Minecraft isn't Minecraft without its sountrack. Daniel Rosenfeld, also known as C418, is the one responsible for probably the most memorable and iconic video game soundtrack in history. But the name C418 is slowly starting to fade away from Minecraft. Every update since the 1.16 release has been lacking new music from him. So, what happened to C418?

Well, it's complicated. C418 has been involved with Minecraft from almost the very beginning. In 2009, Notch began to collaborate with him where he would create music for Minecraft. Before this, C418 just made music as a hobby. This partnership with Notch was a huge opportunity for him to finally get his music out to the world.

C418 would initially make 3 tracks for the game:

• Minecraft
• Clark; and
• Sweden

The way these songs were made and implemented to the game was actually a very unique stylistic approach that was rarely seen in other indie games at the time. One cliche of the typical indie game was their strict use of chiptune music. C418 wanted nothing to do with that for two reasons:

1. Because he didn't have much experience with it; and
2. He was tired of it

He wanted to make something that was unexpected.
Minecraft has this old school pixelated game style. Of course, one would expect it to have chiptune music. But during this time, it didn't. But imagine if Minecraft did. It would feel very different.

The original Minecraft soundtrack has this minimalistic and ambient tone and there's a very specific reason for that. Minecraft is a randomly generated world. The game didn't necessarily know where the player was at any given time. Plus the game was very simplistic especially in its early phases. So the music was created to be simple and universal for any scenario the player would've encountered. This is the idea came about for the music to simply be played at random.

And it worked!

With the music coming on and that silence in between, it lets the player really take in and appreciate the music, and then it somehow ties into what their doing in the game. All these factors are what made Minecraft soundtrack stands out so much from other games.

C418 would later continue to make new music for Minecraft. Sometimes, he would even play a role in making sounds like when the nether was released. He was actually the one behind the ghast sounds which was actually the recordings of his pet cat.

In 1.0 release of Minecraft, 9 music discs were added to the game, with the tenth added in the 1.4 update.

2012 eventually came around. Not because of an update but because of a new documentary film "Minecraft: The Story of Mojang". Alongside with it, new soundtrack was released by C418 called "one", the soundtrack used in the film.

Then 2013 came around with a huge update to Minecraft's music. Not only did C418 created a ton of new music to the game, but for the first time ever, Minecraft's music would become less random. The music was divided into parameters:

• the main menu
• creative mode
• overworld
• nether; and
• the end

This was certainly a deviance from how the music was implemented originally, but it was much needed as each dimension did seem like it deseved its own soundtrack. So after this music update, C418 went silent...

Until 5 years later in 2018, when 3 new tracks were released for 1.13 aquatic update which also added a new parameter: underwater music. This will be the first time that two parameters are in the same dimension. This will be also the last time C418 would be involved making new music to Minecraft.

1.16 eventually came around with another update when the world was taken by surprise of a new composer for Minecraft's music: Lena Raine, making the infamous Pigstep music. Some liked the new music and expecting for new music by her. While some began to wonder where C418 went. At the time there weren't many answers.

Then 1.18 update was released with more music from Lena Raine has been introduced to the game with another composer joining in: Kumi Tanioka. Don't hear me wrong, the music is good, but I would say that Kumi's soundtrack seems to be more aligned with C418's minimalistic approach and I would say she does an excellent job for Minecraft's music.

Even though the new composers created new music to Minecraft, they are still trying to imitate C418's ambient and minimalistic approach which brings me to this question: Why try to imitate C418 when you can just use his music?

After all, C418 said that his last Minecraft soundtrack was considered finished. And the real hurdle is that Minecraft is now a billion dollar property owned by one of the multibillion dollar company: Microsoft. According to C418 himself, "Things have become complicated". He couldn't make a legal agreement with Mojang, or should I say, Microsoft.

C418 currently owns 100% rights to his music. But this wasn't the case with Lena Raine and Kumi Tanioka. If you search their music on YouTube or Spotify, you may see this, "© Microsoft Studios Music". So when they made the music, they sell it to Microsoft which in turn, now owns 100% of the rights.

This is a typical practice with big name video game composers. They sell it to the game company and that company keeps the rights to the music. In contrast, Mojang or Microsoft doesn't own any of the C418's music. You see, when Notch first approached Daniel, they made an agreement where C418 would license his music for use in Minecraft. This worked well at the time as Notch was a small indie game developer and didn't have much resources to hire big name video game music composer to outrage purchase the music. Now with Microsoft owning Minecraft, they can hire anyone they want to make music for the game.

So it's possible that Microsoft wanted to outright own the music rather that C418 licensing it to them.

With Microsoft owning Minecraft, it can and will make things more complicated. But at least we can still hear and enjoy the iconic and nostalgic music that made Minecraft, Minecraft.