I never understood the option of buying soundtracks separately.

The owners of the game already have it and non-owners are not interested because they haven't played the game. The only plausible option seems to be buying just the soundtrack and not the game, based on a recommendation or listening to it on youtube and wanting just the music without the game or something like that.

I fail to see why anyone in their right mind would buy the game AND the soundtrack. You already have it when you buy the game, usually in the game files. It is sometimes hidden in some custom named compression format but usually, RAR can just open it anyway. At worst, you have to download some decompression utility to crack open the custom format (Blizzard games for example and many others I've encountered over the years). But the music is always there for grabs.

Not to mention that the "official" soundtracks are usually hugely incomplete. As an example: Titan Quest official soundtrack has ~2 hours, the "full" soundtrack (including every music present in the game) has 4.5 hours. Or Darksiders 2 where "official" soundtrack is about half of all the music in the game with some crucial tracks inexplicably missing. Why would I ever buy something, knowing it will be incomplete and (usually) vastly overpriced?

I've been wondering about this probably since I had first seen a soundtrack being sold separately. It makes no sense to me any way I look at it except for the (very specific) case stated above.

Thoughts?

I suspect it has something to do with music industry laws in the US where musicians are able to sell their work outside of the movie/game it features in. Or maybe it's because indie game devs are strapped for cash and they make deals with composers that they will make the music for the game for a discount rate and in exchange they sell the soundtrack separately. I'm only speculating though.

Some people like to do it as a way to support indie developers, so they can receive an extra money for a game that is usually sold at low prices.

(This is in the case the soundtrack is sold as a DLC, not as a separate album to buy elsewhere).

I don't think it's true that you can easily extract the soundtrack of every game from the game files, but even if it is, not everyone is that tech-savvy or willing to bother with these procedures. Besides, you might just as well ask why even buy the game itself when you can find free downloads and cracks on the internet? Some people just believe in reimbursing the creators for their work, if they see value in it. And then there are those audiophiles who want everything in the best loss-less quality, as FLAC files or so.

That being said, personally I can't think of many videogame soundtracks that I would want to listen to just as much as regular music albums and that would therefor be worth 10 EUR (or a similar price) to me. (Not to say there aren't any good ones, I'm just not that much into instrumental soundtracks in general.)

Some soundtrack pack includes better versions that does not appear in the game.
Like musician played version, remix, vocals, or uncompressed data format.

Many old games use chiptune, MIDI, or other tricks to make music and sound.
Old but newer games often have lossy compressed music data in game.

Only If a game already includes lossless music as game data, that will make buying soundtrack pack meaningless.

In 90% of cases, just opening the big files where all data is with RAR is enough IF the music is just not already somewhere in the folder structure. The authors were already reimbursed by the developers who paid them to make music for the game and it is included in the price of the game when you buy it. You buy it as a package, including the music, videos, everything. I won't let anyone tell me I can't listen to it outside the game. That is mostly subjective. I almost only listen to video game music. As long as you don't profit from it, no. And even if it was, nobody cares anyway.

I think rights are part of it. Eg, a contract between composer and developer could mean a soundtrack is included with the game but not available as a free separate downloadable album unless it's re-purchased in that format. Cases like BeamDog though who try and sell the "Enhanced" NWN soundtrack separately when the original game not only had the music included as a free extra .zip file but also literally had the in-game mp3's sitting in the \music sub-folder under fake .bmu file extensions is a blatantly obvious rip-off.

Already did (Prince of Persia Sands of Time, Makaimura Ongakutaizen), and I will likely do again in the future. Some gaming music are worth listening to even beyond the game they belong to.

Soundtracks like Cuphead and Skyrim (or any other Elder Scrolls) where the album is actual music I can understand. 30 minutes of "chip tunes" or whatever people call game music these days, that is pretty sad.

Skyrim for example simply has some excellent classical compositions and Cuphead has a lot of great jazz music. It has appeal to people that don't necessarily enjoy the game. Selling separately like a movie soundtrack is perfectly understandable.

It definitely is. But the thing is, you can do so already when you have the game installed. No need to buy it separately, unless you are after some different format as mentioned above by others.

A couple of games I bought in the 90s on CD-ROM had soundtracks bundled with the game. But generally no, I never did buy game soundtracks. Movie soundtracks on the other hand...

I don't know who would, since I never have bought a soundtrack beyond boxed games that game with packed in soundtrack Cd's as an incidental.

One thing I do miss though from the 90's is red book audio sound tracks. All you had to do to listen to Descent 2's soundtrack was put the game CD in your player and away you went.

The original Witcher game is a prime example for me of purchasing the soundtrack (retail as part of a collector's edition / enhanced edition) being one of the smartest things I ever did. The "free" mp3 digital version was of inferior quality, but the genuine pressed audio cd was divine. The music for me was a HUGE factor of my enjoyment of the game, so I had no regrets paying CDPR more money to own the soundtrack(s) as well.

Could I have used the editor / an unpacker later to pull the music myself? Perhaps. But I consider if it was intended for players to get the music seperately from the game, it would have been originally (pre-EE) packaged in a seperate form ready to play, not buried under piles of proprietary formats (and in some game cases, heavy encoding).

I've got older retail games that were hybrid cds (data & audio cd design). You could pop the cd in a player and simply skip the first track to listen to game music. This was ok in my book, because I wasn't modifying anything to listen to it. *shrug*
But I've always been contrary to such things, despite most others of my social circle years ago going ape pirating stuff at will, I never got involved with that either.

No! Beamdog are rip off merchants? nooooo!