C418

Spotify

Daniel Rosenfeld (born 9 May 1981), better known by his stage/online name C418 (pronounced "see four
eighteen"), is a German musician, producer and sound engineer, best known as the composer and sound designer
for the sandbox video game Minecraft. He has also written and produced the theme for Beyond Stranger Things and
the soundtrack for the Steam release of Cookie Clicker.

Rosenfeld was born and grew up in East Germany in 1989, the son of a Soviet-born father of German descent
working as a goldsmith and a German mother. He learned to create music on early versions of Schism Tracker
(a popular clone of Impulse Tracker) and Ableton Live in the early 2000s, both rudimentary tools at the time. It
was his brother, Harry Rosenfeld, who introduced him to music composition through Ableton Live, commenting that
"even an idiot" can successfully create music with it. His brother was also known as C818, from which he chose the
name C418, claiming that the name is "really cryptic and doesn't actually mean anything".

After being introduced to music production by Rosenfeld's brother, Daniel started releasing music on Bandcamp
after Danny Baranowsky suggested releasing his music on the site.In 2007, Rosenfeld started a blog known as "Blödsinn
am Mittwoch" (English: "Silliness on Wednesday"), where he posted a new song every week. This was around the same time
when he became interested in game development and audio, which resulted in him joining the indie game development forum
TIGSource, where he got involved with numerous smaller games and game developers (among them, Rosenfeld unofficially
released the soundtracks of Zombie Dog in Crazyland and Mubbly Tower on his site and old blog). Later, Rosenfeld
started making albums and releasing them on the blog and also Bandcamp, as a hobby. His first release was the 2007 EP
BPS, and shortly thereafter, in 2008, he challenged himself to make a studio album as quickly as possible, for fun,
prioritizing quantity over quality, The Whatever Director's Cut was released on his blog as BAM #30 and on his Bandcamp,
where it was available until it was removed in 2013, due to Rosenfeld's dislike of the album.

In early 2009, Rosenfeld began collaborating with the Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson through an internet
forum called TIGSource. Rosenfeld was responsible for the sound effects and music in Persson's work-in-progress video
game Minecraft. The sound engine in the still young Java game was not very powerful, so Rosenfeld had to be creative in
his approach to creating sound effects and music. In January 2010, fourth studio album A Cobblers Tee Thug, a collaborative
work with Rosenfeld's friend Sohnemann was released. Made in the few days they spent together in the New Year, and they
challenged each other, for fun, to make a full-length LP together in those days. That year was also released the album
Circle, the soundtrack for a 2008 unreleased indie game bearing the same name, created by an unknown developer.

On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second album of the official soundtrack for Minecraft, titled Minecraft
– Volume Beta. Many of the new songs were being added into features of the game that were not present when the first batch
of music was produced; i.e. the Nether or the End. In 2020, the soundtrack was released in physical format with Ghostly
International and reprints of the Minecraft - Volume Alpha physical releases were also released. The Volume Beta releases
consisted of a double CD edition of the album, a vinyl record which came in black and a red "fire" splatter color, and a
limited edition of the vinyl pressed on a magenta translucent material which was at first exclusive to Europe but was later
re-pressed internationally. Persson and Rosenfeld worked together again after Minecraft's success on the creation of a new
game, titled 0x10c. The game was never released, with Persson halting production indefinitely in August 2013.

In 2014, Rosenfeld released an EP containing the music made for 0x10c. It was released digitally with little publicity; Rosenfeld
simply sent out a tweet stating that it was available. In 2015, Rosenfeld released 148, which like 72 Minutes of Fame carried
a significant amount of personal content, albeit slightly more hidden under lyrics and effects. Later that year, Minecraft
- Volume Alpha soundtrack was released in a physical format on Ghostly International. This release consisted of a regular
CD edition of the album, a vinyl edition which came with a code for a digital copy of the album, and a limited edition of
the album pressed on green translucent vinyl. In the same year, Rosenfeld hinted at a potential upcoming third album for
Minecraft's soundtrack, stating "I'll still work on Minecraft, so there’ll probably be another album". In 2017, Rosenfeld
confirmed the future release, claiming the album is "still far from done".

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