niche status, it would definitely be HALO. The original HALO soundtrack, produced by Nile Rodgers under his Sumthing Else Music Works label, sold over 40,000 units, and until very recently was the best-selling original music soundtrack in North America.

Not surprisingly, and perhaps fittingly, it's the HALO 2 soundtrack that can now lay claim to that title. According to Andy Uterano who runs Nile Rodgers' Sumthing Distribution, in the first 2 days they shipped 70,000 units of the HALO 2 soundtrack and have already gotten reorders from 2 major retailers. Furthermore, thanks to all the hype surrounding the game, Sumthing Distribution is expecting to sell an additional 20,000 units of the original HALO soundtrack.

GameDAILY BIZ recently had the pleasure of chatting up Nile Rodgers to discuss his record label, his involvement with video games, and HALO 2, of course. Below are the highlights of what ended up being a very lengthy and extremely entertaining interview.

BIZ: First of all, could you tell us how Sumthing Distribution and your label Sumthing Else Music Works were created?
NR: The truth of the matter is that when I was younger, I had always heard about the distribution end of the music business...somehow that bee stuck in my bonnet until I was older and financially in a position to do something like that. As the record business seemed to become more and more unclear as to what the future was going to be like, I thought that it didn't seem like retail in America was going away anytime soon, so I thought maybe my future in the record business would be to sell my own records directly. The right opportunity came along, so I bought a company that was a distribution company so they had a certain amount of vendor numbers in place, which are theoretically not assignable but I figured I'd take a shot.

And then because I had the ability to distribute, I just decided, "Well, let me just see how the thing functions; let me see if the ship floats." And a buddy of mine, David Lee Roth, was looking for a label, and I said, "David why don't you be your own label?" I explained to him how to do it and he put out a record through my distribution company and we doubled his last record sales on Warner Bros. So I thought, "Well, maybe I can make a go of this; let me just see what happens for a few years."

BIZ: After working with heavyweights like David Bowie, Madonna and many others, how did you decide to enter the video game world? Was it something you looked into or were you approached?
NR: I noticed something really interesting; a lot of videogame companies from Japan were calling me to release their soundtracks and in Japan videogame soundtracks do fairly well, but they really haven't been able to crack the American market. And so I started out with a few and I noticed an interesting pattern that with me and my customer base that we were selling to, videogame soundtracks (even though we weren't racking up huge numbers) fundamentally gave us an interesting product. And I knew where those fans lived because I like games myself. So I started thinking this will just be a boutique label and we'll go after those kids because I know where they live sort of.

BIZ: When did you first decide, though, to turn videogame soundtracks into a full-fledged business?
NR: About three years ago, and like I said I got a couple of soundtracks from Japan and then Simon & Schuster had a videogame called Outlaw Golf and it was just so much fun...it was a really righteous game of golf besides all the stupid, silly distractions...and so when Simon & Schuster came to me with the opportunity to help put music in Outlaw Volleyball when they were expanding the Outlaw sports series, I said, "Sure, I'd be into it!" And that's the first time I fully worked on the music of the game, and I said, "Ah man, this is so much fun!" We were actually having a blast, and then, you know, HALO. It was just an incredible experience and also because I respect the composers so much. This may sound a little corny, but I got to tell you, I've done a lot of film scores and to do a linear film score compared to doing a videogame, no comparison; it's so easy...but in a videogame because you don't know what the user is going to do, you have to think differently when it comes to music. It's just a real interesting component to videogame scoring.

BIZ: Although HALO 2 includes plenty of original music from Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori, it also features several tracks from bands like Breaking Benjamin, Hoobastank and Incubus. What was the thinking behind this? Do you believe fans will embrace these tracks as "real" HALO music?
NR: Not only do I think they will, but I think they are going to love it judging from what I've been hearing. Even in the very beginning, the first thing that I released, the first thing I let people hear was Breaking Benjamin—I streamed the entire song. And I did that because I wanted to see what people's reactions were; I wanted to see if people would start to speculate that HALO was different than before. And the interesting thing is that anybody who played HALO: Combat Evolved, the first thing everybody would start doing is making suggestions on what to do to make the next game better. "Ok man, this weapon's gotta do that and this vehicle's gotta do that" and all that sort of stuff and I thought, "Why not ask that question about everything?" And the great thing about Marty is that I can say to him, "Do you think this would be better if we did that?" And he would say, "No I don't think that but I'll try it and see what happens." Obviously, he tried some stuff and it was cool [laughs]...

