Business

In 2009, in between full-time shifts at a local factory, then-19-year-old musician Daniel Rosenfeld composed a score for an independent video game. “It was just a side hustle, maybe not even that. It was a hobby, really,” explains Rosenfeld, who records under the name C418. 
The game, Minecraft, turned out to be successful beyond Rosenfeld’s wildest dreams. In 2014, Microsoft purchased Minecraft’s Swedish developer, Mojang Studios, for $2.5 billion, and through 2023, it had sold 300 million copies of the game, making it the best-selling video game of all time. Now, it’s the latest one to receive a movie adaption, and even that has been wildly successful: A Minecraft Movie, starring Jack Black, is the biggest box office hit of 2025 to date, having already grossed $550.6 million since it opened on April 4. 

Because no one anticipated the game’s whirlwind success, or had the budget to properly pay him back in 2009, Rosenfeld was compensated for his work with a small fee and 100% ownership over Minecraft’s now-iconic score. Then, when Microsoft came calling in 2014, Rosenfeld made a fateful decision: he refused to sell the score to the tech behemoth, opting instead to bring on game composer manager Patrick McDermott to help him navigate building a business as an independent composer of Minecraft.

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McDermott counts himself as one of the rare folks who understands how to navigate both games and music. He started his career at Captured Tracks, and from 2015 to 2020 he built Ghost Ramp, a label which specialized in releasing game soundtracks on vinyl. At the time he was brought in to help Rosenfeld, he was also managing a number of other games composers, too.

Though McDermott says deals like Rosenfeld’s, where composers retain ownership of their IP, are increasingly rare, his Minecraft soundtracks have proven to be big business. The score, Minecraft Volume Alpha, which is distributed via TuneCore, was certified gold by the RIAA in 2023, and this month, it was inducted into the Library of Congress by the National Recording Registry, which cited it as an “audio treasure worthy of preservation.” 

Since its release on digital service providers, streams of Minecraft Volume Alpha and its companion Volume Beta have averaged 38% year over year growth, and they have been streamed 2.8 billion times worldwide, according to McDermott. McDermott and Rosenfeld have built a surprisingly formidable vinyl business, too. The album, distributed by Ghostly, has sold over 200,000 units to date globally. Rosenfeld even has fans of his own who often congregate in a Discord server devoted to talking about his work, which includes the scores for other games such as Catacomb Snatch and Wanderstop. 

But it’s not all fun and games for Rosenfeld. He thinks that by not selling the score to Microsoft, he might have sacrificed his chance to make future soundtracks for the Minecraft franchise — and it’s true that since the sale, Rosenfeld has not written anything for the game, with Microsoft instead turning to other composers. But because many Minecraft players are nostalgic for his original soundtrack, the score for A Minecraft Movie, composed by Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, interpolates it — giving Rosenfeld some upside from the blockbuster’s success. 

In the end, Rosenfeld feels he made the right choice. “I don’t want to be stuck with the same thing for the next 50 years,” he says of Minecraft, and now, he can turn his attention to the new scoring gigs that excite him. 

Here, Rosenfeld and McDermott speak to Billboard about the strange business of scoring for games and building a living off of Minecraft. “I know it’s hard to believe, but there’s a real argument that Daniel’s music is up there for the most heard audio by humans in history,” says McDermott.

How were you compensated for the original Minecraft game?

Daniel Rosenfeld: I asked for a share of the game, and I didn’t get a share. I got a tiny, tiny amount of salary for the music itself. The good thing, though, is that I owned the rights to the music, and that’s still persistent to this day. At the time, like 2010, people liked doing [revenue] shares for indie games as payment — like the musician gets 10 percent [of the game’s IP], the visual artist gets 20, and then the main developer gets 40 or whatever. That’s usually what happened back then. Mine was a little different.

Back in the day, when you made this score, is this also how larger game scores worked? Would Nintendo, for example, offer a deal like this?

Rosenfeld: Absolutely not. Nintendo is a Japanese company and in that culture, it’s typical that you would likely not get ownership but you’d just be employed there for, sometimes, the rest of your life. It’s the expectation of a company like Nintendo that it’s like a family — we work together and stay together. The mindset of American video game companies is different. The usual deal is the composer writes a song, and they get a single fee. That’s it. No residuals are typical in a AAA [a term used to describe video games produced by large publishers] big game.

