# Unreleased third Minecraft album

German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418, began work on a third unreleased soundtrack album to the 2009 video game Minecraft in 2015. Its existence was alluded to the same year and confirmed in 2017, but the album has not seen release due to licensing disputes between Rosenfeld and Minecraft owner Microsoft.

## Background

Daniel Rosenfeld, better known by the name C418, served as the composer and sound designer for Markus Persson's 2011 video game Minecraft. Having met on the video gaming forum TIGSource, the two decided to collaborate on an early build of the game that would become Minecraft. Under Persson's Mojang AB, Rosenfeld released two soundtrack albums for the game, Minecraft – Volume Alpha (2011) and Minecraft – Volume Beta (2013). Persson chose to commission each work from C418, with Rosenfeld retaining ownership and rights to his work for the game. In 2014, after the sale of Mojang and Minecraft to Microsoft, Rosenfeld stated in an interview with The Guardian, "The days before the sale went through – I felt betrayed by Markus. I was worried Microsoft would take my music. But ultimately I talked to the lawyers and I still own it. My music is not worth $2.5bn. And also, I'm not rich."

## Composition

Daniel Rosenfeld first revealed the development of his third original soundtrack album for Minecraft in a 2015 interview with Fact Magazine, commenting, "I'll still work on Minecraft, so there'll probably be another album. In fact, it's gonna be more ambient than the others, just as an experiment." He also noted listeners' own applications of his previous works, remarking, "I'm interested in seeing how people use music as a sleep aid, so I think on the next album I might put a bonus track on there that's just 15 minutes of complete ambience and see what people think." Rosenfeld again expressed interest in composing an ambient bonus track for his third album in a tweet posted in December of that year.
In a 2017 tweet, the musician confirmed the album's existence and said that it was set for future release, but that work on it at that point was "still far from done". Rosenfeld additionally stated that the record would be longer than the previous two albums combined, which in total clocks in at over 3 hours and 19 minutes. Rosenfeld additionally confirmed on Twitter that the third album will not be called "Minecraft – Volume Gamma", deviating from the Greek Alphabet naming convention used in the previous two Minecraft albums he composed. Of the work Rosenfeld did on the album, he commented, "When I started making a third minecraft [sic] album, I didn't expect it to have this much work involved. I think I'm seeing the end of the tunnel?"

## Release

On 16 July 2018, three new singles from the album were added to Minecraft for the game's "Update Aquatic". It marked the first new contributions from Rosenfeld to Minecraft since Minecraft - Volume Beta in 2013.
Citing licensing issues with Microsoft, C418 has not released the album. On 8 January 2021, Rosenfeld was asked in an interview with music critic Anthony Fantano whether or not the album was still in production. Rosenfeld responded, saying, "I have something — I consider it finished — but things have become complicated, especially as Minecraft is now a big property, so I don't know."

## Legacy

Opting not to ink a deal to have C418's album released, Mojang began hiring other music artists to contribute to the soundtrack of Minecraft, with the likes of Lena Raine, Kumi Tanioka, and Aaron Cherof composing smaller albums to release alongside game updates.
C418 moved on to other projects, such as composing an official EP soundtrack for the Steam release of the game Cookie Clicker, and starting a video game studio called Ivy Road with colleague Davey Wreden, which will develop a game with Karla Zimonja and Annapurna Interactive for which Rosenfeld is composing the soundtrack to.