Video Games Are Launching Rock-n-Roll Careers

jillduffy writes "Steve Schnur, a high-level music exec at Electronic Arts, talks about how video games are launching the careers of top musical artists these days. Some of his examples: 'Avril Lavigne was first introduced to European audiences through FIFA 2003. Fabolous was first introduced in America via NBA Live, and went on to sell over 2 million albums here. JET got their American iPod commercial based on exposure in Madden 2004. Avenged Sevenfold were an unsigned act when we featured them in Madden 2004...' Schnur explains how the phenomenon is made possible by the new generation of media junkies, who feel a song becomes real when they 'play it.'"

Comments

Whew

[cjfs]

For a second I thought the "Rock Band Experts start Real Band" stories had started.

I dread that day.

Re:I agree

[moosesocks]

Music today has boundaries that stretch unfathomably far beyond what gets played on the radio.

For starters, there's the absolutely massive "indie" community that fosters a fantastic amount of great music.

If you prefer ambient/electronic music with few or no words, quite a lot of artists have cropped up in this genre thanks to the magic of file-sharing and the internet, given the genre's relatively specific audience, and the difficulty for such bands to effectively promote themselves.

There are a whole slew of artists in this genre worth checking out: 65daysofstatic, Mogwai, Sigur Rós, Four Tet, Explosions in the Sky, The Books, Battles, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, and a thousand others that I've either forgotten or never heard of.

No matter how obscure you might think your musical tastes are, chances are good that there are many, many others like you. Don't be confined by video game soundtracks!

That all said, I've never been all *that* impressed by a video game soundtrack, with the very notable exception of the Final Fantasy series.

Re:They already had their break

[billcopc]

Yep, that's because GH3 wasn't made by Harmonix. I'm not at all implying that Aspyr isn't a decent game house, they've got quite a few massive hits to their credit, but Harmonix are the people who made the music game genre popular in North America. DDR already existed, but its uber-cheesy eurodance and J-pop soundtrack was too lame for the 3-chord jock tards of the USA and Canada. Harmonix released Frequency and Amplitude, which featured popular acts known to average suburban white kids like The Crystal Method, BT, No Doubt and Run DMC. Then of course, they threw in a few catchy indie tunes from their musician friends. I also found out about Freezepop through Frequency, and immediately fell in love with their sound. If I ever make another musically-inclined piece of software, you can bet your spleen it's going to feature some local talent. It's a no-brainer: little or no royalties to pay, tons of exposure for your friend's music, and of course lots of extra tracks for your game.

Then Guitar Mania came along, with the same weak-ass euro-J-dance and even weaker Bon Jovi tracks :P Harmonix took the concept, gave it some real rock'n'roll tunage and the star power bonus just like they had done for Frequency/Amplitude, and history was made. Come on, it took some serious awesomeness to include the Trogdor song from Homestar Runner :)

To most people, Rock Band is the true sequel to Guitar Hero 2. GH3 is okay, and has a decent track list, but it is inevitably inferior than the first two, simply because its creators are obviously not music lovers of the same caliber.