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Quite a bit disappointed to realize it wasn't a bundle of music licensed so that you could use it in your indie games. I'd happily pay significantly more than $10 for 17 albums of that.
There are lots of sites that offer the kind of thing you're asking - soundsnap.com is $1/sound, for instance, allowing you to use it royalty free.

I don't think the developers would want the music for their games (e.g. Super Meat Boy) used in other games, especially if they paid for an original composition, because it would dilute their brand.

I don't know what license terms the parties agreed to, though, but it's either up to the developer or the music artist. Either way it would be fairly complicated to bundle - I'm pretty sure the license terms wouldn't be the same for all parties.

Do you know of http://indiegamemusic.com/ ?
Makes sense, as one would typically pay a lot more for a license that allows re-use of a copyrighted work in such a way, vs. a typical personal use license.
Been enjoying this since last night. Really surprised at the quality. The C418 "72 Minutes of Fame" is essentially a full, high quality instrumental electronic dance album (some of the tracks are very Underworld).
I just bought it, and I don't see C418 there. What is the name of the game?

edit: Nevermind, it's Minecraft.

He meant one of the additional goodies you get when you give more than $10.
Nice, some new music to hack to for the rest of the day. :)

    - $1 - $9.99 gets you 10 albums.
    - $10+ gets you 17 albums.
    - Each album must downloaded separately as a zip file.
    - Four simultaneous downloads allowed, max.
    - I'm averaging ~100KB/s per download.
    - I've seen file sizes between 60MB - 400MB.
The marketing leaves me with many questions. I suspect this could be a very successful drive if it answered some of those questions. Here are some that spring to my mind:

What are the stats on what other people have been paying, or am I the only person who is going to go for this? Also, why is it a "holiday sale"? Have you been offering this bundle before? If not, that doesn't make sense. Of course you don't need a reason to have a sale, but currently you aren't marketing your sale. You are just saying "sale". You also basically fix a price in the minds of most customers, 10 albums for $1 and 17 albums for $10. The second looks like bad value against the first. Why even suggest a price? Is there any reason for a limit of $1? Do you trust your customers that little? Or is that the PayPal minimum or something. And what is a "game album"? I've never heard of such a thing before. I don't know if I want to buy such a thing or not. And where can I get a sample? And what is the license on these? Also, a little bit of information on where exactly these game albums come from or what technology was used to create them, or something about their provenance would help. How do we even know that you aren't selling someone else's albums that can be found for free on the web somewhere else? Why are we paying you for them?

Hi, zircon here. I'm one of the musicians involved with the Game Music Bundle (Return All Robots! OST, Antigravity). Let me see if I can answer your questions.

1. We will probably release more detailed stats once the sale is over, but as of earlier today we've sold over 9,000 bundles.

2. It's a holiday sale because Black Friday through Cyber Monday is a popular time for there to be sales on things, especially digital items.

3. We have not offered this sale before. To our knowledge, there hasn't been a sale on a collection of game music like this before at all.

4. We are marketing the sale - not just by encouraging sharing on sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, but also news stories on gaming websites like Kotaku, Joystiq, 1up, RockPaperShotgun, Destructoid, etc.

5. The deal is indeed 'pay what you want', a very successful model used by the Humble Indie Bundle (all video games), for example, as well as other musicians like Radiohead. It has just never been applied to a group of albums like this, much less game albums.

6. $1 is the minimum due to bandwidth costs and PayPal fees.

7. Most of the albums here are soundtracks to independent video games. They were produced by independent musicians not affiliated with any label. That's what we mean by game albums or game soundtracks. Some of the games are quite popular (Minecraft, Super Meat Boy) while others are a bit more obscure (Return All Robots!) As for whether you would want them and how to get a sample, you can listen to all the music streaming in full by clicking on the album of your choice and then previewing some tracks. Thus, you can decide for yourself if you're interested in at least some of the music.

8. There is no particular license on these. You can listen to them, copy them, send tracks to your friends (though ideally, we would prefer if they got copies too) etc. If you want to use a track from any given album for some kind of commercial project you would of course want to talk to the artist involved with that particular album. Most of us would be cool with any kind of non-commercial usage.

