The History of Minecraft’s Music – What Happened to C418?

Minecraft isn’t minecraft without its soundtrack daniel rosenfeld also known as c418 is the one responsible for probably the most memorable video game soundtrack in history but the name c418 is slowly starting to fade away from minecraft every update to the game since release 1.16 has been lacking new music

From him with other artists taking his place so why is this the case what happened to c418 well it’s complicated so today we’re going to explore the history of c418’s involvement with minecraft and try to figure out what happened to him c418 has been involved with minecraft

From almost the very beginning in 2009 notch began to collaborate with him where he would create music for minecraft before this c418 just made music as a hobby this partnership with notch was a huge opportunity for him to finally get his music out to the world c418 would initially make three tracks

For the game minecraft clark and sweden the way these songs were made and implemented into the game was actually a very unique stylistic approach that was rarely seen in other indie games at the time one cliche of the typical indie game was their strict use of chiptone

Music c418 wanted nothing to do with that one because he didn’t have much experience with it and two he was tired of it he wanted to make something that was unexpected minecraft has this old school pixelated game style of course one would normally expect it to have

Chiptone music but during this time it didn’t but imagine if minecraft did it would certainly make the game feel much different the original minecraft soundtrack has this minimalistic and ambient tone and there’s a very specific reason for this minecraft is a randomly generated world the game didn’t

Necessarily know where the player was at any given time plus the game was very simplistic especially during its early phases so the music was created to be simple and universal for any scenario the player would encounter this is where the idea came about for the music to simply be played at random

And it worked i’m sure you’ve been in a situation where you were playing the game in silence doing a mundane task like digging a giant hole for your base and then this comes on All of a sudden the task is no longer mundane you feel good about digging that hole in the ground you have a purpose for doing it with the music coming on at random and that silence in between it lets the player really take in and appreciate the music and then it somehow

Ties into what they’re doing in the game all of these factors are what made minecraft soundtracks stand out so much from other games c418 would later continue to make new music from minecraft sometimes he would even play a role in making sounds like when the nether was released he’s

Actually the one behind the ghast sounds which were actually recordings of his pet cat in the 1.0 release of minecraft nine new music discs were added with a tenth added in the 1.4 update then 2013 came around with a huge update to minecraft’s music not only did c418

Create a ton of new music for the game but for the first time ever minecraft’s music would become less random music was now divided up into parameters where location specific music would be played the main menu the overworld creative mode the nether and the end this was

Certainly a deviance from how the music was implemented originally but it was much needed as each dimension did seem like it deserved its own soundtrack so after this music update c418 went silent until five years later in 2018 when three new tracks were released for the 1.13 aquatic update which also added a

New parameter underwater music this was also the first time that two parameters from minecraft’s music would be in a single dimension and this would also be the last time c418 would be involved in adding new music to minecraft 1.16 eventually came around with another update when the world was taken by

Surprise of a new composer from minecraft’s music lena rayne making the infamous pig step music disc most players liked the new music and were very accepting of this new composer but of course some began to wonder where c418 went at the time there weren’t many answers and that brings us to today

The 1.18 caves and cliffs update has now been released and along with it even more new music by lena rayne has been introduced with another composer joining in kumi tinioka now don’t get me wrong the music is good but i will say that kumi’s soundtracks seem to be more in

Line with c418’s ambient and minimalistic approach and i believe that she does an excellent job with that but what’s actually most impactful from these new music releases are the way they are actually played during the game you see these new songs are now only played in very specific locations for

Instance left to bloom will only play in meadowbiomes and lush caves and infinite amethyst only plays in grove biomes and drip stone caves the fact that this music is now biome specific really makes minecraft’s music more formulated than ever this update may increase the immersion with the initial exploration

Aspect of the game but as time goes on you’ll see a certain biome or cave and you’ll know with 100 certainty that a particular song will eventually play in that specific spot these changes mark a new era for minecraft’s music yes the music does still play at random but now

Some of the songs are location dependent this may give the artists more room for creativity to make the song itself match where it’s intended to be played instead of making it work anywhere universally so i’m a bit stumped on whether this is a good or bad change for the game let me

Know what you think aside from the music being less random the new composers still try to imitate c418’s music style which now brings me to this question why try to imitate his style when you can just use c418’s music after all c418 did say that his next minecraft soundtrack volume is considered finished

The real hurdle is that minecraft is now a billion dollar property owned by one of the largest tech companies around microsoft according to c418 himself things have become complicated now he hasn’t stated much more than that except for recently in his discord server so that’s it

From the looks of it new c4et music in minecraft is probably not going to be happening he couldn’t make a legal agreement with mojang or should i say microsoft so with a bit of research i’ve made some speculation as to why this is the case c418 currently owns 100 of the

Rights to his music used in minecraft however this isn’t the case with lena rayne or kumi tinioka if you search their music on youtube or spotify you’ll see this in the description copyright microsoft studios music when these composers made their music for minecraft they sold the music to microsoft who in

Turn now holds all the rights to the music this is a typical practice with big name video game composers they make music to sell to the game company and that company keeps the rights to that music in contrast mojang or microsoft doesn’t own any of c418’s music in

Minecraft you see when notch first approached daniel they made an agreement where c418 would license his music for use in minecraft this worked well at the time as notch was a small indie game developer and didn’t have the resources to hire a big name video game music composer to

Outrage purchase the music from now with microsoft owning minecraft they can hire anyone they want to make music for the game so it’s possible that microsoft wanted to outright own the music rather than c418 licensing it to them now like i said this is all speculation given the

Evidence i found but i’m pretty confident that this or something related may be the reason why no new c4 18 music has been used in minecraft recently so with minecraft seemingly off the table for c418 what is he going to do next well in that same discord conversation i

Showed earlier he mentioned having intentions of creating music for a new game under the company named ivy road who knows what this will bring but at least c418 talked to precisely zero lawyers to work on this game it’s sad to see such an iconic composer daniel rosenfeld leave the position as

The minecraft soundtrack artist but with such a large multi-billion dollar company backing minecraft it certainly can and will make things more complicated but at least we can still enjoy and appreciate the iconic and nostalgic music that made minecraft minecraft You