How did you discover video game music existed outside of video games?

Back in 2000, I got an N64 for christmas, after having been deprived from games for about 4 years. That's also when I joined my first forum, based around Donkey Kong 64. Through there I was introduced to this new alien format (at the time), MIDI, and the site vgmusic.com. So for a couple years, I listened almost exclusively to MIDI files when I was on the computer, mostly from games I had allready played, and some original sequences as well. I tried recording some of my own music files from some games, when I couldn't find good MIDI replacements. I also discovered that I could download some songs through Napster, shortly before its demise, which were much better than what I could make myself. Once I upgraded my computer, I put more emphasis in MP3s than MIDIs, used other filesharing networks, and oucassional download sites if I found them, and then I found my first VGM FTP server. Wow, so much in one place, who would have thought? At this point, I started listening to music from games I never played, and sampled some movie soundtracks as well. Then I found this place which has been my primary source since.

I think I was so readily attracted to soundtracks because I've never had a solid foundation in mainstream music. To this day, I have no favorite mainstream bands, and if I do ever look for mainstream music, it's on a song by song basis.

Jam it back in, in the dark.