Product: Associated Production Music Announces Game Licensing Division

Associated Production Music, a joint venture of EMI Music Publishing (the world’s largest music publisher) and BMG Music Publishing (a division of Bertelsmann AG), has launched Third Element, an internal video game music licensing division to accommodate the growing demand for video game music and video game trailer music. “Video game music is among the fastest growing production music categories,” said Adam Taylor, president of APM Music. “Third Element has been created specifically to enhance video game soundtracks through source cues licensing, which adds an authentic and diverse element to the three components of game music. The first element being original score, the second being licensed commercial music for added branding and recognition, and the third being source cues or pre-recorded production music.” Tapped to lead Third Element is APM key account director Rob Cairns, who also serves on the Advisory Board for Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.), and whose clients include 2K Games, Activision, Atari, Digital Chocolate, EA, High Voltage Software, Lucas Arts Entertainment, Maxis, Microsoft Games, Midway Games, Rockstar Games, Shiny Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sony Online Entertainment, Take Two Licensing, THQ, Ubisoft Entertainment and Volition. Recent A-list games have used a wide variety of musical genres from APM, including Big Band / Swing, Classical, Authentic Russian and Japanese, Romantic German Ballad, French Accordian, African, Rock / Nu Metal, Hip Hop, Epic Orchestral and Electronica. In separate, unrelated news, APM recently unveiled Endgame, a brand new collection of original music cues created by some of the most successful video game music composers in the electronic gaming industry, including Tommy Tallarico, Chance Thomas, Jack Wall, Inon Zur and many others. The Endgame Music Library will also feature a series of CDs with actual music cues from some of the most popular video games titles. APM expects the new Endgame Music Library to be extremely useful to film and television music supervisors, television promo producers, movie trailer editors, radio spot producers, and advertisers.