In terms of video game music I think a lot of us were first introduced to Loudr [1] by way of their annual Game Music Bundles [2]. The group has become one of the go-to sources for clearing cover song licensing quickly and affordably but their digital storefront was never a great place for discoverability. As such, Loudr announced in March [3] that it would be passing its sales business over to CD Baby [4] and has just confirmed some important end-of-life dates for customers.
Check the full article inside for the dates, details and some tips on a few deals.
Album pages on Loudr will lose streaming track previews on December 31st and music purchases will be disabled on January 31st, 2017. The most important date however, is June 30th, 2017 when access to previously purchased music will end. If you ever bought anything from Loudr (or think you might have) you’ll want to get back into your account [5] before the end of June to download a final copy.
For the record, most albums are available in Apple lossless, FLAC and 320kbps MP3 formats and can be exported to a Dropbox drive. An added bonus of Loudr’s competitive rates is that you might be able to grab some albums at a discount through January. There are a few things I’ve had my eye on that are cheaper on Loudr than on iTunes or Google Play.
“It was not an easy decision for us to close this platform,” reads the recent email sent to Loudr users. “But we do believe this will enable us to build new things that will benefit the community of songwriters and creators at large. We’d like to thank you for supporting Loudr’s community of artists and making the Loudr Store more than just another a place to buy digital music.”
Loudr’s licensing team is also in transition and changing names to become Soundrop [6]. As a music buying populace we won’t be dealing with them directly anymore which is surely a weight off the backs of their small team. They aim to maintain the same licensing and royalty terms as Loudr while exploring new means to support musicians and creators.
If you’re looking for some recent game music releases at a discount check out Scarlet Moon’s 2016 Christmas Album [7], Rich Douglas’ Golden Axe Symphony [8], the immense GameChops collection [9] and Marshall Art’s Gallery [10]. There’s even more great game music [11] where those came from.
Let us know some of your favorite albums we can find on Loudr in the comments.
Comments Disabled To "Loudr Shutting Down Purchases January 31st"
#1 Comment By Jacob On January 2, 2017 @ 5:31 am
Rough news.
While I’ve never particularly viewed Loudr to be anywhere near the map when it came to pricing (and I understand why they weren’t), there’s some things they sell that just aren’t offered elsewhere.
This news doesn’t really mention at all what’s going to happen to such things (are we supposed to assume that CDBaby is going to pick up the sales for them? Do they just become non-entities in terms of future availability?) and it really doesn’t elaborate at all on what’s going on with a lot of the labels and artists that made moves to sell almost exclusively through Loudr beyond a few “here’s some things at a discount” mentions (GameChops in particular, with their move off the likes of Bandcamp almost entirely – do they just go back to it? Do they seek alternative outlets?).
#2 Comment By Shawn Sackenheim On January 2, 2017 @ 7:27 am
I had those questions as well but Loudr isn’t saying and I haven’t heard any artists or labels that I personally follow mention their plans yet. Most of them sell their music across the different shops and streaming services. I really wanted to get the post up as soon as they made the announcement because of the cutoff date. I would hate to one day find out that all this music I bought online is gone without warning.