While albums of the songs are aggressively marketed and popular in the Indian market, I don't see many soundtracks featuring the film's score. Is there no market for Bollywood film scores?

For example, while I'm enjoying the SHOOTOUT AT LOKHANDWALA CD, I would very much like to have a separate release of the score. I have one particular piece stuck in my head...plus I'm a bit of a film score nut.

It may be because the original audio stems containing the separate score are not kept after the film's final mix has been done. Anyone care to shed some light on if this is the case?

That shouldn't be the case. There would be multiple music masters vaulted for various reasons, plus the composer would have his own copies.

Older films or production companies from decades ago may have masters that were discarded or destroyed in the intervening years, but the last 20 years should all be backed up and retained quite safely.

So, perhaps its just a marketing choice?

It's marketing - certain films have had soundtrack scores releases - some noteworthy ones are Bobby (released as Soul of Bobby), Qurbani, Kabhi Kabhie etc. These were released as LPs at the time of the movie release and fetch a pretty penny when they appear on eBay!

I guess there isn't a whole lot of demand and I guess the movie companies don't see the value in it.

There is no market because Bollywood films are song oriented, not score oriented. All the effort and talent is put into songs numbers. The rest is connecting filler, often very generic or variations of the song themes, if not copied from Hollywood films or some other source. Of course there are exceptions with quality scores and things are improving with globalisation. But the score tradition of Hollywood does not exist. And even in Hollywood scores (as opposed to song albums from films) are mostly for the devoted collectors and not mass market items except for some hit films (Star Wars, Titanic etc.).

I agree!! I was trying to listen to dhoom back ground! it was darn all song music in different forms, pretty disappointing affair imho

To add some more to this - certain film scores can be found ... Kalyanji Anandji had a re-mix album of their film scores of movies from the 70's Bombay the Hardway was this album: http://www.musthear.com/reviews/bombaythehardway.html
Released mainly to satisfy the hunger for funk laced Bollywood 70's groovy music!

Aside from that I also know that other albums of the films scores have been released - does anyone remember the score of 'Satya' (A.R. Rehman) on CD? Again this was a very limited release and is a rare find if it can be found.

During the LP vinyl phase of Bollywood music a lot of the albums had large sections of the background score on the LP. Films such as Razia Sultan had a double album release which included the songs and selections from the background score. When this album was released on CD the instrumental portion was trimmed and only the songs made it on to CD.

Other times you may find that certain portions of background music actually made it in to other films as songs! There is one scene in the Raj Kapoor film called Barsaat (music by Shankar Jaikisen) where the background score became the song 'O Basanti Pawan Paagal' in the film 'Jis Desh Mein Ganga Bethi Hai' also by Shankar Jaikisen.

On the whole I think that certain music director duos in the 50's, 60's 70's combined where one of them composed the songs and the other worked on the background score. It's these duos who seem to have the most creative background scores.

Alot of these masters were wiped after the film's realese as the master tapes were used again and again so the chances of getting the original recording is slim.

I guess in Hollwood musical film soundtrack releases we would have the same thing in that the songs are released and the score is not? I don't own many - but the few I do there is little to do with the backgorund music and more to do with the songs.

Interesting subject - would love to hear more!

Donno if this is worth mentioning here but still i must say that every single piece of score that we hear in SRK's Don has been made available on its audio cd. Along with all the songs, each and every bg music piece used through the film is very much there in CD.

how many pieces are there? I guess a couple, besides re cycled songs

Nowadays some amateurs are ripping the scores from DVDs by taking certain channels from the 5.1 mix. That is, provided the DVD has a true 5.1 mix. I've downloaded a few AR Rahman scores taken in this manner. I believe the score for his Tamil film Aa Aah was sold on a CD that was sourced from amateur mp3s.

The one that I enjoyed on CD but not in the film, was Rehman's Asian release Warriors of Heavens and Earth

Krrish had a seperate CD of musical score only