Patrick McDermott: The typical structure is to get paid a price per minute of audio. 

Has the way composers are paid in the independent game industry shifted since Minecraft launched? 

McDermott: The way I see it is that there was a big boom of independent games. The comparison I use to explain this is what happened to the music business when [digital audio workstations] and home recording got easier. We got a lot more independent musicians, right? Independent gamemaking was the same. It got a lot easier because you had new tools like Unity and Gamemaker that make it possible to start building your own games. I’d say the heyday of indie games was something like 2008 to 2012 or so. The upstart, scrappy indie game business that allowed for a lot of this shared equity model was really successful for a period of time, but it’s just one of the sad, prototypical things that as people see more success in a market, the more bureaucratic and standardized things become. 

Minecraft was a surprise hit. Then, Microsoft came along and bought it. You’ve said before that they wanted to buy the music rights from you. Why did you decline that offer?

McDermott: We did have conversations about it. Honestly, beyond sheer dollar figures, there was a gap in our understanding of each other. This was the genesis of Daniel and my relationship — when these conversations with Microsoft started to happen. And Daniel was smart enough to say, “Maybe it would be good to have an intermediary to help with it.” We involved a really wonderful lawyer on our side, and we had a strong belief that this music really matters. We just never quite came to the same terms and understanding on it [with Microsoft]. Daniel’s music is doing incredibly well. Who knows? Maybe they’ll knock on the door again someday, but for now, we’re thrilled that Daniel maintained ownership through all this.

Rosenfeld: I’m still going to therapy for this whole process. [Laughs]

Do any of your peers have the rights to their music from popular games today?

Rosenfeld: I am in a unique position, but it’s a bit of a monkey paw. I think it’s still frowned upon by the Microsofts, Sonys and Nintendos of the world for an artist to have ownership like I do. I’m a proponent of keeping rights, but it comes with the problem of some people not liking you so much for it. 

McDermott: A lot of these composers don’t have anyone to advocate for them in these deals. I’ve had a couple situations with clients that I’ve worked for that are less known than Daniel, and we’ve been able to secure some rights for them, just because video games lawyers typically don’t know the nuances of the music business language enough to iron some things out. In a number of cases, I’ve been able to get the full IP ownership [of the music for the composer] and give gaming companies the unfettered usages that they want, but we can still sub-license back the monetization of digital and physical royalties that the musician wants. 

Patrick, when you go into a negotiation for one of your clients, what is the first thing you ask for? 

McDermott: I always want artists to be able to maintain their digital royalties, their physical royalties and their autonomy to make those decisions where they can sign with a record label for the vinyl side of things — stuff like that. 

I honestly wouldn’t expect someone to want a game soundtrack on vinyl, but it seems like you all have built a booming vinyl business. 

McDermott: When we grew up, we would buy games, and we loved the physical boxes and manuals and keepsakes that came with it. Now, most things you buy you just fire up on Steam or on the PlayStation store. I think people are drawn to the idea of having something physical from the Minecraft game they’ve always loved. If I had to guess, probably like 75% of the people who buy it never put it on a turntable. Even beyond just Daniel’s music, there’s just a lack of physical collectibles in these digital spaces, so it just fills that need.

Patrick, you’ve mentioned before that there’s a lack of understanding, on both the music and gaming sides, of the other. What are some of the mistakes you saw musicians making in the gaming world? 

McDermott: When I got into game audio, I would talk to these game composers and realize their sales numbers were so massive compared to the independent tier that I had worked on. It was akin to the top artists at a label like Captured Tracks [where I previously worked]. You’d find someone who casually had Mac DeMarco-level sales numbers. The biggest mistake I saw some game composers making is they would be selling 30,000 units on Bandcamp in six months, but they never registered their music with a PRO. They didn’t know about SoundExchange. They probably had not been receiving publishing royalties in a meaningful way. I realized I could at least bridge these gaps for these composers and help them capture the royalties that are out there for them. 

Rosenfeld: Yeah, I wasn’t signed with a PRO [when I met Patrick]. There were a lot of back royalties that were owed to me that I didn’t know existed. 

