Thanks Arthur and qubodup!
So what I learned from your replies so far is that you need some place to store lossless audio files in order to convert them into OGG. So it seems OGG is the format of choice for games? I'm kind of surprised that you use .mp3 audio and convert that... although 320mp3 might be not as bad.
The point of music being open source is that other people can use and rearrange the music. But this is where licensing issues start to puzzle me. I am able to create a song and release it with
license. Like this one I did for a promotional video of one of my friends:
http://opengameart.org/content/mute-ation-sad-frog-songI didn't use only samples here or MIDI files. There was lots of EQing and Compression etc. These effects are critical for the sound of the music and should be considered as much "source" as MIDI or single drumsamples. Since I use Logic I am not allowed to let people use apple plug-ins for free. So when I provide you with the "source" file, you would be required to already have Logic yourself... which is bullshit I think. I'm open to be convinced otherwise. But let's keep focussed on the puropse of Open Source Music. This is - right after being listend to - to let the music be modified by other people for their needs.
Music is something relatively exclusive if it comes down to production (playing an instrument, access to serious studio equipment, mastering) - not everybody can do that. Of course more and more people got behind the idea of slicing samples out of completed productions. But (getting to the point right now) I think it would be most appropriate if the music is provided in a way that people can start messing around with it immediately without going through the trouble of the hole production again.
I'm not convinced I made sense. I'll make up an example to illustrate that: Take the song I produced. Right now it's just the song ... ready to get sliced up. In order to let others get creative with my music I'd like to try providing a (e.g.) MilkyTracker file and a folder of samples from the song. It wouldn't be my "source file" but it would work immediately and people would also have audiosamples and stems from the song to get busy.
Is it plausible for you to judge the "open-source-ness" of music by the degree to which you can get creative yourself with it?
I still have no idea how the sound gets into the games... I guess it will be OGG-data. But what happens to the OGG in the game developement?
Regards,
MN
p.s.: can somebody write me a personal message and explain to me how I can write hypertext like qubodup did in his post? please