9. As I mentioned, most of the albums consist of music used in various games. So for example, "Minecraft: Volume Alpha" is music from the game Minecraft. A few of them, like "Imposter Nostalgia" and "Antigravity" are simply original albums that are stylistically similar to electronic video game music. In terms of the technology used to create them, it varies greatly depending on the artist. Most of us have personal websites which you can find on the individual album pages, where we describe who we are and what tools we use.

10. Every artist involved has some form of social media presence such as Twitter or Facebook, and has posted about this bundle to their friends, fans and followers. Thus you can verify by viewing these official accounts and their posts endorsing the sale. So, the sale is completely legitimate.

Hi Zircon, thanks for those answers! I do think that some of that information could be woven into your main page without raising the complexity of the page substantively. But of course those were all just questions that immediately rushed into my head when I first saw the page. Of course, I may not be typical of average customers.

Probably the most important things of that lot are that I suspect that even if you had no lower limit on what people could pay (so long as you suggested no minimum) that the number of people who paid <$1 would be negligible. So I wonder if it is the best use of space to even mention that. If 100 people only paid $0.50 would that actually be a problem? And secondly it isn't immediately 100% clear when you first see the page that you are a consortium of indie musicians. To be honest, I am not sure what the best way is to communicate that fact on the main page. But if you can communicate it, I think it adds value (because you are selling the real deal, art direct from real artists which is actually quite desirable to have) and it stops potential customers wasting their effort on trying to figure that out.

At the end of the day, because you are the first group to do this, you are probably going to get a good response. But next week, when there's 100 knock offs, how will you communicate that you are the real deal and everyone else is just peddling fakes? It's worth thinking about because you have an opportunity to cement a brand. Ideally, what you'd like by next week is for others to find that they can't sell music bundles unless they are you. And this will lead them to come to you to sell their bundles for them. :-)

Best of luck with the sale! I hope it goes really well for you guys. And congrats on being the first to get a music bundle off the ground!

P.S: I just noticed you've given away quite a bit of info on how you put this together, e.g. your platform, payment processor, lists you advertised this on, etc. I would not give this info away. Oh yeah, I figured out how the other bundle group you mentioned got "cred". It's the "donate to the EFF" angle. Hey, if EFF is involved with this, it must be legit. I'm not suggesting you do exactly the same. You have your own niche. BTW, if you do decide to branch out into other genres, I have a well-connected DNB contact for you.

Are you planning on doing this kind of bundle again with other genres of indie music? Because right now it seems like it would be restricted to just 'videogame-style' music in the future, but I would totally love to see something like that for other genres.
We'll see what the final numbers are once all is said and done but I think we would be up for doing it again. Many of us have non-game original music, and there are a few of those in the bundle already, but it's a lot harder to pitch something that isn't game-related. We got picked up by sites like Kotaku, Joystiq and Destructoid because of the game connection.
Yeah, that's understandable. The gaming world has definitely got a lot more momentum going for it than the music world at the moment (and that's putting it mildly). I guess I just don't see how far into the future you could go with just this particular market segment, even if it does make for easier publicity at first.

Either way, I hope you guys try to score a deal with the Bastion, Machinarium, Shatter, and Nation Red devs, cause those would be pretty cool to see in a bundle.

And if you guys do decide to branch out into other genres, and happen to do a Metal bundle, let me know, cause I'm currently working on a 'Melodic-thrash' Metal album and would love to be a part of it.

Slightly off topic, but I'm a huge fan of your music!
Offtopic, but a fellow Electro Freak here. I wish we could get back thesixtyone from the old days.
Re 8: How about a explicit creative commons license? :)
I would certainly not buy music if I can't listen to it first, so I looked for a way to listen to samples or something and found the same "looks like a play button but really an image" everywhere.

Wondering why someone would put fake "play" button that do nothing at all, apart maybe hurting sales, so I headed to the support page and I was not disappointed to see this http://i.imgur.com/7M1GH.png

How can I trust you with my money when your website doesn't even work properly ? Apart maybe from the part I truly dislike about nowadays web a.k.a. "google spy-alytics" and "we'd like to track your every move outside our networks social buttons".

