Minecraft – Volume Alpha
2011 video game soundtrack album by C418
Minecraft – Volume Alpha is the first soundtrack album by the German electronic musician Daniel "C418" Rosenfeld. Created for the 2011 video game Minecraft, it is the first of two albums by Rosenfeld to come from the game's soundtrack. It primarily consists of simplistic ambient music, though some tracks are more upbeat. The simplistic nature of the album's music was caused by the technical limitations of Minecraft's sound engine, which made earlier concepts unfeasible. Volume Alpha was released digitally in March 2011 as Rosenfeld's first commercial release, with record label Ghostly International releasing the album in vinyl record and CD format in 2015, and in cassette format in 2025.
Since release, Volume Alpha has been lauded by critics, who praised its usage in the game and its merits as a standalone ambient work. It has been considered to be a major part of Minecraft's popularity, and seven of its tracks are among the most streamed video game compositions on Spotify. Due to its association with Minecraft, some have considered it to be an influential album, as well as one of the best video game soundtracks ever made. In 2025, the soundtrack was selected to the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, and/or aesthetically significant", making it the second piece of video game music to do so after the Super Mario Bros. theme.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1523255. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2015 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Minecraft – Volume Alpha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.