McDermott: BMI, to their credit, reached out to Daniel because there was uncollected money. Thankfully these PROs have a period of about three years for retroactive royalties. So some of his money was technically lost, but we were still able to garner three years of back royalties.

I imagine the streaming habits for fans of the Minecraft score are pretty different from traditional mainstream pop listeners. Patrick, can you explain what listening behavior you’re seeing? 

McDermott: There are two main things that I find pretty wild about Daniel’s digital performance. One is just the sheer amount of organic listens that avoid any of the algorithmic and editorial playlisting. The other thing is Spotify started sharing streams per listeners, which obviously shows if listeners hear a single once and move on or if they are bingeing the track, and Daniel’s is quite high. It’s 15 streams per listener. That’s at least seven or eight listens higher than anyone else I have access to. It’s also very evenly listened to throughout the soundtrack.

How is Daniel’s score represented in the new Minecraft film? 

McDermott: There’s a song that the film licensed from us for interpolation across the score. It’s in there a number of times. There’s one song called “Dragonfish” that’s from a separate composition Daniel did during his negotiation with Microsoft, and Microsoft actually owns the rights to that one — well, Daniel owns the royalty and monetization rights, but Microsoft owns the IP. They actually play that song in full in the movie. We have no idea if that was gamesmanship on their part, using one of the songs of Daniel’s that they have better access to, or if they creatively just chose that one.

Rosenfeld: To their credit, I find the way they interpolated my song to be quite respectful. I haven’t seen the movie. I don’t know if I want to see the movie. I still need to go to more therapy. [Laughs]

The movie is still very new, but has hype around it translated into more streams for Daniel’s original score?

McDermott: Since the release of the film, his three highest streaming days ever were consecutive. Like within a range of 10 percent to 20 percent higher than usual.

Patrick, have you seen a noticeable impact in the consumption for this soundtrack since you came on as manager? 

McDermott: Since Daniel and I started working together, the catalog is probably about eight to 10 times [more] in terms of monthly [listeners]. Still, every year has been bigger than the last since we started working together. I think it’s just worth saying that Minecraft is obviously continuing to add players — I think that’s what separates this. It’s such a unique IP to be associated with — so different from traditional music or even film. It’s just getting bigger over time. 

Do you attribute the growth in listenership to Minecraft’s continually growing popularity, or do you also think that the trend is due to your various marketing efforts?

Rosenfeld: This is actually my little source of pride: as long as I have worked on Minecraft, there has been next to no marketing help.

McDermott: We don’t have a marketing budget for ads or anything. This is just organic. We just let it ride and see where it goes. But I think the reason it’s growing is twofold. It’s new Minecraft fans, and I think there was a transition of game audio listeners leaving Bandcamp and becoming Spotify users. We saw a big drop in Bandcamp and a big jump in Spotify in the last few years. 

What about YouTube? There are so many gamers who are streaming their game play on there and other sites like Twitch. How do you handle monetizing your IP versus letting users enjoy the soundtrack? 

Rosenfeld: We don’t collect any Content ID stuff on YouTube. We just rejected the idea of claiming those videos. 

Why?

Rosenfeld: Legally I wasn’t allowed to. It was part of the original first contract.

McDermott: It’s a pretty unique thing to gaming. You would never want to short-change the marketing of the game to monetize the music. It just wouldn’t make any sense to pull monetization from these streamers because then they will just start muting the music. The spirit of the arrangement is to let content creators play the game and even do things beyond the game and let the score be part of it. It’s definitely different. If my music was being used on a random stream, I would claim it, but that’s not how it works here. 

How much does Spotify account for Daniel’s soundtrack income now?

McDermott: Nearly 70 percent.

Back when you had the opportunity, you decided to not sell to Microsoft. Since then, there have been more compositions made to build on the Minecraft universe that came from other composers. Do you feel that if you had done it differently then maybe you’d be part of the newer scores?

Rosenfeld: Yeah, I bet I would, but here’s the thing: If I would have said yes, I would probably be able to write so much more music for them, but I probably would not feel great about it. I chose not to sell it, and now, I get the different sadness of, like, a messy divorce [with Minecraft] — but in return, I get my mental health and my freedom.

This story is part of Billboard’s music technology newsletter Machine Learnings. Sign up for Machine Learnings, and other Billboard newsletters for free here.