According to the arstechnica article there's supposed to be one?

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/release_diablo_9a26c/post380

"However https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/03/original-diablo-is-now-on-sale-for-10-drm-free-but-not-on-blizzards-app/ says there's supposed to be a soundtrack goodie? "GOG's version comes with a few goodies, including FLAC and MP3 versions of the original soundtrack (yes) and a high-res scan of the original manual (yes)." Misreport?"

Not the answer I (and others) was/were hoping for, but thanks for clearing that up.

Tracking down old soundtracks is a difficult task.

It's annoying when you cannot legitimately purchase CD quality digital versions of music that was once released on a limited run CD edition. It is possible to purchase out of print music CDs on Ebay at steep prices , and since I live in Australia shipping is also high (most of the limited edition items you want is in the US). Oh and MP3/AAC encoded music isn't CD quality; it has been degraded by lossy encoded.

Places like FFShrine and RuTr@cker are often good for finding out of print game and film soundtracks, though a lot of links on the former are dead.

And lastly, some games on CDs from the mid to late 90s are mixed mode ones with CD audio on tracks 2+ (track 1 is the installation data and cutscenes).

It doesn't take much effort to find the tools to extract the original .wav files from diabdat.mpq.

The problem is usually on the legal side.

It's not illegal to extract the music from you copy of the game.

Of course, if you have the original Diablo CD, the soundtrack is all on there... and you can find "Music-CD-ized" versions of it out there if you don't know how to extract from a disk yourself.

In fact, Ulman and Bllzzard made the soundtrack(s) free for download a few years back, and I THINK they're still up there.

EDIT: Ah, I see what's happened. For the anniversary of Diablo, they pulled the 'free" downloads and have released a paid album download now.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/music/diablo-15year.html

It's $11 bucks on iTunes.True. However, it IS illegal to distribute it to people who don't legally own it.

Thanks for the heads-up.
Unfortunately it's on iTunes, and I'd rather chop off my private parts than give Apple any of my eurodollars.
Would be a whole different story if it were available on Bandcamp.

For those interested in extracting the WAV-files themselves, here's the link again to Ladislav Zezula's MPQ Editor:
http://www.zezula.net/en/mpq/download.html

Works like a charm.

No, the soundtrack was not a CD soundtrack, it was in the MPQ file just like with the GoG version.

Huh?

I have to assume English is not your first language... and that you simply do not understand what I said and are "responding" to something other than what I said.

The post below my post, for example, addresses how to extract those files. I did it, years ago, and so have many, many others. A few folks "packaged" the extracted files into an actual "music CD format" but TECHNICALLY, this is legally suspect... though if you own the game and also possess the "music CD format" extraction, you're still legally OK in the USA (not sure about the stricter European rules, though).

But at no point did I ever say "there's a playable music disk included in the commercial distribution." In fact, the music files are conventional music files (wave files, if memory serves) but they're packed inside of an archive file, and you have to extract them from that archive file.

You need the Diablo soundtrack and you want to download it? No problem guys:

https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/diablo-1

You can also find the Diablo II soundtrack and the soundtracks of many other games, all for free and, I think so, legal, on that website too.

It's not legal at all. They just host whatever and hope they won't get caught, and if they do they take it down and add the game to their "blacklist" so people won't ask for it again.

Well, the webpage is online for years already and I use it from time to time, if I need to find a certain game soundtrack, so I never thought that it would actually be illegal, but I could be wrong. They got music from some games where they write "rip", so that you know its just a rip and you can sometimes hear this clearly, as the soundfiles have a low quality, but the ones of Diablo are just in perfect quality. Of course, you decide yourself if you want to download them from there. I personally have never seen a problem with it.

Anyway, I have just added the words "I think so" into my original post, just to be sure that I am letting other people decide. :)

How charitable of you. I simply misread you, but I see now that you correctly understand the topic.