyl-pressing division of the publisher Lost in Cult in the 2010s. Video game music resource and repository Blip Blop, which also catalogs vinyl releases, counts 69 active video game music labels. 2022 saw the publication of 288 new titles on vinyl, Blip Blop reports. 

Video Game Music = ビデオ・ゲーム・ミュージック
Haruomi Hosono
1984
Electronic, Chiptune, Video Game Music
Vinyl, Album
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“There’s a lot of people who buy video game music on vinyl because they want to listen to the highest quality,” said Laced’s Head of Music and Game Partnerships Mat Ombler. “They’ve got an amazing record player. They’ve got an amazing system, but certainly, there’s just as many people [that] buy these [records] to have as collector’s pieces. They want them sitting on shelves, or they’re going to open them. They’re going to display them proudly as fans of the video game IP.”

“Ownership is expression,” echoed Vincent Skillbard. “In a world where listening is free, owning is optional. People buy what they want to be associated with or support.”

As with any collectible, there are white whales. The Discogs marketplace counts 14,427 video game music releases and 35,759 items for sale (14,817 on vinyl). The vinyl for Bungie Studios’ The Music Of Destiny, Volume I, composed by Michael Salvatori, C Paul Johnson, Martin O’Donnell, and Paul McCartney, often sells for north of $600. 

New Record

With vinyl’s steady rise in popularity over the last decade and a half and more people turning to video games for entertainment — in 2020, the video game industry made more than the music and movie industries combined, according to a study by SuperData Research — it’s possible to observe that there has never been such a demand for video game OSTs across demographics.

“We know the video game industry is getting bigger and bigger every year, and more games [are] coming out,” said Ombler. “But I think something I’ve noticed specifically in the past couple of years is a resurgence in older video game OSTs on YouTube. This is, in part, due to the trend surrounding ’90s music, including jungle music, drum ‘n’ bass, techno, and, of course, ’90s video game music that people make playlists with.”

“TikTok, for example, is partial to ’90s and early 2000s “Mario Kart” music, which becomes the ideal gateway to the genre and medium,” said Ombler. “I think that’s inviting a new audience into video game music who might not have necessarily grown up with these video games in the same way that I did because I was a ’90s kid.”

Changing Sounds

Millennials such as Ombler grew up playing a host of Nintendo 64 and PS1 games, as did, most likely, musicians and bands such as Grimes and Anamanaguchi incorporate sounds often ascribed to early video games into their work. The latter of which wrote the OST to the hugely popular “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game.” Thanks to technological breakthroughs, video game music isn’t limited to sounding like it used to.

Doom (Original Game Soundtrack)
Mick Gordon
2018
Industrial, Heavy Metal, Soundtrack, Video Game Music
2 x Vinyl, Album, 180g, Red Translucent
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“If we look at how diverse video game music is, [it’s possible to] capture the attention of people who might not necessarily be video game players. That [might be] what brings them into the vinyl scene, or just the video game music scene in general,” says Ombler.

He cites the Doom 2016 OST by Mick Gordon, which pulled in fans from the metal and alternative music scenes, which Ombler himself was part of. Among metal fans, for instance, the running joke goes along the lines of “Mick Gordon released an album with a free video game incorporated.”

Similarly, massively popular games like the “Persona” series have become as well known for their opulent, stylized OSTs as they have for gameplay. 2017’s “Persona 5 features a sprawling OST filled with catchy jazz, rock, and funk music that’s strong enough to stand on its own. The original vinyl version of the game’s OST sells for a median price of €501.10 on the Discogs marketplace.

To capitalize on the new opportunities, several indie performers and composers have branched into the video game world. What used to be a job for more commercially successful artists has opened up to a new class of creators. Coeur de Pirate wrote the OST for the fairytale-like adventure Child of Light, and Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast scored the Moebius-esque game “Sable.” The Highland Tales OST pays tribute to Scottish folk music, while “Immortality,” scored by Emmy-nominated Nainita Desai, is reminiscent of the opulent 1980s and ’90s thrillers. British Sea Power lent their music to “Disco Elysium” and Kero Kero Bonito tracked a song for the Sony Playstation 5’s launch title, “Bugsnax.”

However, there’s still a need for more education within the video game industry, particularly in studios. “It’s not just about convincing them, but also making them aware that there is a demand for their music and they should release it,” said Ombler.

Additionally, if a studio releases a game but doesn’t make the OST available digitally from day one, anyone can upload the music illegally on platforms like YouTube.

“This means the studio misses out on potential revenue and the chance to capitalize on the initial excitement,” said Ombler. “That’s why it’s beneficial to have vinyl ready around the same time. With so many games being released, it’s crucial to take advantage of the hype before people move on to the next game.”


Angelica Frey is a writer, researcher and translator based in Boston and Milan. She writes about the visual arts, music, and design. Read more of her work on her Portfolio. She writes the disco-music resource Italian Disco Stories with music scholar and curator Giuseppe Savoni.

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