Erm, what happened to soundtrack?

[murla]

Hi, why is "Stellar soundtrack created by acclaimed sound producer – Simon Viklund." arranged as a single MP3 file instead of separate tracks?

P.S. Also lossless would be great.

[76561198308031661]

Hi, The track is like one continuous mix of all the music in the game. We tough it would suit the ambient vibe of the music.
Regarding lossless. MP3 seems to be the most popular format. Will look into possibility of adding a FLAC version.

[murla]

Originally posted by Spelkraft:

Hi, The track is like one continuous mix of all the music in the game. We thought it would suit the ambient vibe of the music.

Can't say for everybody but I think many people (including me) listen to the whole albums at once. So in this regard it doesn't make big difference comparing to tracks format rather than forcing people to listen to it at once. Such mix could be a nice addition but not the main thing in my opinion. Fade-out of the previous track and fade-ins of the next track really create continuous ambient music but modern players can do similar effect with tracks too (foobar2000 or AIMP[take.ms] to name a few).

Track names often gives you interesting information about the game music, they also reflect composer's vision. Or tell you where this theme is heard in-game. They also make it good for referencing (hey, listen to "16. Forest: Mysterious" from Pan-Pan soundtrack by Simon Viklund, it's awesome! or "4. The Lawn" from Pan-Pan is my favorite!). Also that's not how the music was genuinely created.

tl;dr Such mix can be done from tracks with modern players. This single file can't be split into tracks due to crossfade (it'd be boring too). It also doesn't give you any information about the music and is back for referencing.

Originally posted by Spelkraft:

Regarding lossless. MP3 seems to be the most popular format. Will look into possibility of adding a FLAC version.

MP3 is definitely (and sadly) the most popular format while not being the best technically and just old. Let's say Vorbis OGG has not worse hardware or software support than LAME MP3 and is in fact a standard for sound/music in games, quite likely used in Pan-Pan too. And it normally has better quality/file size ratio than mp3. Still, there're a lot of people who haven't even heard of it.
There is also Musepack that provides transparency[en.wikipedia.org] on lower bitrate comparing to ogg and mp3 (in VBR mode). And so on.
... but MP3 is the most popular :/
Lossy formats are portable formats for me. I store music in lossless (quality!) and convert it to lossy if I'm going to listen to it on portable devices (I prefer ogg -q6 btw). With lossy sources my arms are tied. So it's always great to have lossless, quality- and freedom-wise!

P.S. Is there a typo in "Derilict Ship Cave"? Gotta be "Derelict ..." if yes.
P.P.S. I've created an entry on VGMDB - http://vgmdb.net/album/61092 , you can update it if you have something to add.