Did Trent Reznor agree with restoring the score?

[Vagabundork]

Last year, Nine Inch Nails released the Quake soundtrack in vinyl, digital and streaming; NIN noted that the vinyl release was intended to be accompanied by a booklet of essays from two of Quake's developers, John Carmack and American McGee; but that its inclusion was blocked by "a certain unnamed video game publisher". The band included a link to access the booklet in PDF but then deleted it (but it can be accessed via the Wayback Machine).

Does someone knows what's NIN's position, if there was an arrangement, if Bethesda has the right to use the score in the game with or without NIN's permission?

[D4NUK1]

https://youtu.be/33T7NPxnEKI

6:57 one of the developer talks like if was not problem to work with NIN Soundtrack.

[Vagabundork]

Originally posted by D4NUK1:

https://youtu.be/33T7NPxnEKI

6:57 The main developer talks like if was not problem to work with NIN Soundtrack.

At least from Nightdive, it looks legit. Maybe Bethesda is trying to do the right thing and stop being a terrible company?

[GamerXT]

The music was made for the game, which should include all versions, it isnt like a car licence or something.

[Owlet VII]

Originally posted by gamerXT3:

The music was made for the game, which should include all versions, it isnt like a car licence or something.

That isn't how music licences work, at least not in this situation. Trent Reznor owns the copyright to the Quake soundtrack. If they want to include it in a new release of Quake, they have to make an agreement with him.

[GamerXT]

Originally posted by Owlet VII:

That isn't how music licences work, at least not in this situation. Trent Reznor owns the copyright to the Quake soundtrack. If they want to include it in a new release of Quake, they have to make an agreement with him.

If that`s true, then I`am sure they did then.

[Owlet VII]

Originally posted by gamerXT3:

Originally posted by Owlet VII:

That isn't how music licences work, at least not in this situation. Trent Reznor owns the copyright to the Quake soundtrack. If they want to include it in a new release of Quake, they have to make an agreement with him.

If that`s true, then I`am sure they did then.

Definitely. Probably.

[Michael]

Originally posted by Vagabundork:

Originally posted by D4NUK1:

https://youtu.be/33T7NPxnEKI

6:57 The main developer talks like if was not problem to work with NIN Soundtrack.

At least from Nightdive, it looks legit. Maybe Bethesda is trying to do the right thing and stop being a terrible company?

Bethesda is now owned by microsoft... You ain't seen nothin' YET.

[[ScrN]PooSH]

From the legal point of view, the remastered version is still the same Quake - it just received a huge update after 25 years. Maybe that is one of the reasons why we got it for free on Steam. They didn't want to position Quake Remastered as a separate game to use the soundtrack.

[Owlet VII]

Originally posted by ScrNPooSH:

From the legal point of view, the remastered version is still the same Quake - it just received a huge update after 25 years.

No it isn't, it's sold as an entirely new edition. There was no Quake on PS5 25 years ago.

[V I D A L]

Originally posted by gamerXT3:

The music was made for the game, which should include all versions, it isnt like a car licence or something.

This is a special case. You can hear why straight from Romero here:
https://youtu.be/zAC4_ID8quY

look at 24:00

In short, because the soundtrack was made by Nine Inch Nails, they were "owned" by a record company like most musicians. So the record company also owns Quake soundtrack and they made the decision to not allow them to have the soundtrack in mp3 with the game files, but instead they are recorded tracks on the CD of the game like a regular audio CD. So the only way they work is by having the CD on the driver at all times while playing. With digital copies.. the soundtrack is obviously missing and id doesn't own the rights for it.

So you have to use a workaround to get it in.

[TROGDOR]

Originally posted by V I D A L:

Originally posted by gamerXT3:

The music was made for the game, which should include all versions, it isnt like a car licence or something.

This is a special case. You can hear why straight from Romero here:
https://youtu.be/zAC4_ID8quY

look at 24:00

In short, because the soundtrack was made by Nine Inch Nails, they were "owned" by a record company like most musicians. So the record company also owns Quake soundtrack and they made the decision to not allow them to have the soundtrack in mp3 with the game files, but instead they are recorded tracks on the CD of the game like a regular audio CD. So the only way they work is by having the CD on the driver at all times while playing. With digital copies.. the soundtrack is obviously missing and id doesn't own the rights for it.

So you have to use a workaround to get it in.

It's likely not so much that the record label wouldn't allow it - it's that they wouldn't allow it, without a new licence being paid for to redistribute the music in a new product (i.e. a new production/distribution of Quake) - licences aren't typically granted in perpetuity with infinite exploitability written in- they are limited, and if the licensee wants to use the music beyond the terms of the initial licence, a new license with new terms needs to be agreed & paid for.
It's likely whatever it was wasn't something iD thought was worth it until now.