I don't know why your site is broken, maybe it's because it doesn't like debian linux, maybe it doesn't like opera and iceweasel as browsers, maybe it requires a proprietary plugin I don't have, what I know is that I'm now heading to the closest bittorrent tracker to look for this music.

And sorry but as much as I like to support indie games and music, chances are I'm not coming back to give you any money afterwards mostly out of sheer laziness, but also lack of trust in broken website and refusal to support broken websites.

But I just realized that even I wanted, I can't give you my money as I don't have the required paypal or google account (I do have bitcoins though).

What a ridiculous diatribe. The site works fine, as do the audio previews.

You're complaining because the site doesn't support iceweasel and bitcoin? I'd wager this isn't the first site you've had those issues with.

No, I'm complaining because I'd like themto take my money and it is not possible for me to do so.

And no the site does not work at all on any of the computers (linux, mac and windows) and browsers (opera firefox, iron, rekonq, safari) combination I tried. Didn't work on ipad or smartphone either.

The cause of the problem: it requires adobe flash plugin I dont have and fails to make any mention of it or to provide a fallback alternative.

Not that it would be difficult to provide an alternative way to play those mp3 for which you can find the direct link in the source of the page.

When someone wants to give you money and your website or process prevent them from doing so, the only conclusion is that it is badly thought and designed. But only offering support through flash is plain stupid, how can anyone get in touch to tell them about a problem with the flash plugin when this very plugin is required to get support ? Suddenly email and web form are not good enough ?

You're trolling. I know it, you know it, the rest of the readers know it. That's why you've been downvoted. Next time you respond to an article have a think about the issue and how best to communicate your specific problems.
Unfortunately the Bandcamp previews also fail to play on Firefox 8 and Google Chrome on Ubuntu, with Flash installed and FlashBlock/Adblock disabled.
This is a hilarious, almost satirical level of entitlement. "I will copy your music if you don't perfectly support my extremely uncommon desktop environment and browser combination, I'm not willing to put in the slightest bit of effort, oh, and I can only offer Monopoly money. What!? That's somehow a problem!? ASSHOLES!"

Honestly, keep your money. I don't think they even want it, $20 bucks says you'll demand a refund right after because you can't grab them in APE or FLAC format anyways. People as picky and demanding as you are never satisfied.

It's not about perfect support, it's about something that just works.

Don't you know that piracy happens mostly because there is no other convenient way to get the content. I'd be happy to give them my money, but there is no way for me to do so.

Turns out all the samples are actually mp3 files (direct links are to be found in the source). These mp3 play fine in my browser, it's only the required use of the flash plugin that prevent me to do so.

Yes I'm part of the estimated 10% of web users that don't have flash installed. Maybe you think that it's good business practice to tell 10% of the potential customer to go fuck themselves, I don't.

I'm not sorry about having ethics and refusing to use paypal or for not wanting google to track me more than they already do by not using their online payment services, it's simply good privacy practice.

Actually they do offer flac which is among why I'm interested in this in the first place, I don't mind paying the extra to get the flac version as my whole music collection is flac only. I simply don't buy mp3.

> It's not about perfect support, it's about something that just works.

For you, on your totally atypical setup. Try it on 90% of the worlds machines, "it just works". In other words, demanding perfect support.

> Don't you know that piracy happens mostly because there is no other convenient way to get the content. I'd be happy to give them my money, but there is no way for me to do so.

There are plenty of ways, you are just too much of a stubborn snob to utilize any of them. I fully agree with this argument when there actually is a barrier to entry, but you are just building them instead.

> Maybe you think that it's good business practice to tell 10% of the potential customer to go fuck themselves, I don't.

I do. When they are as picky and demanding as you, in the long run typically they'll cause you more support headaches. Their 10% isn't worth the 20% you lose overall when dealing with their over the top demands.

> I'm not sorry about having ethics and refusing to use paypal or for not wanting google to track me more than they already do by not using their online payment services, it's simply good privacy practice.

Then be ready to repeat this experience with most things on the internet. Your Monopoly money is unproven and highly unstable, only those that haven't thought it through very well or are desperate for cash from security nuts are willing to accept it, and even then they would rather take real currency if you've got it.

