Lately I’ve received several emails from folks trying to break in as composers writing music for video games, mostly in the indie game market. I am not sure I’m at a point where I should give advice — but nevertheless, here are a few suggestions from my perspective:
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I’ve been a part of the closed beta for Record, Propellerheads’ new software audio recording system which essentially adds live recording and better mixing to Reason, and now that the beta is open I can share some of my experiences.

Firstly, I really do like Reason although I do not use it as often as I once did, and I do agree with the opinion that its default darker bump in the low and low-mid range is better suited to dance and electronic music than most of what I do. Record has the same default bump. This is not a bad thing, it’s just part of the PH character. It can also be changed, if you avoid the mastering suite and work the EQ in an external rewired DAW.

Secondly, I am still not really sure what the target audience is for Record. I like it and it is fun to use — most software is not so fun to use, but Reason has always been fun, stable, and relatively lightweight. Record fits along the same lines. But there are many things lacking that prevent it from being considered a full DAW for commercial scoring: lack of plugin support and lack of video support being chief among them.

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The economy is in shambles, layoffs are replacing holiday bonuses, but the game industry keeps on chugging: 18 percent growth in the U.S. year-on-year, and 35% growth in software sales alone. But there was also this interesting tidbit: The mobile gaming market (including all handhelds) was reported as slightly down over the month, though still up by 7% for the year. Apparently, iPhone ads aside, the console is still the place to be, as families downsize expensive vacation packages to a few new video game titles.

Faced with a tough job market, high debt and maxed-out credit, affluent Americans don’t necessarily eliminate entertainment costs but rather downsize them: instead of a vacation/shopping/theatre trip to Manhattan or London, instead of a weekend of gaming in Vegas, etc., they play more video games. Casual game businesses are booming, and it’s adults that are doing the boom-making, not the overly-aggressive high school age males that many consider the core video game demographic.

With casual games, the prized demographic isn’t so much that hardcore adolescent male gamer on consoles, but the soccer mom set. Women are the big target, and casual games on mobile devices as well as the web are the attraction. The Wii is interesting here, too, because it aims at crossover appeal between the groups.

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Had a Skype chat with David Collins today; he’s an audio director (actually now ‘Sound Supervisor’ is his title, but it’s basically the same thing — the guy who hires sound designers, the composer, manages the audio budget, etc. for a game company) at LucasArts, where his most recent game title was Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. He’s a very likable guy. He also does voice-over work, and is the voice of the character Proxy in this game.

Anyway, he shared his biggest piece of advice for creative professionals of all stripes who are trying to get work, and it’s one of the two pieces of advice I always give myself to others, yet he summed it up more succinctly: “Don’t be an asshole.”

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Dave Kusek writes about the MySpace Music disaster.

MySpace had turned into a music ghetto, too cluttered with poor navigation, a poorly-implemented promotional and ad strategy, and populated by labels and services that work the system with friend adders and such which made ratings and searches illogical.

But all of those problems are relatively small and could have been fixed. The incredibly hard part is getting the artists and audience together at enormous scale in the first place; it requires a serendipitous chain of good fortune and timing beyond technology and business strategy, and they managed to do that. The other problems should have been solvable.

Here’s an excerpt from Dave’s piece:

Ok, so here’s the bottom line. MySpace takes a vibrant community of musicians (5 million) and fans (120 million) and sells the whole thing out to the major labels for a 40% cut. No equity available for indie labels or artists. Any be sure of this – the equity owned by the major labels will not find its way to any of their artists. Big media wins again.

Rather than trying to encourage the direct-to-fan model that they once touted as they encouraged indie artists to post their music and develop their friends – MySpace hands it all over to the combine. THIS IS NOT THE FUTURE OF MUSIC.

If I ever had any optimistic doubts that LinkedIn was something more than a dressed-up resume service, those doubts were dashed today when I received yet another slew of invitations to connect to a horde of recruiters.

Does anyone actually use this crappy service aside from the recruiters themselves? At this point it is such a slum that I can’t imagine that any A-level player is wasting any time on the site, and anyone who’d respond to a LinkedIn recruiter these days has implicitly declared that they’re not really up to par.

My friend Joe Berkovitz launched the public beta of his notation software service today:

http://www.noteflight.com/

Noteflight is an interesting service for many reasons which I lack the time to fully explore here, so here’s a very quick summary:

It takes the most important parts of notation software and implements them online, in a stunning and lightweight browser application, and leaves the complex nasty gooey seldom-used parts of notation software for the likes of Finale and Sibelius.

I foresee great uses of this software in the music education area.

Congrats, Joe!