Next-Gen Music Startups Utilize The Cloud To Attract Top Composers Globally For Videogames

“There has been a perfect storm of activity in the music industry”, says Eric Rigaud, founder and creative director of Buoyant, a boutique production company specializing in music and SFX for games and emerging media. “We’re witnessing the disintegration of the music industry as we know it. Together, there is rapid expansion and diversification occurring in the game industry. More games are being created than ever earlier on consoles, and more faster and cheaper on mobile phones and on the web. The common denominator is that every game needs music or sound, or both, so possibility abounds. In the meantime the tools to create professional quality compositions and sound effects have been democratized and are accessible to anyone that has access to a computer linked to the Internet, and music software just as Logic Pro or Pro Tools – and let's not forget the perseverance to become a master of those tools and techniques. So now more than anytime in our history, great composers and sound designers are in abundance across the globe and are just waiting to be discovered. Buoyant finds that world-class talent and matches them to cool game projects.”

Rigaud says, “Take for instance our recent work on the Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty game for the iPad/iPhone/Droid. Buoyant’s headquarters are based in Washington, DC, nevertheless we worked remotely with Toronto-based composer David A. Logan, a top-flight, AAA game composer and Buoyant creative partner. The publisher, Disney Mobile/Marvel Entertainment, is based in LA. What’s more, the game developer, Sarbakan, is based in Quebec, so in order to have the teams working efficiently, we relied heavily on Google Docs, Skype and DropBox to collaborate between groups in real-time and ultimately to deliver David’s compositions to Sarbakan’s extranet for Disney/Marvel’s final approvals. My point is the web and cloud based services made it possible for seamless, real-time collaboration, allowing my company to look beyond my local talent pool to hire the best of the best for the project, regardless of geography. You need only listen to the music from the game to hear the final output of this process. The proof is in the product. And because my company is virtual, my overhead costs are much lower as compared to my LA or NYC based counterparts, which spend lots of money on the ‘client experience’; money they ultimately must recoup from their customers.”