VGMusic.com
 Videogame Music Archive | |
Type of site | Music website |
|---|---|
| Owner | Mike Newman |
| Created by | Mike Newman |
| URL | http://www.vgmusic.com/ |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
The Videogame Music Archive, also known as VGMusic.com or VGMA, is a well-known website that archives MIDI sequences of video game music, ranging from tunes of the NES era to modern pieces featured in Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 games. Currently, there are over 21,000 MIDI files hosted on the site.
The owner of the website is Michael Newman (Yaginuma,) a University of Connecticut graduate who is a chemical engineer by day.
Purpose
VGMusic.com accepts remakes, arrangements, and remixes of video game music in MIDI format. When the site was first started, the emphasis was on quantity rather than quality. In more recent years, the staff have been rejecting files that they believe are not good enough, although the rule is more relaxed if a particular song does not exist in the archive. The staff have also started to reject direct reproductions or rips from original game soundtracks, partly to minimize Copyright infringement issues.
The files archived are sequenced by the general public, and are submitted to the site for approval by staff members before being added to the actual archive. Sequencers do not receive money for submitting their sequences, and no paid staff sequencers are employed by the site.
Submission Process and site standards
The site maintains a large list of rules for users to follow submitting files, though these are often ignored. Files are submitted through a web form, accessed by clicking Accept on the rules page. There is no error-checking done on names or e-mail addresses, which frequently causes problems if a sequencer needs to be contacted, or if fake information is given.
Updates occur infrequently; the staff asserts that infrequent large updates are much easier to perform than frequent smaller ones [1]. However, a list of newly uploaded files is available to the public. Unfortunately, since it is public, it can be used to display non-compliant MIDI files, until the staff catches and removes them. The staff is known to IP-ban repeat offenders.
The staff can remove any file at their discretion if they feel it is not up to the site's standards. However, many files that were accepted in the site's early days have been grandfathered in, despite not meeting these standards. In general, files with a higher bit count show greater musical accuracy and sound quality.
Controversy and reform
At several points in VGMusic's history, there have been changes as to what's acceptable and what isn't.
- After a lawsuit threat from Bobby Prince, the PC section of the site was removed. It was reinstated again several years later, with a note not to upload rips or conversions of music taken from an actual game.
- There is a list of composers whose work is not accepted on the site for any reason. Typically this is at the composer's request.
- Conversions from emulator formats were banned on August 4, 2004. This decision sparked a good amount of controversy, but the staff refused to back down from their position.
- In February 2005, VGMusic's staff cracked down on copyrighted material attached to or linked from forum messages. This rule is comprehensive in scope, and can be used to punish users for linking to sites that contain illegal files, in addition to copyrighted attachments (primarily digital recordings of video game music). Although this has resulted in a few users' protests, no copyright infringement lawsuit threats have been levied against the site since the rule was instituted.
Community
Most interaction is the VGMusic community takes place on the VGMusic Forum. This community is very strict about what is and isn't allowed. Boards are broken down as follows:
- Music Requests
- Cartridge-based Systems Wishlist
- Disc-based Systems Wishlist
- VGMusic.com
- News
- Bug Reports and Suggestions
- General
- General Message Board
- Q&A
- Creative Corner
One thing you won't see on VGMusic is an unmoderated board. VGMusic's staff does not believe in hosting such a board, as it is against the principles of the site staff.
There are two unofficial IRC channels of VGMusic community members, both located on the EsperNet IRC network:
- #vgmusic
- #vgma
The staff members also discuss most site business through their own private IRC channel.
History
- December 19, 1996 - The site was founded by Mike Newman (Yaginuma) at its first location: Geocities Enchanted Forest.
- March 1997 - The site was moved to its second location: Geocities Times Square, in order to be eligible for Geocities's Featured Page Program.
- Spring-Summer 1997 - Yaginuma starts looking for people to assist him with the site.
- July 13, 1997 - The site moved to its third location: talon.extremecom.com
- September 7, 1997 - The site moved to its fourth location: Talons.com
- September 15, 1997 - The site was named Ultra Game Players site of the month for October 1997.