> Actually they do offer flac which is among why I'm interested in this in the first place

They didn't when I posted my comment.

> I simply don't buy mp3.

You didn't have to tell me that, it was clear from your original comment that you would never allow anything but FLAC to tarnish your precious ears. Nobody who's as big a snob as you would be caught dead listening to lossy codecs.

According to their twitter feed, if you increase your purchase to $10 then you can get FLACS. They also added torrents cause someone wanted that. Apparently they are just that awesome.
Funny how people don't understand that criticism is feedback and downvote my comment.
Maybe if you didn't layer your criticism with serval coats of "entitled asshole" people would be more willing to hear you out?
Anyone else notice that Track 76 of the Super Meat Boy soundtrack seems mangled or cut off? It calls itself an extended cut along with two other tracks, but the other two tracks are 3:20 long, whereas the seemingly cut off "Can o' Salt (Ch 3 Light World Extended Cut)" is only 35 seconds and cuts abruptly at a nonsensical point.

I tried mentioning this to the GameMusicBundle Twitter account, but they seemed less than sympathetic and just suggested I contact Danny Baranowsky directly on Twitter. I have done that, but he hasn't responded yet. I just figured there might be other people who noticed the same thing, it would be great if you could mention it too and help me get it fixed.

I do not like the limited amounts of "downloads". I see why it's there (people might share links with friends etc.) but it feels a bit like punishing me because of some cheapskates. Problem is, this does not count "downloads", it counts hits on the download link. Accidentally hit cancel in the save file dialog? Too bad, one "download" wasted. Same thing when I tried to get it from my cell phone (which sucks), it did not work, there went another attempt.

I probably could live with say 20 downloads in a month (or some timeframe), but this feels very limiting.

We're happy to refresh your count if you run out prematurely. We just have to keep bandwidth costs in mind.
Just purchased and look forward to listening but requiring me to only download 4 albums at a time is rather poor.

"Please only download 4 files at a time or you may be disconnected from the file servers."

Also, you can only download each album 20 times and it shows you a visible count. Not exactly a repressive restriction or anything, just thought I might throw it out there.
This is primarily an issue with how Amazon S3 works, unfortunately.
Have you thought about giving the option to just torrent them? (Like how the HumbleBundle guys do)
Yes, would have much preferred a torrent with a passworded .zip or something similar. Would have been faster too.
Couldn't they just zip up all the albums into one file?
Downloads of one giant file are less reliable - more of a chance someone will download 5GB and then have to start over because of corruption. Torrents aren't much better; I downloaded some 25 GB video of a train in Norway and 90% of it is unviewable.

The best way to do this would probably be a multi-part rar.

> Torrents aren't much better

If your torrented video was corrupted, it's because the original file was corrupted. Your torrent client would have thrown away anything that's different from the original.

> The best way to do this would probably be a multi-part rar.

They already offer multiple-file downloads. The compression algorithm isn't going to change the fact that multiple concurrent downloads fail.

rar is often employed more as a packager than a compressor. For instance, if you have a 5 GB file to offer for download, you split it into 7 parts with rar and offer it as a self-extracting .exe, like they are doing here for instance http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575

As for the file being corrupt, I suspect something else may have been going on, such as bugs with torrent clients. I don't know why the original source file would have been corrupted, as it was supplied by the maker of the film.

Well, if it's coming from more than one source (multiple trackers) it could rather simply have been tampered with.
They added torrents at some point. I'm currently downloading all the albums using my max bandwidth.
Super Meat Boy soundtrack and the VVVVVV soundtrack? I'm actually more excited about this than the last couple humble bundles I participated in.
I remember being very close to buying this exact version of the SMB OST a few months ago - it was I think 30 dollars, just that one. This bundle is a dream come true for me right now.
4 albums have been added to the pool. I purchased for over $10 yesterday but I don't seem to be able to get those 4 new ones...anybody have success at this yet?
If you buy one indie game soundtrack buy the Machinarium soundtrack. Insanely good as an album in its own right.
I'm a sucker for these...
Bundles, bundles, bundles - I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. I'm actually surprised it took so long.