Bjorn Lynne music appearing in thousands of productions - what's up with that?

Today I received an email from Assad, who had come across my music in a game called SolarMax (I've never even heard of this game before, but that's not unusual) and he had done a little bit of research and found that the same music tracks were up for sale / licensing via the royalty-free music website Shockwave-Sound.com for only $30. So he was wondering - is this really the case? Can people really take my music and put it in their game... and pay only $30??

I wrote him an answer and I thought I'd share it here, since I'm often asked about this.

Hi Assad,

It's true, it is possible to legally license my music, for use in games and other commercial products, for prices starting from only $30. I have made my living on this for many years now. For the last 12 years I have made myself a good income with this business model. Actually, prices start from $30 but if you want to use the music for “bigger” projects, you have to buy the Mass Market License, which costs 2.5 x the amount of the Standard License. So if you see $30, that means the Standard License costs $30 and the Mass Market License costs $30 x 2.5 = $75.

SolarMax - Just one of thousands of
games and apps with Bjorn Lynne music

I own and manage Shockwave-Sound.com and we are working with about 300 composers who have their music sold via this site. We sell many, many licenses each day. After 12 years of having my music licensed like this, I have got my music used in maybe over 50,000 different projects (films, games, commercials, web sites, YouTube videos, installation, trade show / corporate videos, etc. etc.). Most of them, I don’t even know about. Sometimes I surprisingly come across my own music in some video game, iPhone / Android App, etc.

It may sound like $30 is a very small price to license music, but remember, it’s the same music that gets licensed by several hundred other customers, so this customer is not getting unique music. He/she only gets to use the music that potentially hundreds of other people are also using in their projects. I’m making a lot of money on this and I’ve made great success. So… I’m pretty happy with that!

Plus, it's kind of cool to come across my own music here and there, whether I'm watching a film like Respire (where I surprisingly heard some of my music in the background to one of the scenes in the movie) or playing a game like Vertigo on the Wii, where I also surprisingly recognized my own music.

All the best,
Bjorn Lynne

Worms, Worms and more Worms

From time to time I'm asked about music that I composed for the many different "Worms" games from 1995 until 2006 when I worked as a composer of video games for Team17 Software.

To keep this music from "dying out" I've now made a lot of it - maybe not all of it, but everything that I still had on backups and that I could make sense of, arrange and present in nice and tidy way, and that sounded ok as music in its own right, outside the scope of the game.

I invested a huge amount of creative effort in all that Worms music through the years, so it's with pleasure that I'm able to present it on my website now, so that the music can "live on" and be heard by fans of the games, and the music itself.

The music is available in FLAC (lossless audio) or MP3 (256-kbps) from the Bjorn Lynne Download Shop.

New music track: "Let's Go" in MIDI & MP3

Hi folks,

I just wanted to send a little note to say that I’ve posted a new General MIDI track on my web site. The track is called “Let’s Go” and I guess you could say it’s kind of “game music pop”. :)

General MIDI isn’t exactly “cutting edge” technology any more, but there’s a surprising number of people still listening to and enjoying MIDI tracks. These days, mostly when I add a new General MIDI music track, it’s because I’ve already composed the tracks using “real” instruments and it’s then a reasonably quick job for me to make a General MIDI version of the same composition. So anyway, you can hear the new MIDI track now, it’s called “Let’s Go” and can be heard at my MIDI Music page.

Should you wish to hear the same track in it’s original form with guitar etc., you can hear it at http://www.myspace.com/bjornlynne (it’s one of the tracks featured in the music player on that page).

It's nothing big or groundbreaking, but I hope you'll enjoy it. :-)

- Bjorn

Bjorn Lynne music for Flintstones & Home Alone

Just a quick note, people, to say that you can now hear my music in the two new PlayStation 2 games, "The Flintstones: Bedrock Racing" and "Home Alone".

So if you get a chance to play one of these, crank up the volume. ;-)