Ok I will explain this as best as I can and mabye I could be wrong since this is just me:

Yes we still hear music in movies and games but when was the last time we heard a theme song that defines the game and movie,for example this song defines Jaws:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvCI-gNK_y4

this one defines Pirates of the Caribbean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQrYEEfgbG8

this one defines The Legend of Zelda:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-mNw11ZXbY

and this one defines Halo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5yVOFokLVY

anyways this is just me and I am open to corrections but I have not heard a single famous song in years from movies and games.

sometimes I wonder how this series is in the same world as half-life
half-life is dark and serious, portal is a pixar movie

The whole link was born out of necessity from shared art assets, but wound up as a tongue and cheek bit. There's a lot of meta humor in Half-Life 2. The link may be the most blatant piece, but it's not the most egregious if you're going to take that nitpick.

I think that with the evolution of software availability, composers begin to misunderstand music. A lot of composers think in terms of music theory instead of musical tone. How do they relate? Well music theory is what it sounds like: What music will sound like when theoretically orchestrated in one manner. Musical tone is entirely personal and is usually the thought process when a really good tune comes out: I.E This sounds like a cool rhythm, let's expand on it.

There's also the fact that masters in disciplines are rare. We all know that there are many bands out there who have just lost the way in terms of their compositions and seem to no longer make good tracks. We all need to understand though that there's a lot of music coming out all the time. Some music may not always be hummable, but the affect is what truly matters. I couldn't properly whistle back Minecraft's music, for example, but it sets a tone. More relatable to GoG customers, Planescape: Torment doesn't exactly have sweeping orchestral scores but its damn good for what the game sets to convey.

It's not a lost art, it's just been taking new directions as games evolve.

I understand the gaming reason but what about movies I have not heard anything catchy from movies even John Williams latest music is starting to seem forgettable (excluding War Horse)

Again, it's an advancement thing. As the years have gone on, the scores in themselves have been harder to integrate. Not to mention that coming up with distinct themes for so many various situations is quite tough work, especially when you've worked on so many movies.

I think one of the paragons of soundtracks is definitely the Lord of the Rings (Extended). It has such brilliant thematic ways of incorporating themes, a wide range of instruments, and a general tone to bring out the importance to each scene. At the same time though, there are a few tracks which are quite forgettable since they are meant to be background. That's merely a result of how the movie is flowing and how composers have adapted to the editing process.

I would argue that the Star Wars soundtrack doesn't always properly fit up with the edits of the movie. Not in a very blatant way, but the calm force (heh) of one scene is occasionally thrown off by the score, as memorable as it may be. Star Wars, for its time, used some pretty radical editing techniques whilst Williams was very rooted in classical movie architecture.

But in the feel to make everything cohesive, its rare that a theme can be put into a serious drama without seeming cheesy. Music, more often than not, does not play a huge part in your average character flick. Its usually reserved for movies with moments which arouse a great triumph or fright in the viewer (Lighting the Beacons, raising the X-wing from the swamp, most music from Conan, etc.). The tones of movies nowadays tend to be more ambiguous because they're attempting to replicate life's complexities. You don't hear music blazing and taking over an event in real life, do you?

You also have to remember that it's all very subjective, too. Jeremy Soule and Alexander Brandon have made some of the most important and memorable VGM themes out there. Listen to the soundtrack to Deus Ex, Total Annihilation, or Baldur's Gate 2 to see what I mean. It's not anthemic or "catchy" in the way that Zelda, Super Mario or Halo was, but it's no less important as example of excellent musical scoring for video games.

Some recent indie games, like Lone Survivor and Frozen Synapse have (IMO) fantastic soundtracks too.

To be honest, I can hardly remember any movie music, outside of some of John Williams work and a few specific songs used in scenes focused around music (and even then, I can't remember all that many (this being one of the few exceptions, but I know it in multiple languages)). For the most part movie music is just used to set the tone, it is not supposed to be the main attraction. There are exceptions, but quite often the "best" movie music is the one that you don't think about while watching the movie.

By and large I don't think the music of the '80s and '90s was really that good. Sure there were exceptions, I like the HoMM music and Settlers music, but there were also games like Quake where you have to ask WTF were you thinking letting Trent Reznor anywhere near the game.

But really, as soon as you moved from the very simple music of the '80s I think that's where things went a bit off track because of the amount of repetition and the inability to make music properly adjust to the game conditions. FO3 and FO:NV did as good a job as any, but due to the scope of the games there was way too much repetition.

The playlist bug in FO:NV didn't help things either.

Baba Yetu from the Civ IV opening was probably the most memorable one to me in recent years, and that game's already seven years old. There were quite a few times when I launched the game just to listen to it.

Don't know if this would really count, but it's my favorite track from Breath of Death, so at least Indie titles still have pretty good/defining music.

Graveyard

Actually, I thought Reznor's music fit Quake quite well; the tone that the music set really added to the dark, otherworldly-gothic-horror atmosphere of the game, much like how Quake 2's hard rock theme really drove home the point that it was a straight-up guns-blazing action game.

That's sort of a large part of the problem, Quake wasn't a Gothic game, it was a game that was Gothic at points and technology based at other points. I love the game, but the designers ought to be strung up for not deciding which way to go.

It was still a ton of fun, but even when it was new, Quake was an ugly game, it just got cut a lot of slack because the visuals were innovative, if quite ugly.

Going farther to the retrogaming music realm, before digital music (Quake => Doom)...

I always hate it when people mention Doom as some kind of pinnacle of General MIDI music in PC games. Maybe because it was the first MIDI-enabled game they heard? The music is catchy, but quite simple and very repetitive. Give me Ultima 8, Tie Fighter or Privateer music instead. Another IMHO overrated retro soundtrack is the music in Monkey Island (2). Catchy tunes, but that's all, not really masterpieces. Frankly I got sick of the MI2 title tune quite fast (even with Roland).

Needless to say, lots of the PC's early 90s great music got lost on people who listened to them through Soundblaster. It's never late to try them today with Munt and better GM soundfonts, even if technically they are far behind modern digital game music soundtracks.

Amiga games' music was overrated IMHO. There were some good ones, but most of the Amiga soundtracks that were praised by others left me cold. My favourites in Amiga games were some of those which others never mentioned, e.g. certain French mountain climbing game whose title tune is forever etched into my brain, same way like e.g. FarCry title tune.


For the original question, I guess more and more game music try not to stand out, but blend with the game. Maybe it makes the music more suitable, but also forgettable. I don't even remember if e.g. Half-life 2 really had any music? But FarCry's title theme I can remember. Yet, I don't think neither game had some soundtrack playing in the background whole the time you were playing, like e.g. Doom did.

That's probably why. I remember the first time I got my Disney Sound Source working with Wolfenstein 3D, it was like some sort of revelation hearing the doors actually creek open and hear the guards yelling mostly unintelligible, what I assume was supposed to be German.

But yeah, I think you're right about the fact that music seems to be better these days, the Doom music was pretty bad and most music these days seems to be a lot more effective than it used to be.