...So I think that people are really going to be surprised at how well the tracks work because you got to understand that on the album we have vocals on some of the stuff but certain things are the exact way that they appear in the game. Incubus' Odyssey is exactly the way it appears in the game, and when you do what you do [in the game] and then that kicks in you're going to go, "Oh man, that's so cool!" It's just really exciting; HALO music is atmospheric and it kind of sparks the fences. I remember when Marty finished the first one and I heard the way that he used guitar and that's why I brought Steve Vai up. I said, "Look, there's guitar on the first HALO record; what if the guitar player was Steve Vai? What would that be like?"

Editor's note: I can honestly say this album rocks, folks. Go buy it

BIZ: You touched on this already a little, but since you've worked on music for both films and games, how would you compare or contrast the two?
NR: Just the sheer volume that you have to put into a videogame to keep it interesting for 40 or 50 hours or whatever—it's really interesting. I mean, it's a lot of work but it's rewarding too, because for a guy like me who comes from the sort of rebellious music school, videogames feel the same way; it's fun. The game developers and people are like rock guys to me—they can say yes and no and put on tantrums and it's all fun.

BIZ: As the producer, what were your main responsibilities while helping to create the HALO 2 soundtrack?
NR: The way the process works is that Marty and Mike are continuously working on the music for the game...so then it's up to me to take my idea of a soundtrack and mold that into its own unique, complete work. You got to remember that when you're listening to the soundtrack, you're not playing the game anymore...so you're not in the same headspace that you were in while you were playing. So I have to construct that and put that together in a way that is its own unique thing.

Every product to me has a beginning, a middle and an end and I deal with the soundtrack as a complete thought. And maybe it's because I come from the record era, but we don't just record files randomly. So to me, a record is a complete piece of work like a film; it's not just snippets or scenes. I treat the soundtrack as one complete idea, so when you get through the soundtrack you have a fairly good representation of what the game was like. And the reason for why I put Hoobastank's Connected as the last track, as the bonus track, [is that] they weren't part of the game; they weren't in-game. They summed up the experience and it's perfect. I had to fight my instinct to want to put that at the top because I'm the record company; any other record company would say, "Yeah man, put that first...it's a hit!" You don't do the bait and switch on people; that's not cool.

BIZ: So, how has it been working with Bungie and Microsoft?
NR: The thing that's cool is that I don't think that any relationship is supposed to be, you know, when every time you say something, people just go "yes, yes, yes." That wouldn't make sense. A lot of times what you're doing is throwing stuff from way outside to see if it works because you want to see if people thought of it and if they had thought of it and denounced it, "why?" Or maybe they hadn't thought of it and "wow let's try it." So obviously, it's a lot of trial and error. I would say that basically, as an overall relationship, my relationship with Bungie and Microsoft is fantastic.

BIZ: As you mentioned earlier, video game soundtracks are much more popular overseas. Do you feel they will become more popular in North America in the coming years?
NR: Well, I sure hope so [laughs] since I built a company around it. In my heart, I do. I'm always a little bit leery because the American music buying customer has been developed in a system that sort of markets stuff almost the same way every time. So it's a little bit tricky. We're not that comfortable dealing with conceptual type of music so to speak. In other words, like in Japan they could buy the Pokemon music because they like the music and they like the characters and all that sort of stuff. In America, that would be a weird concept...the concept of buying music by cartoons or anime just doesn't fly here.

But I think that a lot of the fan base now and the potential fan base of the future is growing up with a lot of their characters and entertainment being developed in the digital domain. They're feeling a lot more comfortable with it than some of the buyers of the past. And also because the kids interact with these characters all the time via videogames as opposed to the passive experience of just watching them on television. So, you know, I'm not Nostradamus trying to predict the future, but I got into it because I like games and I like the music that's in games. I just think it's clever and inventive and creative, and maybe the reason why I like it is because I hear it so much. I remember even back in the day, with Super Mario Bros. we used to walk around singing that and learned it on guitar...it just showed that the music of videogames had permeated our psyche and it just became a part of our world. So, I grew up in the old school that said the most powerful tool in the marketing of music is repetition&mdashwhat's more repetition than spending two months at a videogame?

BIZ: So what's next for Sumthing Else? Do you have more game soundtracks lined up?
NR: I have Fable and I have Conker coming out, and I have a couple other really big titles I can't tell you about, but I got some cool stuff coming out next year.