The Benefits of Audio and Music in Games

Christopher, from Clean Cuts Music, discusses the details of running a music production studio for games

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-cc-music.mp3

Or listen to it here…

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at Casual Connect, and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Christopher: My name is Christopher Kennedy. I work for Clean Cuts Music. We’re based out of the Washington DC area.

Interviewer: Do you do royalty-free music, or what kind of music do you do for games?

Christopher: I would say most of it is royalty-free. We do everything based on contracts. Most of our music is exclusive for whatever game we’re working with. We, for the most part, do custom music. We also do have a music library, so if game developers are interested in using the music library, they can go to that, but we have actually found most people are interested in custom music.

Interviewer: For most indie game developers, developers on the fringe, for them audio is just something that they can buy online. They just pay $20 or $40 for a pre-made royalty-free track. What is the benefit of getting something custom? Can you talk about any stories or experiences that you’ve had and you’ve seen where custom audio has made a difference and driven more sales or made the game experience so much better?

Christopher: Sure. Well, as a general philosophy, as I was talking about earlier, like, it’s the square peg, round hole which is such a tired clich