Star Trek Soundtracks

[Timofnine]

First of all, does anybody know why we don’t have much of a library of DS9 and Voyager music besides the pilot?

In particular I, and I am sure many others, would love to have the following available:

DS9:

The Die is Cast/Improbable Cause/Way of the Warrior/A Call to Arms/Sacrifice of Angels/What We Leave Behind/The Visitor

Voyager:

Basics Part I and II/Scorpion Parts I and II/Dark Frontier/Endgame

I know that we have a few random tracks available for example a suite from ‘Heroes and Demons’, ‘Defiant Ending’ from ‘The Changing Face of Evil’ and ‘I Can Live With it’ from ‘In the Pale Moonlight’. But that is about it as far as I know? I’d happily buy sound tracks such as these separately from Apple Music etc if they were available but it would be cool if they were on this streaming service after all of these years.

What are your favourite Star Trek scores and albums? What would you like to see available which currently is not?

I could listen to season 3 Voyager onwards and DS9 season 4 onwards sonic wallpaper literally all day!

My favourite Star Trek album is Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage, btw as it is so varied.

On another note, we should get Strange New Worlds season 1 soundtrack available over the next few weeks going from the Picard release?

 

[Eddie Roth]

Well, there is technically a ton of soundtracks out there, also for DS9, VGR, ENT and beyond. The problem is that these multi-CS collections were all released as limited editions by La La Land Records, many of which are out of print or else become rather expensive if you have to import them from the US. And that's to my eternal chagrin, because I'm like you and would love to have it all (great accompaniment while building the Eaglemoss Enterprise, too, by the way ).

That said, some of these are available: https://lalalandrecords.com/releases/star-trek/

What I love best are some of the movie scores, the TOS scores (which had a complete collection too which can now no longer be found anywhere, not even as an mp3 release) and the early TNG scores, mostly the ones by Ron Jones.

 

[Timofnine]

I can’t see the particular tracks I have asked for amongst those albums @Eddie Roth ? Earlier season soundtracks are cool though.

Were ‘Lala land’ given indefinite exclusive rights to the music before anyone had even considered the possibility of digital releases? Is this music now only available to a select few ‘elite’ fans who bought the albums at the time, albums that are set to *never* be released again?!

Does this mean that albums containing what we would all like to listen to will *never* be available again? Or that when they eventually *do* become available the people who would buy it would probably no longer be around to buy it therefore their market for the music will no longer exist or be *extremely* limited and niche not making it worth a re release lol.
Ok

*EDIT*

Ok I found some tracks I asked for after looking more…. Would I be able to legally rip this to my car MP3 player if I bought the CD? Or would I need to plug a CD player in to my car somehow?

 

[Timofnine]

Ok I am happy now.

I have Scorpion Part I and II and Dark Frontier soundtrack on the way in the Voyager Collection.

Thank you for the help @Eddie Roth

They are expensive (but worth it as I have waited over a decade for these!) but I shall buy a new album each month until I have them all.

 

[Tosk]

I've been putting together my own DS9 collection in chrono order, taken from thirty years worth of CDs. It has 250 tracks of music. So there is quite a bit of officially released music for DS9. (Almost 14 hours worth!)

The Die is Cast/Improbable Cause/Way of the Warrior/A Call to Arms/Sacrifice of Angels/What We Leave Behind/The Visitor

Every one of these are represented with the exception of Improbable Cause.

 

[Timofnine]

@Tosk I’m going to start buying DS9 next month.

 

[Eddie Roth]

Ok I am happy now.

I have Scorpion Part I and II and Dark Frontier soundtrack on the way in the Voyager Collection.

Thank you for the help @Eddie Roth

They are expensive (but worth it as I have waited over a decade for these!) but I shall buy a new album each month until I have them all.

You're very welcome. I myself have been splurging recently for the various expanded movie scores, some by La La Land (I think), some by Film Score Monthly, Intrada, etc. All (very!) limited releases originally, probably because they felt there wasn't much mass audience appeal. That might also explain why so few of these had digital releases.

My #1 regret with stuff like that is the TOS music. There was this item released in 2012:

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series_Soundtrack_Collection

Which is just about literally all the music ever done for TOS. Dream come true, but the price! In the high hundreds. Now of course, it's in the thousands, IF you can find the set in the first place. That would be alright because I'm no collector of CDs per se (vinyl yes, but not CDs), so all I require is that this music be available in any form, e.g. digitally. And there was a time that all of these 15 or so albums in the set were released as mp3 albums individually. I only got one at the time for financial reasons. And when I went back to get the rest - they were gone. So yes, it seems that these treasures now reside exclusively in the hands of those select few who could afford them back in the day. Which I hate. And now I would pay extra just for the mp3 version, but there's no seller (no iTunes, no Amazon, no nothing) who even offers them. J'accuse!

 

[Kor]

I believe we actually have a BBS member who is involved with La La Land Records, who may be able to provide some insight on all this. Bridge to @Indysolo, please report to the General Trek Discussion forum.

Kor

 

[Indysolo]

Not much to report that hasn't been said. The releases are limited for several reasons. There's of course the size of the audience, which is never as big as we'd like. The other has to do with musician union rules, which limits the number of copies you can sell. It's led to a limited edition collectors market. Believe me, I'd love for the TOS set to be available at all times.

