It’s a question that crops up a lot: how do musicians move into video game soundtracking?

Lena Raine is one of the most respected game composers on the circuit, capturing the imagination of millions with her work for Minecraft and Celeste, one of the key indie games of the last decade.

Often with No Tags, we try to focus on people who haven’t had their story adequately told. That’s not the case with Lena. She’s given many interviews, and she’s always an excellent subject. But we wanted to ask some practical questions: just how does a musician enter the world of video games? And what do they need to know about pitching, contracts, copyright and the difference in process between releasing recorded music and working for video games? 

It’s an interview of two halves: the first serves as a practical resource for musicians, but in classic No Tags style, the second half goes somewhere else entirely, with Lena on fine form tackling Gamergate, the evolution of the modern internet (not familiar with the theory of the Cozy Web? You soon will be) and the sale of Bandcamp. She saves her most righteous response for the coming of AI, though – that’s worth the price of admission alone.

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