- October 15, 1997 - Mentioned in Lockergnome, a then-popular webzine, mentions the site in issue #52
- October 19, 1997 - Yaginuma and his new financial partner, Rom Geller (Necrosaro), buy the vgmusic.com domain name. The site moves to its fifth location: hosted by Value Web.
- October 30, 1997 - Problems with Value Web cause the site to move to its sixth location: Tierra Net.
- December 27, 1997 - The site moves to its seventh location, hosted by Mightyfox.com. Problems with the domain name cause it to remain pointed at Tierra Net.
- February 14, 1998 - The site moves to its eighth location, Nuerogamer. The domain name is moved to Nuerogamer shortly afterwards.
- May 2, 1998 - Due to massive amounts of downtime at Neurogamer, the site moves to its ninth location at Telefragged, where it remained for several years.
- May 8, 1998 - Ross Bemrose (Powerlord) finishes work on a partially automated update system.
- February 2000 - The site is mentioned in Wired magazine, in the article Scoring a Grammy
- March 2000 - The site is mentioned in Yahoo Internet Life.
- May 7, 2000 - Powerlord takes over Necrosaro's position as co-owner of the site, and assumes the position of Webmaster and General Site Manager.
- February 9, 2001 - The site is mentioned in The Washington Post's The Joystick Symphonies.
- November 22, 2001 - The site moves to its 10th location, a dedicated server hosted by Rackshack/EV1. Powerlord takes on the duties of Server Administration in addition to his position as Webmaster.
- June 3, 2002 - The site moves to a faster server at the same host.
- June 2002 - The site is mentioned in the UK Edition of The Official PlayStation magazine.
- June 24, 2002 - In order to help manage the site, two new positions were created: Update Coordinator and QC Coordinator.
- July 12, 2002 - Upload system was changed over to a PHP script. The rest of the site remains running perl.
- October 8, 2002 - The site is mentioned as the Site of the Night on TechTV's The Screen Savers.
- August 30, 2003 - The site suffers a hard drive crash, and loses some information.
- September 24, 2003 - The site suffers another hard drive crash. Due to a missing database backup, the forum system is changed from WWWThreads/UBB.threads to phpBB2.
- September 2003 - The site is mentioned in the US edition of the Official PlayStation Magazine, in the article "Videogame Deejays."
- January 23, 2004 - The site is mentioned as the Site of the Night on TechTV's The Screen Savers. Again.
- May 6, 2004 - The site is mentioned in a Los Angeles Times article "The Next Level." Staff member Benny Hsieh (Braxus) is interviewed.
- August 4, 2004 - Conversions are officially banned on the site.
- February 2005 - New versions of the indexing system are rolled out on VGMusic. Most of the site is redone using CSS.
- March 22, 2005 - The site is mentioned in the Globe & Mail, a Canadian newspaper. Staff member Shannon Mason (Pongball) is interviewed.
- June 7, 2005 - Powerlord announces that he will retire as the site's System Administrator and Webmaster permanently. Due to him having registered ownership of the server, the entire site moves to a different server at the same data center.
- July 2005 - Due to incompatibility issues on the new server, the indexing system is rolled back to a previous version and large sections of it are rewritten; also, the forums are reset. A hard drive crash later in the month forces the forums to be reset a second time. The server's processor is upgraded.
- August 2005 - A new backend update system is created and used to push the number of MIDIs archived to over 20,000.
- December 2005 - New staff member Secret Agent Man improves the update system in many ways.
- January 2006 - Powerlord releases the perl source code to VGMusic's music indexer versions 3.8.1 and 3.9.9b, and new-files indexer versions 3.8.0 and 3.9.9, under the GNU GPL. They are available for download as a zip file.
- July 26, 2006 - Updater Pongball resigns after 6 years as a staff member. Forteblast steps down as webmaster of vgmusic.com. Kurtis and Powerlord re-/join as co-administrators to take Forte's place and as system-administrators.
- December 19, 2006 - VGMusic.com celebrates its 10th anniversary with a giveaway. One lucky winner will win Gamemusic.com's top 10 game soundtracks.
- January 4, 2007 - Kurtis resigns after 2 years of being a staff member. Also, the winner of the Gamemusic.com giveaway is announced.