Label news: Naxos links into gamers
NewsThe major classical resource Naxos has linked up with the Reactional Platform, which allows game developers to create interactive music soundtracks in games.
Naxos and Reactional will aim to collaborate on the composition of interactive soundtracks, ‘allowing composed music to be generated in real time around the gamer and gameplay’.
Reactional Music President David Knox said: ‘With 14,000 games released on PC, 8,000 on console and thousands more on mobile each year, the diversity of games development across five continents is huge. The partnership with Naxos is important as it brings music scores from every region of the world together along with an incredible catalogue of classical music. Naxos has a vision and understanding of the transformations that are taking place and the new opportunities that now exist for creative and commercial use and consumption of music.’
“Naxos has a vision and understanding of the transformations that are taking place and the new opportunities that now exist for creative and commercial use and consumption of music.”
Translated: ‘We get fed-up with the shrinking market for classical music, there’s more money to be earned with the ignorant, uncultured kids’.
I really want to see you talk to scholars of popular music and see how many will laugh you out of the room
Actually, what is more to be expected is the other way around. ‘Scholars of popular music’ is an impossible concept, the only respectable and effective academic category for ‘popular music’ is cultural anthropology. I don’t mean that in an ironic sense, I am serious about that, because in that context pop can be studied as a phenomenon without having to go into the area of artistry and musical value.
I think you are on the wrong website. Better look for a website that offers you more comprehensible feedback. This is mainly for classical music (look it up, it is something different from pop).
John, when I interviewed the very talented violinist Conrad Chow for Fanfare Magazine some years ago, he cautioned me about not unfairly dismissing composers whose resumes included composing for video games, as well as composing concert music which he had performed and recorded. His point was that these trained young composers — in common with film music composers of an earlier era — were thereby 1) making a living off their music, 2) were able to try out ideas abd actually hear the results, and 3) using the experience gained to their advantage.
So let’s not paint with too broad a brush.
Oh but really, there is nothing against writing for games or filmmusic, to earn a living. Even Schoenberg scored vulgar operettas for his wife to be able to buy the groceries. But games and filmmusic are a very different category from concert music, serious classical music. I did many things myself for a living that had not much or nothing to do with serious concert music. But what Naxos is doing here, is something else: it is cheapening and dumbing-down the art form for which they had been set-up.
John Borstlap seems once again to have got it all wrong. Has Naxos said it is in any way cutting down its commitment to recording the widest range of classical music compared to any other label, including a large amount of contemporary music? No! Naxos has been continuing to expand its catalogue of music that includes core repertoire and music other labels don’t dare to touch. It adds far more classical content per month than any other label. It has been at the forefront of almost every advance in the spreading of classical music worldwide since it founation almost 40 years ago. It now distributes 50 plus labels in addition to its basic Naxos label. Its complete cataloge is available on the internet and, I believe, free to educational institutions. For John Borstlap even to suggest that the new venture represents a “cheapening and dumbing down of the art form” is just plain nonsense! It’s a new venture that may well appeal to a considerable number of those who do not presently listen to classical music.
I hope this relationship has a good dispute resolution mechanism on AI related issues. There can be a slippery slope, even unbeknownst to both parties, where there could be AI generated music, and who does it belong to?