A Little Conversation

Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL, received a lot of attention as a result of his remix of Elvis' "A Little Less Conversation" a few years ago. He has licensed music and written original scores for multiple videogames, including Forza, SSX Blur, Quantum Redshift, Test Drive 5, Burnout 2, and the Need for Speed series (Underground, Carbon, Pro Street).

JXL signed with Artwerk a short time ago, a new Los Angeles-based music label formed by Electronic Arts and Nettwerk One Music. GamesIndustry.biz recently spoke with him upon his return from a tour in Australia.

Since 1994 or 1995. I was always blown away by the technology, for starters, and I realised pretty early in my career that if I wanted to reach more people with my underground music, it would be better to use more media forms than just regular CDs.

For me, movies and commercials and videogames have always been a very interesting outlet to reach more people than just the ordinary CD-buying person.

I would say that it's not any more or less difficult than having an ordinary career in music.

There is a difference in making music that appears in a videogame as a track, as an ordinary piece of music. Anybody could technically qualify for that, which is usually called a soundtrack or licensed music. This is already existing material.

The part where it gets tricky is the original score - music that is especially made for the videogame, usually music that is interactive as well - and that's what I've been focusing on a lot.

To make a career in that area... For starters you need to be a talented musician, but you also need to have a fair amount of experience knowing how it works, how to make interactive music, and also you need to be a very good team player because you are part of a big team that has spent a lot of money developing a game.

If you have a massive ego as an artist, you need to leave it at the door. Otherwise there is no room in that industry for you.

The music needs to fit with the game. Usually you get approached with your music in mind. I wouldn't be asked to do the music for a romantic comedy, for example. But anything that is dark, anything that has action, that needs an electronic approach, that's usually where I come in.

Usually you talk about the style they have in mind, you tell them what you have in mind, and you start making demos. At a certain point, everyone is happy with it and then you can start mass producing music for such a game.

[The industries] go hand in hand. Many kids out there play games and consume the music as well.

Obviously, the industry is trying to figure out in the next four or five years, how money can be made... You know, downloading music or downloading movies.

But, for me, the interesting part at this point, is that my name catches on out there. For instance, I just did the score for Need for Speed, and by the time it is Christmas, [the game] may have sold 5 to 6 million copies worldwide.

If you know that one game is played by three other people, you are talking about 18 million people in the next two months that will have heard Junkie XL music. It creates a demand on the internet for my music, whether it is bought legally or illegally. Because of that, it creates a demand for gigs. So, it really works for me.

Also, if people really like the music for Need for Speed, it will generate other work in the same field. People will approach me saying "Man, I heard that score for Need for Speed, and it was awesome. We're working on a film and we're looking for a similar approach." or people ask me for remixes. So, for me, it really has a positive effect.

Honestly, in the last twenty years, I've never made money from CD sales like I do royalties. I always make my money elsewhere, like from remixes, doing a score for a videogame, doing a score for a movie, collaborating with other artists. That is really propelled by the fact that I work on so many multimedia projects.

Not if your name is Brittany Spears or Kylie Minogue, but if you are called Junkie XL, absolutely yes.

MTV will not play my stuff. Nor will the big commercial radio stations worldwide. In the US, we're lucky with the satellite radio that does play my music a lot, and some really cool radio stations like KCRW in Los Angeles. But, unfortunately, there are only a few radio stations like that worldwide.

For me, getting the exposure through a videogame is massive. Like I just said, 18 million people will hear my music in the next two months. It's really hard to create numbers like that with traditional media like TV and radio.

If you look at the past, there is always room for good alternative music...thank God. Bands like Nirvana and Sonic Youth, to name a few in the past, broke through traditional radio. So it is possible. At this point, though, it is harder than ever before to get electronic music played on commercial radio stations.

I wouldn't say that the typical gamer is automatically a fan of electronic music. Electronic music fits really well with the game, so it enhances the game experience for the player. But besides that, there will be a lot of kids out there who are like "I never really liked electronic music, but this stuff is great, so let's check out this guy." So it has a good effect.

Absolutely. You see different games being developed to support different music styles. There were the hip-hop games, and now we have Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

But I think that one of the cool things that videogames also offer is that, once the sound palate has been set for a certain game, music supervisors really go digging in the crates to find cool stuff that matches that profile.

For instance, Need for Speed, the profile is electro/punk. So they start digging in the crates, and there are bands on the soundtrack that many people have probably never heard of. So, it is great exposure also for young bands. That's what sets videogames apart from radio.

Usually what you hear on the radio is massive...it is supposed to be a big hit. What you hear in videogames is not necessarily meant for that. It is meant for a different approach. The general music approach for videogames is a more honest and a more real one that actually lives out there among young people and older people. Because videogames are being played [by people] up to 40 and 50 years-old.

People hear Need for Speed, then they download some tracks, then they want to see a show. If there is more demand for a show, I can play in a bigger club and my fee will be better, and because of that my profile is raised. And then other people will hear Need for Speed and want me to work on their movie, and then the movie comes out and people approach me for something else. For me, it's a snowball effect. It's a slow rolling snowball, but it is rolling, so it has a really good effect.

