Warner Music Playing Hardball With Rock Band 86
We recently discussed the fight brewing between the music industry and the popular music games, such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero, over the licensing fees paid for songs used within the games. Well, Warner has stepped things up and denied access to future songs without a payment increase. "Once the already-agreed-upon music runs out in the Summer however, the two companies will have to hammer out a new deal that's amenable to both. If MTV Games ends up giving Warner a larger slice of the pie, you have to think that the rest of the labels will begin asking for the same cut." The Rock Band games have seen a steady stream of DLC additions to their song libraries, the most recent being Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood album. Activision has been busily working on new Guitar Hero content as well, revealing details for Guitar Hero Greatest Hits, which is due out in June. Ben Heck (of Xbox 360 laptop fame) has just put together a breath controller for Guitar Hero World Tour's bass drum, for those unable or unwilling to use the standard pedal.
Re:Better idea for Rock Band (Score:3, Interesting)
I really hope they do this. It's the exec's jobs to look over reports, hell, sometimes even do their own reports, to figure out how to generate more income without harming themselves. If Warner is really full of that many stupid execs... well I hope their stockholders pull out. No sense in wasting your money on a company that obviously can't yank their head from their ass.
I don't know why record companies think they're entitled to be given money so that others can essentially advertise their music.
Dear Media Industry, (Score:2, Interesting)
I will not buy an album or track from any band or label which is RIAA-associated and included within these games, should you abuse your market position like this. I actively ENCOURAGE Rock Band and Guitar Hero's respective developers to avoid your music at all costs, and provide market exposure for independant bands, whose music can be freely downloaded and used from Jamendo [wwwjamendo.com] and similar sites for review before contacting the author for permission for use. I have no doubt that 100% will agree.
I will buy their game anyway, as I enjoy the gameplay regardless of the backing track. It's for this same reason that I bought AudioSurf on the Steam platform.
Sincerely.
Re:To be fair... (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair, shouldn't the labels be on their knees, thanking Jeebus that somebody actually *wants* to pay money for entire albums from the 80s?
More than enough already (Score:5, Interesting)
They've already got more than enough music to be released. They only release 3 to 8 songs a week from 2 or 3 artist (or sometimes an entire album instead). There's no way the company can keep up with everything. There are tons of artists out there that don't even have a single song in Rock Band, and it's not because of negotiation failures. There are just too many artist to cover without flooding the market.
So if Warner wants to pull their catalog from the list of available options, it will only make it that much easier for Harmonix to catch up with other artists from some other labels. I have a feeling Rock Band won't be lacking for anything, but Warner will have to answer to their artists about why they aren't seeing the advantages that other artists are enjoying.
Re:Mechanical Licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem there is that fans have gotten a taste of the real thing, and many won't tolerate it anymore. It would be kind of like saying that game design has gotten really expensive these days, and that developers should just keep costs down and go back to 2.5D engines for their FPS games. Most gamers won't tolerate either option anymore.
Re:A Solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Changing the thresholds up to filter out the noise means quite a few beats get lost. Some songs it works pretty well, but not all of them.