14 DAY TRIAL // Can you tell me which entertainment industry is on its death bed and trying desperately to find something to cling to? Yes, it's the music industry and its newest ray of hope is to get more money out of videogames. How? By charging more on the tracks that games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero use.
Warner Music Group Chief Executive Officer, Edgar Bronfman, stated for Reuters that "The amount being paid to the music industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content we own and control, is far too small". In other words, if you want famous bands to feature their music in your games, be prepared to start a bidding war, because CD sales are dropping and Warner Music needs a new cash cow.
Warner Music Group is currently publishing, through its various labels, music from bands like Metallica, that is set to get its own Guitar Hero game sometime in 2009. There are already many Warner Music owned tracks featured in Guitar Hero III and its various downloadable content packs.
If royalties demanded by music owners go up, we might see shrinking playlists for Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2. Downloadable content will also probably be sparser.
What music companies like Warner do not understand is that the main element that attracts gamers to music simulators is not the tracks, but the chance to pretend to be rock stars. Once Guitar Hero World Tour offers each player the ability to create his own music and then to share it with friends, licensed tracks will be less important, as everyone will jump at the chance to create or re-create his own favorite tracks using the game.
Warner also misses the advertising potential of music games. Seeing a track in the game and playing it will likely get a gamer interested in the band and will, in turn, push up music sales. A smaller selection of tracks in the game will mean less publicity for the artists.
But, as always in the last decade or so, music executives are so preoccupied with immediate profit that they seem to lose the long term perspective.