I don't really consider that a downside. It is just the nature of the game.

But then again, I can release that myself through iTunes or a physical release, a normal CD. That's how I can say whatever I want to say, you know?

As I said before, if you work on a videogame or a movie, you are part of a bigger team. If the goal of that team is to concentrate on a certain age group, you know at the start that you shouldn't be writing certain types of tracks. You know that when you begin. You can still say that you won't do the game if you don't feel that you can express yourself.

I got really easy going, because I can always release stuff as an artist. That's my ultimate freedom.

But there is also a little bit of a paradox, because if I were to collect some of the music I've done for movies and videogames, if I were to collect that on one disc, it would be so gnarly, so underground, that a record company wouldn't even put it out.

So, once the perimeter is set for what a movie or a game is all about, within that area you have a lot of freedom to do whatever you want. Like I said, some of the stuff I did for movies is so dark, so gnarly, that it is pointless to release it as a separate track because people wouldn't buy it.

Well, it works like this. If you've done a score, then the gaming company owns the whole music. It's like a work for hire. So as an artist you are not the owner of that specific music anymore, which is different from the music used for soundtracks. Those tracks are already done. They are already finished and released. [Game companies] just pay a certain amount of money for using a track in a particular game.

Well, from the licensing part, there is not really anything to it because you already made the track. You didn't make it for that game specifically. The "**** More" song is the first single from my new album, so I didn't make that with Need for Speed in mind. I just made that track for my album, and then EA Games said "We love that track. We want that track to be the leading track for Need for Speed." And it's like, okay, there you go, you can have it for a certain amount of money. But I'm still allowed to do anything with that track I want, because it is my artistic track.

Versus the original score, where I get approached by EA Games asking if I'd like to make an hour and a half of interactive music for this game, and I say yes, then I start making the music with the game in mind.

Yeah, you can say that. For instance, in the past I've turned down licensing for Army commercials.

I get hired by EA Games to do original scores. That is one thing. That is completely separate from the fact that I am signed as an artist to Artwerks. I know it is complicated, and they are very closely connected with one another, but the deal I have with Artwerks is just a regular artist deal with just another record company, but in this case called Artwerks.

Why I am so happy with Artwerks is that it is a joint venture between EA Games and Nettwerk, and they are really upfront thinking about where the music industry is going. They are very much aware of digital distribution, things like ring tones, licensing for videogames and for movies and commercials.

They don't operate as "old-fashioned," I would say, as some of the other record companies out there who are struggling to maintain their position right now.

We are also going to have a physical release in some countries where it still makes sense to do that.

Again, I am signed to Artwerks, and EA Games just happens to be a partner in that joint venture, but it is a traditional record deal between a traditional record company and a traditional artist. So, that's one thing.

Second, I do a lot of work for EA Games making original music for their videogames. But technically it is completely separated from each other.

Well, they don't necessarily have that right as far as I know, but EA Games is just around the corner, so while I am working on the record, I keep feeding them with MP3s of the album stuff that I am working on.

But it is not exclusively for EA only. We are approaching other companies as well with that same material.

All the licensing deals that we make are non-exclusive.

Unless, I don't know, Apple would approach us and say "Here, you have USD 2 million, we want that track for two years exclusively," then it's a whole different scenario, you know? But that is not what we are talking about here.

No, I cannot, because I always have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Everybody is so panicky that details may come out way before the game comes out. They are very strict on that.

I used to be.

At a certain point, I got so incredibly busy with my music career that it was impossible to maintain that super-addicting videogame playing. But I was totally caught up in it up to 1997 or 1998, and that's when my career really started taking off.

If you work 14 to 16 hours a day and come home, the only think you want is to drink a glass of wine and watch movies, you know? The last thing you want is to get another shot of adrenaline. But that's just for me.

I've got friends who play everything that comes out. Sometimes I am just sitting next to them on the couch. It's like watching a movie. It is just incredible how those games look and what you can do with them.

But obviously, because I work in the industry, I know a lot about the games that come out and it is a really thrilling development.

I am always enthusiastic about my music for the first week, week and a half, and then I'm like "Damn! I should have done it differently!"

The worst thing that someone can do to me is, when I come to their birthday party, somebody decides to put on Junkie XL music to make me feel comfortable. You know what I mean?

If I knew that with numbers, I would be a marketing guru right now! [laughs]

Unfortunately, you don't. You can only guess. You can see things like extra traffic coming into MySpace or extra hits on my web site or more people turning up at shows, more people talking on blogs internationally about certain things. That's how you notice.

How many in actual numbers? It is hard to tell. Like I said, if I knew that I would get hired by all the companies in the world to do some marketing research.

You can do that already.

In the future, we will have one box which is a massive multimedia center in your home which registers everything you do. Buying that box, you probably give permission to the makers of the box to keep track of everything you do so that they can give you better musical demand, better movies, better videogames...all the kind of stuff we see nowadays.

That's going to be very valuable for many people out there.