Editorial Introduction: Synergies between Game Music and Electronic Dance Music in Cultural Context

Dr. phil. Melanie Fritsch is Junior Professor for Media and Cultural Studies with a Focus on Game Studies and Related Fields at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf since October 2020. Her dissertation, “Performing Bytes. Musikperformances der Computerspielkultur,” was published by Königshausen & Neumann in 2018. In 2021 she co-edited The Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music with Dr. Tim Summers (Royal Holloway). She is a member of the Ludomusicology Research Group as well as the speaker team of the AG Games of the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft and the Arbeitskreis Geschichtswissenschaft und Digitale Spiele. She is a cofounder of the Society for the Study of Sound and Music in Games and the Journal of Sound and Music in Games as well as the AG Spiele (Verband DHd – “Digital Humanities im deutschsprachigen Raum”). She worked as a research associate at the Research Institute for Music Theater (University of Bayreuth), worked as a PR and communications manager in the games industry, and was an adjunct lecturer in media studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Hillegonda C. Rietveld, PhD, is Professor of Sonic Culture at London South Bank University (UK) and was chief editor of IASPM Journal between 2011 and 2017. During the 1980s, she recorded for Manchester’s Factory Records and was closely involved in its nightclub The Haçienda, FAC51. She has published extensively on electronic dance music and DJ cultures, in addition to coediting a collection for Bloomsbury Academic, DJ Culture in the Mix: Power, Technology, and Social Change in Electronic Dance Music, and coediting a special issue on dub diasporas for Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture. She additionally publishes research in concomitant aspects of electronic popular music, as well as in the nascent field of game music studies, and coedited a special issue on game music for GAME: The Italian Journal of Game Studies.