Often times people buy games bases on the quality of the graphics or the gameplay lately though it has also been on the music in the game. We have seen video games evolve in graphics, gameplay, content, and music, they have also made their way into culture, politics and the music industry. I started thinking about the impact games have on the music industry after I read this article in Time magazine about a jazz CD that came out on August 20th, 2009 called Kind of Bloop, the whole CD is done with old 8-Bit sound affects. Games have evolved far from 8-Bit sounds to a full symphony orchestra performing live but Andy Baio, the man behind Kind of Bloop, took video game music back to its roots and use those sounds to re-make an entire jazz CD using those 8-Bit sounds. Baio bought the rights to the original album, Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, and hired a group of 8-Bit(Chiptune) musicians to use old computers and computer-programming codes to make certain songs. It doesn't say what type of old computers they used so it could have been an Apple II or even an Atari.
The CD is definitly interesting even if you're not a fan of jazz music people should listen to the samples found at the Kind of Bloop website. The simple fact that video game music has evolved from simple Bleep Bloop's on an old computer/ entertainment device to having a full symphony orchestra perfome live music for a a game on any next gen system. Either way it is a noticeable fact that video games have an impact on musicians, as stated in the Kind of Bloop article.
"...in 2007, hip-hop artist Timbaland got in trouble for sampling a tune composed by a Finnish chiptune musician in one of his songs. That same year, a rapper named Megaran released a Mega Man–themed album that landed him a deal with video-game publisher Capcom." -Claire Suddath, Kind of Bloop: Miles Davis as Video-Game Music, TIME
Could video game music be evolving in the opposite direction now? It could be with it's obvious rise in popularity with the musicians of today some gaming companies might follow in line to increase sales and gain fans of Chiptune musicians. Chiptune as a genre in music looks like it is gaining more recognition and popularity this could create more chiptune musicians and this could mean the rise of chiptunes in video games. 
If Chiptune music takes the place of current video game music what will happen to composers like Nobuo Uematsu? They probably will still be composing music, they may even compose music for chiptune musicians to code. Chiptune is a genre of music now, it's no longer just a video game thing of the past as clearly seen with the release of Kind of Bloop. Although Baio has disbanded his chiptune musicians that re-made the songs on the album Baio has plans to make chiptune copies of other albums with different chiptune musicians sometime in the future.
Essentializing music
zach whalen on Mon, 2009-09-21 14:16This is some interesting stuff indeed. I would even argue that the stripped-down feeling of "Still Alive" has more in common with some of Koji Kondo's compositions for early Nintendo games than, say, Nobuo Uematsu's orchestral soundtracks for Final Fantasy games.
Today in class we came across the "gameplay v. graphics" debate. Do you think there's a similar technological progressionism to music?