Now there's two completely different things being compared here and it's gotta stop.

1. Movie soundtrack : Original score or songs composed specifically for a movie.

2. Movie soundrack : A compilation of pre-existing or recent music/songs that would have been produced even if the movie didn't exist. Many people don't consider this to be a legitimate soundtrack to a movie, even if its labeled and awarded as such.

ufoclub said:

Now there's two completely different things being compared here and it's gotta stop.

1. Movie soundtrack : Original score or songs composed specifically for a movie.

2. Movie soundrack : A compilation of pre-existing or recent music/songs that would have been produced even if the movie didn't exist. Many people don't consider this to be a legitimate soundtrack to a movie, even if its labeled and awarded as such.

There may actually be three distinct types:

Movie Score

Original Movie Soundtrack

Movie Soundtrack

For example, Batman (1989) had both a movie score (Danny Elfman) and movie soundtrack (Prince).

namepeace said:

ufoclub said:

Now there's two completely different things being compared here and it's gotta stop.

1. Movie soundtrack : Original score or songs composed specifically for a movie.

2. Movie soundrack : A compilation of pre-existing or recent music/songs that would have been produced even if the movie didn't exist. Many people don't consider this to be a legitimate soundtrack to a movie, even if its labeled and awarded as such.

There may actually be three distinct types:

Movie Score

Original Movie Soundtrack

Movie Soundtrack

For example, Batman (1989) had both a movie score (Danny Elfman) and movie soundtrack (Prince).

Prince's album is not really the soundtrack to Batman even if they creatively called it that. It has a few songs of which fragments are heard briefly in the movie (ouside of "Partyman"). With Batman, they were scrambling to make the two audio releases distinct.

With the majority of releases, most all movie "soundtracks" released from the the golden age of Hollywood until now are called original "soundtracks" and feature the instrumental music composed for the movie. For example John Williams' movie soundtracks have won many oscars and are the music composed for each film, and are labeled "soundtrack" on the album cover.

With something like Saturday Night Fever or even Grease it gets more confusing because in the case of Grease, many songs existed before the movie (composed for the theater musical). For Saturday Night Fever you have songs featured in the film, but some of them were recorded before the movie came into existence. And then you have a song appearing twice but recorded by different artists!

Movies like Footloose or Flashdance are weird because many songs are by different artists, and were probably already going to be produced even if the movie never existed. These are more like compilations.

Purple Rain is truly a soundtrack though, because the music is featured in the movie and woven into the narrative by one artist or band. Of course someone else made the incidental intrumental music you hear in the movie.

I think that technically a score is the written sheet music (notation). So a book of sheet music would more accurately be called the score.

Purple Rain. The best soundtrack and album Prince ever made