All About IDES

About IDES's Library Music (written by trentsignia)

The History

Although IDES's use of library music has been known pretty much from the moment it began, the circumstances that led to the use were for the longest time unknown. It was only in 2018 that the late Hironari Tadokoro, a former producer for the Cocktail Soft label at IDES, shed some light into this area in the memoir he wrote on his time there (Chapter 20, Page 187).

In late 1992, IDES was producing software for the PC-98, X68000 and MSX2 computer platforms. All of these had their sound handled by MUSE, an internal sound team that had become gone independent earlier in the year, and they produced several versions of each game's soundtrack targeting disprate sound hardware. Around this time, IDES began to support the FM Towns as well. Tadokoro speculated in his memoir that there was concern internally over the additional costs of commissioning MUSE to adapt their music for yet another computer, much less one that was relatively niche at the time.

However, a key advantage that the FM Towns had over other computers was that, on top of including the standard floppy disk drives, it also had one for compact discs. This meant that software released on CDs could include audio recorded in the "redbook" format, which was the standard for recorded music at the time; This therefore opened the opportunity to license existing music from a library, that for a one-time fee could be used as much as needed. Someone at IDES must have considered this cheaper than paying MUSE to produce soundtracks on a per-game basis, as library music was introduced into their CD releases starting in 1993.

MUSE was livid at all this happening behind their backs, of course, and Tadokoro noted that this put some strain on the two companies' relationships for a time. After 1993, IDES backpedaled on this practise and got MUSE to produce redbook soundtracks for the majority of their remaining CD output. The use of library music didn't go away entirely, however, as they continued to appear sporadically until IDES left the PC-98 and FM Towns behind in 1996.

This would lead to some serious consequences when their relationship with MUSE eventually deteriorated, right around the time that they were re-releasing many of their older titles for Windows. Without MUSE around to create MIDI versions of their original soundtracks, and unable to use the licensed library music for one reason or another, they appear to have had to hastily commission entirely new music from other music companies, ironically forcing them to eat the additional production costs they had been avoiding all along.

The Music

So, what music libraries did IDES use? In his memoir, Tadokoro recounts that the box of CDs that he was shown were bought from Rittor Music. And indeed, much of the library music used in IDES's games come from what was once known as the Rittor AVC Library. The library changed hands a handful of times; First to Roland some time in the early 2000s, and then to C Music in 2017. Today, it is known as the C Music Professional Library. Unfortunately no songwriting credits survive for the songs in their library, and the provenance for many of these tracks are to this day unknown.

Another music library that was used belonged to Atmosphere in the UK. This library has similarly changed hands over the years, and today is owned by the Universal Music Group. Some big names in the British music industry were tapped to write tracks for Atmosphere, such as prolific songwriting duo Andy Blythe/Marten Joustra and Anthony Phillips of Genesis fame. Their albums seem to have been distributed rather widely, as today their CDs can be found relatively easily second-hand compared to Rittor's.

Finally, the CAM Music Library from Italy makes up the remainder of the tracks found in these games. It is much older than the two afore-mentioned libraries, having been released on Vinyl in the 70s as opposed to on CDs from the late 80s onwards. The songs themselves were often sourced from the soundtracks of period Italian cinema, with some notable examples coming from iconic era schlock such as Rosso Sangue. IDES stopped using CAM's music after 1993, which might have something to do with their unusual origins compared to the other libraries.

The Search

In late 2021, C Music began to release their music through TuneCore, a music streaming distributor, and the C Music Professional Library became available through various music streaming services. Atmosphere's production music had similarly been made available on streaming around this time.

Although Japanese listeners have long been identifying the appearances of library music wherever they popped up, the wider release of the music libraries to streaming services led to some songs being identified through YouTube's Content ID system, which was how people such as myself and JackDBS (who runs the JPC Music YouTube channel) first became aware of this unique aspect of IDES history. This release on streaming also made it possible for music identification services like Shazam and AHA Music to identify individual songs without sifting through literally hundreds of tracks manually. It was in this manner that we compiled the majority of the information that appears on this website.

Some songs were less straightforward to identify as a handful of albums from both C Music and Atmosphere's libraries did not make it into online databases, having been pulled from distribution in years prior. Many of the tracks from these albums were identified by the experts at the Library Music Themes forum, a place dedicated to sharing and raising awareness for music of this sort.

The CAM tracks were also particularly difficult to track down, as nearly none of the over 200 albums made it into online distribution, at least in their original form. It's not without coincidence that these tracks were the hardest to track down for this site, and are likely where the few that are still unknown likely reside. A head start came from CAM releasing to streaming some of the film soundtracks the library music was originally sourced from, giving us the identity of these tracks if not their original source.

Ultimately, however, the majority of them have been identified thanks to the sharing of album rips from the library music community, with many individuals that own parts of the library uploading them online for the listening pleasure of all. It cannot be overstated how incomplete this website would be without having much of the CAM Music Library on hand to peruse and sift through for tracks.

It's possible that there's some we've missed. If you know the identities for any of the unknown tracks...please get in touch.

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