[Allard]

Originally posted by Owlet VII:

Definitely. Probably.

Bethesda is very careful when it comes to copyright in these rereleases. Hence why in Unity Doom, for instance, they had to remove the NIN logo from E4M1, just in case, and why the addons in that are sometimes edited to remove copyrighted material. This is a heavily publicized rerelease, they'd have to be insane not to get an okay from Trent on it, especially after GOG's fiasco with the soundtrack.

[Gila]

TLDR: Reznor never was against including OST or 'restoring' it.

Tim Willits, back when he was still at id Software a year or two ago, said in interview that it was all this legal stuff being obstacle to both distributing Quake on digital platforms with soundtrack, but also apparently for Trent to release the soundtrack, which finally happened in 2020. Come to think of it, that's actually first release of the soundtrack separately from the game - 24 years later! Anyway, Willits said Reznor contacted them and they sorted it all out - that "we had to agree" (meaning id), "and he had to agree" (meaning NIN/Reznor), etc. Wilits also told the same story that Romero did - that NIN's contract with Interscope Records (now part of Universal Media Group) said that music would be distributed strictly on redbook audio CD.

The whole OST booklet thing was caused by 'an unnamed publisher', which many speculate to be Zenimax Media, or Bethesda. Either way the booklet was leaked online in PDF but had censored heavily pixelated screenshots of the game. Community managed to identify the places in the maps and create their own PDF with 'restored' screenshots.

[freefall]

Originally posted by gila:

TLDR: Reznor never was against including OST or 'restoring' it.

Tim Willits, back when he was still at id Software a year or two ago, said in interview that it was all this legal stuff being obstacle to both distributing Quake on digital platforms with soundtrack, but also apparently for Trent to release the soundtrack, which finally happened in 2020. Come to think of it, that's actually first release of the soundtrack separately from the game - 24 years later! Anyway, Willits said Reznor contacted them and they sorted it all out - that "we had to agree" (meaning id), "and he had to agree" (meaning NIN/Reznor), etc. Wilits also told the same story that Romero did - that NIN's contract with Interscope Records (now part of Universal Media Group) said that music would be distributed strictly on redbook audio CD.

The whole OST booklet thing was caused by 'an unnamed publisher', which many speculate to be Zenimax Media, or Bethesda. Either way the booklet was leaked online in PDF but had censored heavily pixelated screenshots of the game. Community managed to identify the places in the maps and create their own PDF with 'restored' screenshots.

Thanks, that's good explanation. Given that the soundtrack was restored in the anniversary update, I think it's fair to say they sorted out the legal wrangles. Either they renegotiated a contract where Reznor gets a royalty (which is probably just in the region of a few cents if we're going by most royalty models, and since this isn't broadcast on-air over radio) off each digital sale of Quake since the anniversary edition was published, or they pay him a one off payment in exchange for including the game soundtrack into digital versions henceforth, and in perpetuity.

[V I D A L]

Originally posted by TROGDOR:

Originally posted by V I D A L:

This is a special case. You can hear why straight from Romero here:
https://youtu.be/zAC4_ID8quY

look at 24:00

In short, because the soundtrack was made by Nine Inch Nails, they were "owned" by a record company like most musicians. So the record company also owns Quake soundtrack and they made the decision to not allow them to have the soundtrack in mp3 with the game files, but instead they are recorded tracks on the CD of the game like a regular audio CD. So the only way they work is by having the CD on the driver at all times while playing. With digital copies.. the soundtrack is obviously missing and id doesn't own the rights for it.

So you have to use a workaround to get it in.

It's likely not so much that the record label wouldn't allow it - it's that they wouldn't allow it, without a new licence being paid for to redistribute the music in a new product (i.e. a new production/distribution of Quake) - licences aren't typically granted in perpetuity with infinite exploitability written in- they are limited, and if the licensee wants to use the music beyond the terms of the initial licence, a new license with new terms needs to be agreed & paid for.
It's likely whatever it was wasn't something iD thought was worth it until now.

Yes, but in the original agreement for the 1996 release, the soundtrack wasn't part of the game files.. which was something more or less common back then with limited hard drive, it was a normal thing to have the soundtrack and FMVs reading from the CD... So we were used to have the CD on the drive while playing PC games back then... But what Romero says on the video is that the decision of having the soundtrack locked on the CD came from the record company.

When the game was released on digital stores, the music files were not part of it.. and like you said, the only way to have them back is through a new agreement id never bothered to secure.