Should VGM be better represented on TV & mainstream radio?

[mikurotoro]

do you guys think VGM should be better represented on TV & mainstream radio? personally i do because i want the popularity of VGM to grow so we can get more OST's,sheet music,more VGM concerts,etc! i like that OCR is helping with getting more people interested in VGM but have you guys at OCR thought of having your own TV show all about VGM as a way to get more people interested? what do you guys think? thanks in advance!

[Brandon Strader]

It's an interesting question, nobody is going to say "no", but it doesn't matter too much and here's why. TV is run by ratings, and even if there were a very highly rated show about VGM it would either be on cable so you'd have to pay extra, HBO or similar so you'd have to pay extra extra, or if it was just featured as background music in an existing show it'd be kinda dumb IMO. You'd be watching Keeping up with the Kardashians and Song of Storms would come on and you'd be like WTF? What did they do to my Childhood?

Radio, there's only so many frequencies, but oddly a lot of them are taken up by classic rock, a couple classical, and then "dance music" channels.. and a couple country. While I think VGM is good, diverse enough to justify its own channel, it brings about its own bunch of issues if a potential VGM station were to exist. For one thing it'd be based out of some specific city (in fact such a channel might already exist, we just don't know about it). Would you move to Kansas City to listen to VGM radio? And get Google Fiber? Everyone wants to, but you can't just up'n do.

Maybe I'm just being goofy and I should just go with the touchy feely answer of "I do! Yes, oh gosh 100 times yes!"

Soo basically Yes, and gosh-dang the consequences!

[Slimy]

If there's a demand. I don't think putting VGM on TV & mainstream radio would necessarily result in a bigger audience for it. Doesn't VGM already have an audience? An audience primarily on the internet, not TV?

[Chernabogue]

A few shows in France used some VGM. It's not mentioned, and only serves to fit the video (I remember my GF watched a girl-oriented show useing a few pieces of music from the Sims).

[EbonHawk]

Interestingly enough, the 20th anniversary Toy Story special that aired in December used some songs from The Sims 3 as background music.

For example, the song that plays at 23:00 is this track.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

I would actually say I'm indifferent to existing pieces being played on TV and radio. Video game music already has a huge fanbase around the world even among non-gamers because of, well...video games. It's one of the most popular hobbies there is. Your 93 year old grandma can probably hum the Mario theme or recognize Pac-Man and the 70s and 80s were a long time ago.

 In fact, video games have been credited with "saving" the symphony orchestra because VGM concerts are super popular and also get young people interested in orchestral music. 

What I would like to see, is video game composers get more opportunities in the film and TV world. I'd really love to see what people like Mick Gordon, Inon Zur, Yuka Tsujiyoko etc. could do to film. Film composers managed to get a piece of the video game action, but not really the other way around. I firmly believe a lot of video game composers make far more/better use of melody and in a huge variety of genres where as pretty much every film these days is going for the drones & atmosphere, hybrid score and it's terribly boring. Nobuo Uematsu, Tsujiyoko, Shimomura, Yamane, etc.'s orchestral music is much closer to the classic, romantic and epic film-scores like John Williams composes and I'd really love to see people like this bring take their composition beyond games or at least do so more often. 

Basically, I trust any music composed by a middle-aged Japanese woman - you just know it's going to be good  

[mikurotoro]

actually i should have said i want VGM to grow in popularity where i live the main kind of music people listen to in this area is country so i would like to help get VGM popular here! for example the local amphitheater has an annual concert series every summer & i suggested to both ironstone amphitheater & richter entertainment group that they have VGM this year but i never got a reply from both & ironstone amphitheater blocked me on facebook all because i suggested they feature VGM!

[Eino Keskitalo]

3 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Basically, I trust any music composed by a middle-aged Japanese woman - you just know it's going to be good  

I just wanted to quote this.

[Jamphibious]

Not too long ago a piece from the Zelda Symphony of the Goddesses was playing on Stephen Colbert's show.  That was pretty awesome.  It would be cool to actually see composers as guests on various talkshows and the like, perhaps one day we'll start to see more of that happening.

[Pipez]

A Sirius station could work.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Maybe this is a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I don't really feel this urge to go out and tell everyone about how great video game music is. It's... really just music. Sure, it's pretty good. But... treating it like a cause, to "raise awareness" to the general public (insofar as the OP's suggestion to have a TV show), kind of confuses me.

Maybe in the vein of artistic/academic recognition, yes, there's some work to be done, to get it to the level of filmography studies and whatnot. I could see that, and I certainly am of course in line with OCR's mission of promoting VGM as an artform, especially since I've been indoctrinated into it for like 8-9 years. But in general, I don't feel the urge to go out and tell regular people about VGM anymore than I feel the urge to go tell people about jazz music, or EDM, or progressive metal.

On the contrary, I do feel strong urges to share specific music with people. Like when I hear a hot new album from zircon, or a great new cover from Dirty Loops, I'll share it around, try to get my friends to check it out. That's because I'm excited about how much I enjoyed something. But I don't think I've ever gone to someone and said "Look how great video game music is!" and threw a giant list of timeless OST's at them. I'm as likely to share non-VGM as I am to share VGM.

So I guess tl;dr, I think VGM should be better institutionally represented in academic/artistic endeavors (should see more game composers winning Grammys), but as far as the general public actually listening to it, I feel like trying to push that is as fruitless as trying to do it for any other genre/classification of music.

[yangfeili]

My wife watches a lot of Chinese television, and there have been numerous occasions where I've heard VGM being used in shows. One in particular that jumps out at me was some reality show on mainstream CCTV that kept using bits of the Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack.

I highly doubt they actually have the rights to use the music, since I also often hear them throwing around bits of the Star Wars soundtrack. But I could be wrong, maybe it's more common to draw on VGM/anime sources for music in Asia. (Once heard a bit of the Escaflowne soundtrack on an episode of Iron Chef.)