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.