@Eddie Roth I know it's not 15 CDs, but this 4CD collection has a disc of library music from the original series and it's a really good listen and features many highlights from the show. It also has music not in the 15CD set.

 

[Timofnine]

This thread has turned *super* cool.

the La La Records website has some samples available of some of my favourite tracks:

Basics
Dark Frontier
Scorpion
That cool generic DS9/Voyager sonic wallpaper music we all love

I hope that you don’t mind me posting these clips @Indysolo but they are available on the website as album samples and sound bloody amazing!!!!

https://lalalandrecords.com/star-trek-voyager-collection-limited-edition-4-cd-set/

The music from these episodes is imprinted on to my mind just as much as the stories themselves, I can not wait to have this album delivered, and the others if they are still available when I can afford to get them each month haha!!! I will be getting as many as I can, I never knew they existed.

I can’t stop listening to the clips I linked to above never mind the album.

Why didn’t we have this type and style of music in Picard??? With a modern twist? Maybe we will in a Seven of Nine spin-off!!!!

 

[Indysolo]

I hope that you don’t mind me posting these clips @Indysolo but they are available on the website as album samples and sound bloody amazing!!!!

I make many of the samples for the LLL site.

 

[Timofnine]

I make many of the samples for the LLL site.

Cool. They sound great, you chose great showcase tracks.

Maybe you also ‘touched’ my CD set at some point before it was dispatched?

 

[Eddie Roth]

Not much to report that hasn't been said. The releases are limited for several reasons. There's of course the size of the audience, which is never as big as we'd like. The other has to do with musician union rules, which limits the number of copies you can sell. It's led to a limited edition collectors market. Believe me, I'd love for the TOS set to be available at all times.

@Eddie Roth I know it's not 15 CDs, but this 4CD collection has a disc of library music from the original series and it's a really good listen and features many highlights from the show. It also has music not in the 15CD set.

I know, and I've been considering getting that one. But I'm sort of a completist once I get into a collecting mood, so the full set would be nice to have. So @Indysolo - are the reasons you mention also why the digital releases of the individual TOS albums have disappeared?

 

[Indysolo]

Cool. They sound great, you chose great showcase tracks.

Maybe you also ‘touched’ my CD set at some point before it was dispatched?

Sorry, I don't work in their office.

I know, and I've been considering getting that one. But I'm sort of a completist once I get into a collecting mood, so the full set would be nice to have. So @Indysolo - are the reasons you mention also why the digital releases of the individual TOS albums have disappeared?

Probably a contract thing. That's outside my pay grade.

 

[Timofnine]

Sorry, I don't work in their office.

Ah ok, so you didn’t pack it for me then and take it to the post office…

 

[Indysolo]

Ah ok, so you didn’t pack it for me then and take it to the post office…

No, but my "fingerprints" are all over the Star Trek II album.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I'm a long-time film music collector, going on 45 years of it, so I was in on the ground floor for all the Star Trek releases I ever wanted. I got the Fred Steiner CDs, the Tony Bremner CDs, the five GNP volumes. the first round of movie soundtracks. And that was it for a long time. But there was music from 22 TOS episodes and every movie. I loved it.

Then came the Star Trek Renaissance. All the film scores were given remastered, complete editions. The 15-CD TOS box came along. Fantastic. Then the 4-CD "50th Anniversary" set completed and perfected the TOS box, and it also included the 1973 Animated Series music. I bought it all, and had literally every note of Classic Cast Star Trek music locked down. It was and still is amazing. As noted above, I really do feel like one of the "elite" lucky few. I paid full retail for everything and it was worth it.

I didn't personally need much of the spinoff series music, but it was great to see it come out for the fans who wanted it.

Regarding the 15-CD set disappearing from iTunes, I can tell you that La La Land has nothing to do with that. LLL produced the CDs, but CBS retained all the digital rights, got all the download royalties, and had control over how long the set would stay on iTunes, Amazon digital, and Spotify. When digital revenues fell below a certain threshold, I'd say CBS decided to stop paying the rent on download and streaming sites. Poof. It was gone.

But the last time I checked, LLL's long out-of-print 12-CD set of Lost in Space music (the 1960s series) was still on iTunes. I can't check it here at work. You have to search for "Lost in Space Volume" for the albums to come up in the iTunes store. And I'm sure their days are numbered. The John Williams scores are pretty great!

 

[Eddie Roth]

No, but my "fingerprints" are all over the Star Trek II album.

Which is absolutely great! I just got that recently, and the STIII also. Having the complete scores is such a different listening experience than the old soundtrack albums. Liner notes are also always a nice touch to help you appreciate the music more.

 

[Annorax849]

Scorpion pt. 1 was my favorite episode soundtrack, at least non-Ron Jones anyway

 

[Timofnine]

Well I just found the ‘Way of the Warrior’ soundtrack suite on the Best of Star Trek Volume 2. It’s also got a lot of other cool TOS and TNG music on it. The Voyager music is kind of good if you like that kind of thing but it is not actual Star Trek music, it is Bride of Chaotica music which is non Star Trek ‘holodeck’ music in a Star Trek episode.

Anyway, until my Star Trek Voyager CD set arrives I can listen to ‘Way of the Warrior’ for a while.