RuneScape - The Album

From UnRuneScape Wiki

RuneScape - The Album is an album released by Jagex featuring a number of popular fan-made songs. It was released in July 2007 and had sold up to 8 copies by the end of the year.

Contents 1 Track listing 2 Tracks cut from the album 3 Notes 4 The story behind the album

[edit] Track listing

1. "Scape Main" (Opening music)
2. "Canifis or Cannabis?"
3. "Ode to Zezima"
4. "We Are the Goblins" (Reds and Greens United)
5. "I Have to Become a Member!"
6. "Come Back, Wilderness; Come Back" (No Chance)
7. "Lair of the Dragon"
8. "Castle Wars"
9. "Lament of Meiyerditch" (Techno remix)
10. "Scape Main" (Dance remix)
11. "Lament of Meiyerditch" (Original version) (Japanese edition bonus track)
12. "Scape Main" (Strawberry Flower remix) (Japanese edition bonus track)

[edit] Tracks cut from the album

• "Troll Romance"
• "Karamja Rap"

[edit] Notes

• Tracks 1, 10 and 12 (on the Japanese release only) are instrumental dance tracks.
• Tracks 11 and 12 were only included on the Japanese edition released in late 2007.
• Two tracks were cut from the album after Jagex decided they only wanted 10 tracks to be featured on the album (12 for the Japanese edition).

[edit] The story behind the album

Despite RuneScape still gaining in popularity throughout mid-2007, Jagex decided to try something new that would pull themselves out of a period that had been boring for them, so they held a mid-year poll which asked players to vote on what option they thought would be best to revitalise Jagex and RuneScape itself, and the options were: closure, a sister game to RuneScape, make macroing legal, or release an album full of fan-made songs. Surprisingly, the general populace chose for Jagex to release an album full of fan-made songs.

In June 2007, Jagex encouraged players to write and record songs, and the best 9 would be chosen (there would be 10 tracks, but the first track would be the theme to RuneScape, "Scape Main"), but, as usual, there were a couple of conditions: 1. Jagex could do what they liked with your song when you submitted it to them, and 2. In submitting your song to Jagex, you would not gain any profit if the album sold any copies. Despite most players not reading the fine print, some did, but still gave their songs to Jagex out of pity.

It came to crunch time in late June 2007, when Jagex decided on the 9 best songs, which included 2 remixes, including a techno remix of "Lament of Meiyerditch", which had been self-penned by an anonymous Jagex moderator and released as a single earlier that year by Jagex as an attempt to break into the music market at that time, but Jagex blindly forgot that all teenies want nowadays is "doof doof" techno and hip-hop in which 17-year-old nobodies sing about their desire to "supersoak" and "Superman that ho!".

Regardless of this, Jagex decided to exercise their powers over these fan-made tracks and add subtitles to the songs which went against the original intent of the writer(s)/singer(s), such as the addition of the subtitle "No Chance" to the nostalgic lament of "Come Back, Wilderness; Come Back", and addition of redundant statements to a song of their own inclusion, such as in the case of appending the subtitle "Opening music" to "Scape Main".

While the Jagex staff waited at various times the next week with bated breath and mouses poised over the "refresh" buttons on various countries' album charts to see what position their album would debut at, they were sorely disappointed when the U.S. music industry magazine, Billboard, expecting a huge surge of album sales, reported that RuneScape - The Album had performed far worse than expected, and that, according to Nielsen SoundScan, had sold a grand total of 2 copies in the United States. In the following days, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) informed the masses of the album's selling 4 copies in Britain, and the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) published that, miraculously, the album had sold a copy in Australia. However, something Jagex were not counting on the next day happened - the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) published in a bulletin on their website that the album had sold a copy in Canada and had zoomed to #1 on their albums chart! Despite Canada's joy, Jagex tearfully chucked away their party supplies the next day.

In late 2007, renewed hope came in the form a Japanese release, which added two bonus tracks (the original "Lament of Meiyerditch" and a special "Strawberry Flower" remix of "Scape Main"). Jagex got the result of this release a week later, when they realised RuneScape had virtually no market share in Japan (thanks in large part to games like MapleStory, Lineage and Lineage 2), and all potential buyers rushed out to buy the latest Ayumi Hamasaki CD, which subsequently topped the United World Chart the following week, despite selling virtually no copies anywhere else in the world.