Despite various contacts and tryings to get an official release of the CD-i soundtrack of Tetris out of the mud, it is probably not going to happen. The composer, Jim Andron, retired by now, does not own all the rights to publish a high quality version of it himself. Originally, he made the soundtrack of Tetris, together with other CD-i game soundtracks like Lords of the Rising Sun, for Philips POV and Philips POV remained the owner of the publishing rights. Jim Andron about this: "It was a Work for Hire arrangement. Let me see what I can find out. I'm not really in contact with those people".
However, Philips POV itself went independent, turned into Mass Media. It is unclear what happened to the portfolio of soundtracks like these. Mass Media was acquired by THQ in 2007, which itself had some troubles in the past too. (The studio was closed a few years later, but started up with a new team. The right ended up in limbo, according to our source. However, Mass Media itself still exists. It is likely the current holder of the rights is not aware of it, and the same kind of situation as with Atari might be a solution: To sign a deal in the sense of 'We didn't know we owned the rights, but with this agreement, we let them go'.
The biggest chance of success for that is with THQ Nordic, from what we investigated. In the meantime, a bootleg version is available on Spotify but the quality is subpar - the same as what we can find on Youtube for years. CD-i member Omegalfa also did his best to help finding who owns the copyrights, but it all lead to a dead end years back. Omegalfa: "All his previous contacts goes to a dead end (mailer deamon). I was with a couple of people and a specialized company in publishing unknown copyrights musics (Materia Collective)."
In the meantime, other CD-i members also try to rip the sprites from the original game, as well as high quality versions of the music. They didn't succeed, as of yet.
- Editor:Morton
- Credits: Jim Andron
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