Music downloads now profitable through videogames
- Posted January 21st, 2008 at 18:45 EDT by
- 18 Comments
Just twenty years ago the music of the videogame industry really wasn't taken that seriously. Just a bunch of midi-tunes thrown together along with a few beeps and music in videogames really was not something a gamer thought much of. Flash forward 20+ years later and music in videogames is now a profitable entity as developers and artists alike jumps in to make money.
This new phenomenon is proved by recent success of musical downloads through Guitar Hero III and Rock Band. Through Rock Band, over 2.5 million downloads were purchased and over 5 million songs were purchased via Guitar Hero III. Now compare that to the 1 millions songs that it took Sprint four months to sell through its downloading service and you obviously have a new competitor.
Van Toffler, MTVN Music Group/Logo/Films division President explains:
"With such a low installation base, we didn't think that there'd be 2 million songs sold in eight weeks. We live in a rough time around music where our audience struggles to pay $20 for a CD but don't hesitate to pay $50 for a game. The notion to pay 99 cents or $1.99 to have a song and repeatedly play with it apparently isn't a big hurdle."
Now music studios and artist may have another avenue to distribute and make royalties from their songs as Toffler explains:
"We are talking to tons of bands, from indie to the most established ... to release not necessarily their entire catalog, but maybe some of their classic albums and do special packages around that,"
While Guitar Hero III and Rockband are currently the only two titles in which users are able to download new music to be played into the game, it is possible that other games from other developers such as Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV could use this same feature. Electronic Arts has already thrown their opinions out there by saying, "That's certainly something we're interested in.”
Because the PS3 does not currently allow for outside music to be played in all videogames, this will be very beneficial to PS3 owners.
Comments
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gingo |
gingo- 7:00pm GMT - January 21st, 2008
- 2
psn id: gingo... unfortunately companies will start getting greedy and raise the prices for their songs then other companies will follow and the price keeps going up until people stop buying them then everyone will stp making songs and we'll be back to square 1.... thats my pessimistic theory lets hpe its rong
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Naucious23 |
Naucious- 8:35pm GMT - January 21st, 2008
- 5
yeah what did happen to singstar? But this news states the obvious from a guy who does music I've come across labels who ask if it was possible to make scores for video games and what not but keep it in mind nothing is better than live actual play over synth.
If the market were too start selling music through videogames then it would be a grave day because i'm pretty sure the revenue for that would increase, just look downloading music was $0.99 and now i have seen them increase to up too as much as $3.99, it's inflating big time so I would have to agree with good ol gringo on that part but it wont stop making songs though. Just think of it as mixtapes on video games..... produce a lot of singles but not an album.
just came to think of it ..... I have a feeling DDR is going to take advantage of this big time and so will the artist
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InfernoReaper |
GrimDarkling- 9:11pm GMT - January 21st, 2008
- 6
People struggle to pay $20 for CDs because retail increses the price unnecessarily. So why pay $10-20 per CD when it's so easy to pirate anymore? It's much harder to pirate video games, therefore people pay for them.
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zbamf
- 10:22pm GMT - January 21st, 2008
- 9
@uncool
I don't get you point, Singstar is still a game where it has a store full of songs to purchase, download and play just like GHIII and Rockband, and there are well over 50 songs on the store. Yes its not 350 songs like they announced and 18 added isn't allot but there is still oppotunity to have million plus downloads in singstar.
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Stef Nighthawk
- 4:23am GMT - January 22nd, 2008
- 15
Now If Sony would also use its PSStore to sell MP3s, that would be brilliant.
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PS3-The Ultimate Machine
- 9:32am GMT - January 22nd, 2008
- 18
Won't GTA IV allow you to stream mp3/wma music files from your hdd,like you could on the PC versions?
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