Warner Music: Music Video Games Must Pay More

Warner Music Group Corp, the world's third-largest music company, said on Thursday that video game makers will need to pay more to license songs for music-based video games like "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band."

Warner Music Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman drew comparisons between MTV's launch 25 years ago or Apple Inc's iPod launch five years ago, and today's video game companies like Activision Blizzard Inc and Harmonix, a unit of Viacom Inc.

"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."

Credits for the report to Reuters.

Comments

[IrishDude]

Horseology... Money Scabbers

[Mootallica]

Just more excuses to take money from the bands and game developers to fill the pockets in their wardrobe because the pants they are wearing are already full of money.

[aceofspades10]

Mootallica wrote:

Just more excuses to take money from the bands and game developers to fill the pockets in their wardrobe because the pants they are wearing are already full of money.

...good one.

[creativlogic]

This will ultimately be bad I think... They charge more for good music... so the good music doesn't make it into the game... Then the track list sucks... We don't want the game... Music Game Genre falls apart...

[HarmlessMarvin]

Mootallica :
Just more excuses to take money from the bands and game developers to fill the pockets in their wardrobe because the pants they are wearing are already full of money.

The game developers are they only ones making any money. Guitar Hero 3 cost what? $50 without the guitar? There are 70+ songs on it. Even if there was no markup at retail, and all the money went straight to the artist, that's still only like $0.70 a song, usually split between 4 or 5 people. But that's not even realistic. You've got to cut out what the developer takes out and figure in the record company and publishers percentages too.

The truth is game development is almost non-existent in these types of games. Graphically the games are out of date, they tried to put the wii version of GH3 out in MONO!!!, and any original content they create is completely pointless. No one plays GH for the awesome characters or Brett Michaels motion capture, they play it for the songs. The bands carry all the weight in these games and they get paid fractions of a penny while the developers literally do nothing (Guitar Hero 80's) and make millions if not billions off them.

[roarinflames]

HarmlessMarvin wrote:

Mootallica :
Just more excuses to take money from the bands and game developers to fill the pockets in their wardrobe because the pants they are wearing are already full of money.


The game developers are they only ones making any money. Guitar Hero 3 cost what? $50 without the guitar? There are 70+ songs on it. Even if there was no markup at retail, and all the money went straight to the artist, that's still only like $0.70 a song, usually split between 4 or 5 people. But that's not even realistic. You've got to cut out what the developer takes out and figure in the record company and publishers percentages too.

The truth is game development is almost non-existent in these types of games. Graphically the games are out of date, they tried to put the wii version of GH3 out in MONO!!!, and any original content they create is completely pointless. No one plays GH for the awesome characters or Brett Michaels motion capture, they play it for the songs. The bands carry all the weight in these games and they get paid fractions of a penny while the developers literally do nothing (Guitar Hero 80's) and make millions if not billions off them.

so then according to your math
since guitar hero 4 has sold 8 million copies as of july 08
then each song is worth $5.6 million (8 mil x .7)
we'll say we take out 70% for game development, marketing and paying record companies.
thats still nearly 2 million dollars
some of those bands on there
ive never even heard of

$2 MILLION

[Scorge]

well, this looks like their excuse to make up for all the money they are losing to piracy

[HarmlessMarvin]

roarinflames :
so then according to your math
since guitar hero 4 has sold 8 million copies as of july 08
then each song is worth $5.6 million (8 mil x .7)
we'll say we take out 70% for game development, marketing and paying record companies.
thats still nearly 2 million dollars
some of those bands on there
ive never even heard of

$2 MILLION

Except that like I already said there is no way they're getting $0.70 a song, and there's no way the developers are only getting 70%. A really good record deal gets you maybe 25%. That's 25% from the record companies % because everything is filtered through them. Minus 10% for management.

Read Steve Albini's "The Problem With Music"

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

That will give you a pretty good understanding of how little bands end up getting in these licensing deals.

[roarinflames]

HarmlessMarvin wrote:

roarinflames :
so then according to your math
since guitar hero 4 has sold 8 million copies as of july 08
then each song is worth $5.6 million (8 mil x .7)
we'll say we take out 70% for game development, marketing and paying record companies.
thats still nearly 2 million dollars
some of those bands on there
ive never even heard of

$2 MILLION


Except that like I already said there is no way they're getting $0.70 a song, and there's no way the developers are only getting 70%. A really good record deal gets you maybe 25%. That's 25% from the record companies % because everything is filtered through them. Minus 10% for management.

Read Steve Albini's "The Problem With Music"

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

That will give you a pretty good understanding of how little bands end up getting in these licensing deals.

hmm
your logic is confusing
mainly cause your first post was "the game developers are the only one's making any money"
but now you're saying the record company is getting quite a hefty profit as well.
check your sources or at least explain them more thoroughly please

[Anjohl]

Music labels should PAY to have their songs inclueed...do they realize the money they make from the FREE ADVERTISING and FREE PRODUCT PLACEMENT? Think about it, after the release of GH3, Dragonforce CD sales went up 183%...this is proof enough.

[gooman]

Anjohl wrote:

Music labels should PAY to have their songs inclueed...do they realize the money they make from the FREE ADVERTISING and FREE PRODUCT PLACEMENT? Think about it, after the release of GH3, Dragonforce CD sales went up 183%...this is proof enough.

That's very true. My OWN enterprise of freely and somewhat illegally downloading songs off the internet (for myself ONLY, mind you) soared up in function because the music in all the games were so damn good.

For all it's worth, I went out and bought the newest A7x cd, AND went to Taste of Chaos (I paid...), JUST because I loved their song on GH2.

[RFer]

Uhm, damn these guys are GREEDY