C418

Rosenfeld was born and grew up in East Germany in 1989, the son of a Soviet-born father of ethnic German descent working as a goldsmith and a German mother. He learned to create music on early versions of Schism Tracker and Ableton Live in the early 2000s, both rudimentary tools at the time.[6] 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.[4] 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".[7]

In 2007, Rosenfeld started a blog where he posted a new song every week, known as "Blödsinn am Mittwoch" (English: "Silliness on Wednesday").[8] This was around the same time when he became interested in game development and audio, which resulted in him joining an indie game development forum called TIGSource, where he became involved with numerous smaller games and game developers.[9]

On TIGSource, Rosenfeld began collaborating with the Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson. 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.[6]

As a freelance artist, Rosenfeld was not on staff at Mojang,[10] the company behind Minecraft. Rosenfeld still owns the rights to all his music in the game,[11] and has released two albums featuring songs from the Minecraft soundtrack.[10] The first soundtrack, Minecraft – Volume Alpha, was digitally released on 4 March 2011 on his Bandcamp page.

Almost half a year later, production on a documentary of the development of Minecraft started, titled Minecraft: The Story of Mojang. C418 was requested to create the soundtrack for this documentary, which was included on his 2012 album, One.[12]

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.[13] Meanwhile, Minecraft – Volume Alpha was released on a physical format on Ghostly International in 2015.[2] 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.[14]

Persson and Rosenfeld worked together again after Minecraft's success on the creation of a new game, titled 0x10^c. The game was never released, with Persson halting production indefinitely in August 2013. Rosenfeld released an album featuring his work on the project in September 2014. The album was released digitally with little publicity; Rosenfeld simply sent out a tweet stating that it was available.[15]

In 2015, 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". As of 2020, three tracks[16] have already been released as singles, which were added to Minecraft in a July 2018 update.

After the "Update Aquatic" update of 2018, three new songs were added to the game as underwater music.[17] These songs – "Dragon Fish", "Shuniji", "Axolotl" – were released by Rosenfeld respectively on August 9, November 10, and December 12, 2018 on Spotify as singles.[18] All of them are to be included in the third album.[18]

Despite the addition of Steve, his work was not included in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for various undisclosed reasons, though one explanation given was it being too calm for fighting.[19] Tracks other composers made for Minecraft Legacy Console Edition, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Earth were added instead.

In addition to the Minecraft soundtracks, Rosenfeld composes his own independent music. He has released a large amount of music on his Bandcamp page, of which he has released sixteen albums (not including Minecraft soundtracks).

In 2008, Rosenfeld created Circle, the soundtrack album for an unreleased indie game bearing the same name, created by an unknown developer.[20] Later that year, he also released two small collections of his early music, Mixes and Bps. His third album, Zweitonegoismus, was released on 16 December 2008.[21]

In 2009, Rosenfeld released his fourth album, Bushes and Marshmallows. The album is loosely related to his blog, titled Blödsinn am Mittwoch. It is not a translation to English, as that loosely translates to "silliness on Wednesday".[18]

When Minecraft became available to the general public as an early access title, it became popular rapidly. Rosenfeld, who up until that point had worked at an assembly line, could now pursue music as his primary source of income.[9] This inspired his album, 72 Minutes of Fame. The content of this album mostly revolves around this lifestyle-defining moment in Rosenfeld's life.[22] This album was the first of Rosenfeld's works to have a (limited) physical release. The Guardian has compared his compositions to those of Brian Eno and Erik Satie because of their ambient quality.[6]

In 2015, Rosenfeld released 148, which much like 72 Minutes of Fame carried a significant amount of personal content, albeit slightly more hidden under lyrics and effects.[23]

Rosenfeld released 2 Years of Failure in 2016, including a collection of music made for failed projects or songs that could not fit anywhere else.[24] Several songs in this album were made for an abandoned game Rosefeld described as having a "...Japanese puzzle exchange..." vibe. This album also contains the original soundtrack for Crayon Physics.[24] Most notably, this album contains C418's remix of the Stranger Things theme song, which had staggering popularity in 2018. It is still the most played song on Rosenfeld's personal SoundCloud page.[25]

He released Dief in 2017.[13] The songs of this EP were created and used as a soundtrack for an informative talk by Teddy Dief.[26]

On 20 July 2018, Rosenfeld announced a studio album, Excursions, with the release of its lead single, "Beton".[27] Its second single, "Thunderbird", was released on 20 August 2018.[28] The album was released on 7 September 2018.[29]

Excursions was released on CD and a limited vinyl LP by Driftless Recordings in January 2019.[30]

Studio albums

• Minecraft – Volume Alpha (2011)
• 72 Minutes of Fame (2011)
• One (2012)
• Minecraft – Volume Beta (2013)
• 148 (2015)
• Excursions (2018)

• Official website
• Daniel Rosenfeld at IMDb