Jeremy Soule

In August 2019, Soule was accused of rape by game designer Nathalie Lawhead. He was also accused of sexual harassment by vocalist Aeralie Brighton. He has denied the accusations, and though they were widely reported no charges were filed.

In 2016, Soule composed the soundtrack for virtual reality game The Gallery. Since then he has continued to work on games such as Consortium: The Tower in 2018 as well as films such as the documentary Ice on Fire (2019).

In 2015, Soule composed a Dota 2 music pack, along with his brother Julian. The soundtrack was available as part of the Compendium, a pack of digitally-distributed content that funded the prize pool for The International 2015 tournament, which took place in August 2015 and ultimately featured the largest prize-pool in e-sports history, with over $18,000,000 in total.

In 2014, Soule signed an MMO exclusivity deal with Sony Online Entertainment, in order to compose music for Everquest Next and Landmark. The move saw an end to his six-year collaboration with the Guild Wars series. Everquest Next was later cancelled in March 2016; Landmark was released in 2016, but was shut down less than a year later in February 2017.

In March 2013, Soule launched a Kickstarter project to fund a classical music album called The Northerner: Soule Symphony No. 1, seeking $10,000 for the album. The campaign ultimately raised a total of $121,227. The project features vocals in Old Norse, with Soule citing the successful use of the similar Icelandic language by Malukah in one of her own projects during development. For the project, Soule and his company are developing new audio technology. The symphony has no expected release date, having missed all prior announced dates.

November 2011 saw the release of the fifth installment in the Elder Scrolls franchise, Skyrim. The game's soundtrack is among Soule's most critically acclaimed pieces of work, receiving a BAFTA nomination as well as numerous other awards from organizations such as the Game Audio Network Guild. Soule would also go on to compose the music for two of the official DLC packs for the game, Dragonborn and Dawnguard, both released in 2012.

Since then Artistry Entertainment has grown and scored a string of highly successful games such as the Guild Wars series, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Oblivion was an award-winning soundtrack by Soule. It was nominated for the 2006 British Academy of Film & Television Arts and Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awards, and won the MTV Video Music Awards and Official Xbox Magazine soundtrack awards. In 2005, Jeremy and Julian Soule founded DirectSong, a company which sells DRM-free downloads of Jeremy's compositions as well as works by dozens of classical composers. By 2007 the company had grown to over one million registered customers, though Soule noted that not all of those customers resulted in a sale of a non-free product. Soule says that the traffic numbers for DirectSong have surpassed some major record labels at times. DirectSong has also struggled to fulfil orders or provide timely support, with some customers sometimes waiting more than a year for CDs, resulting in an "F" rating by the Better Business Bureau, based on 58 complaints.

In 2006, Soule composed music for the first Guild Wars title, and would ultimately go on to compose music for all expansions for the first game, as well as the soundtrack for Guild Wars 2. Soule also uses DirectSong to sell "expansion packs" of music for games such as Guild Wars that can be played in game like the rest of the soundtrack. He estimates that at least 10% of the players of Guild Wars have bought his musical expansion for the game, Battle Pak 1. Soule also worked on another of Chris Taylor's real-time strategy titles in 2007, with the launch of Supreme Commander.

In 2005, he founded DirectSong, a record label that publishes digital DRM-free versions of his soundtracks as well as those of classical composers. Soule's works have been played in several live concerts such as the Symphonic Game Music Concert in Germany and the international Play! A Video Game Symphony concert series. While many of his works are orchestral, he considers himself a "music practitioner", or someone who creates music in general rather than just one type of music. Several of Soule's soundtracks have been created with the help of his brother, Julian.

Music that Soule has composed has been played in numerous live concerts. His music from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was performed on August 20, 2003 at the first Symphonic Game Music Concert in Leipzig, Germany, and his music from Morrowind was performed at the third Symphonic Game Music Concert on August 17, 2005. Selections of his pieces from Morrowind and Oblivion are played in the international concert series Play! A Video Game Symphony. Jeremy Soule attended the world-premiere of Play! on May 27, 2006 in Chicago. Music from Oblivion has also been played at the Press Start 2007 -Symphony of Games- concerts in September 2007 in Japan. The first live orchestral concert dedicated to Soule's music for "Skyrim" took place on November 16, 2016 at London's Palladium theater. Soule's music has been featured in numerous top-selling games; he once estimated in an interview that around 10 million games with his music in them were sold in 2006 alone.

In 2001, Soule scored the first of five Harry Potter games that he would work on between then and 2005. His first game, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, was nominated for an Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences award for "Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition", while Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban won and were nominated, respectively, for a British Academy of Film & Television Arts award for "Best Score" in the Game Music Category. The other games he composed for that year include Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Azurik: Rise of Perathia, which he later described as a bad game lifted up in the eyes of testers and reviewers by good music. He was responsible for composing the soundtracks to three top-selling role-playing games in 2002, those of Dungeon Siege, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and Neverwinter Nights; Morrowind earned him his second Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences award nomination.

In February 2000, Jeremy and his brother, Julian, formed Soule Media as an independent music production company; its name has since been changed to Artistry Entertainment. Julian works as a sound engineer and composer for the company, and has assisted Jeremy in several projects throughout his career, both credited and uncredited. The first large project that Jeremy Soule worked on through the company was 2000's Icewind Dale, which won the best music of the year award from both IGN and GameSpot.

While working at Humongous, Soule met fellow employee and video game designer Chris Taylor, and signed on to compose the soundtrack to his major project, Total Annihilation. Soule convinced Taylor that, given the large number of other real-time strategy games coming out at the same time as Total Annihilation with techno scores, that to separate themselves they needed to do a large orchestral score. He went so far as to bet a year's worth of reduced pay that it would pay off; Gilbert felt that it did after the first sentence of the first review of the game he read was about the music. Given the software limitations at the time, to make the sound work correctly required a full live orchestra, the first that Soule had ever worked with; the orchestral tracks in Evermore had been performed by Soule and his brother by themselves, two instruments at a time. The soundtrack earned Soule his first award, that of "Best Music" of 1997 from GameSpot in their year-end awards. Soule spent the next two years composing music for the game's two expansion packs and for children's games.

After several years of private composition studies he became an employee of Square in 1994. After finishing the soundtrack to Secret of Evermore in 1995, he left to join Humongous Entertainment, where he composed for several children's games as well as Total Annihilation, his first award-winning score. In 2000, he left to form his own music production company, Soule Media, now called Artistry Entertainment. Through the company, Soule has created several award-winning soundtracks, including Icewind Dale, the Harry Potter series of games, and all of the main Elder Scrolls games since 2002.

Jeremy Soule (/ˈ s oʊ l / ; born December 19, 1975) is an American composer of soundtracks for film, television and video games. He has won multiple awards and has been described as the "John Williams of video game music" and "a model of success" for Western composers. He has composed soundtracks for over 60 games and over a dozen other works during his career. He is best known for his work in The Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars series, and several other top-selling titles such as Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Harry Potter.