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Music Industry Conflicted On Guitar Hero, Rock Band
Wired is running a story about the friction between the music industry and music-based games, such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Despite the fact that these games are very successful and are drawing a great deal of attention to the music represented in the games, the industry is not pleased with the licensing arrangements that allow the games to use their songs. Quoting: "Putting the brakes on music gaming would hurt everyone in the ailing music industry. Instead of demanding greater profit participation, Warner should be angling for creative participation. Thirty years ago, Hollywood took a similar threat — the VCR — and turned it into a new source of revenue, building customer loyalty in the process. The music industry could use new games the same way — but its track record suggests that it won't."
The music industry shooting iself in the foot?
Colour me surprised...
If they had any creativity (music industry) or software acumen, they'd be better off now than ever. Yeah, copying songs for free is probably just going to be the way things are, but incorporating them into activities or games is not as easy as clicking a button. Maybe they'll get a clue one day?
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Let me rephrase and re-summarise the article:
Games like Rock Band and Guitar hero are now incredibly popular, so the music industry wants to cash in on it and fleece everyone for every single penny they can.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I'm really lost with this one. For the music to be used, the developers of the game would require permission from the two copyright holders - publishing and recording copyrights.
They agree on payment and royalties when they seek copyright permission. So why the fcuk are they moaning after?
I also wonder how much money is made by labels and publishers in royalties, bet it is a lot more than selling CD a digial versions.
That's their job, though. They're supposed to make the most money they can for their shareholders, not run a charity. If they think they can sell something for more money, well, they're _supposed_ to ask for more money.
Now whether they're smart about it, is a whole other question. (E.g., too often I see companies shooting themselves in the foot for millions so some department can save cents or so the CEO's shares rise 2 cents in the very short term.) Whether their means are acceptable is another good question. (E.g., the RIAA lawsuit carpet bombing) But acting as if wanting money was a by itself a capital sin is kinda missing the point.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The music "industry" is not music. It's just middle men. They create drag, friction, between the musicians and the fans. They are an unneeded artifice, a relic of an earlier age, in my mind. For instance:
"Despite the fact that these games are very successful and are drawing a great deal of attention to the music represented in the games, the industry is not pleased with the licensing arrangements that allow the games to use their songs."
Does anyone here think "their songs" refers means "the artist's songs" or does it rather mean "Corp X's songs". Their original argument in the opening salvo of their war against the internet was "think of the artists!" Well, apparently they don't abide by their own logic (nor have they ever). From the very same article:
"Music games are proven earners--Aerosmith has reportedly earned more from Guitar Hero : Aerosmith than from any single album in the band's history."
Fuck the music industry. Please, just die already.
Quik Biz Tip: Try adding value to drive sales, instead of taxing legitimate uses into oblivion.
I don't see actual music sales suffering as a result of this, sorry. Go pick some college kid's pocket instead.
Some boring button mashing game references your music, and you expect to get paid?
No wonder the music industry is dying- Too busy trying to suck blood from a stone.
Get a viable business model that doesn't involve 80 percent lawyers fees.
The automobile put the buggy out of existence, and you're licensing used horseshit. Keep up the good work.
The music that comes from the music industry on DDR games or Hottest Party is the boring part of the game (well, not all of them, but most). Why not eliminate these tracks and put more native JPOP stuff on it that really makes fun? I would buy the games also without the music of the people who complain here. I've already ask Konami about it before. And now I'm even a bit happy that the music industry wants more money. This will perhaps minimize the impact of them on the music style. NAOKI and others, make more music for DDR!!
Also... I haven't bought any music CDs for more than a decade, because I am very picky (I cannot really find what I need) and I don't like the greed. Some few licensed music tracks from the games (that also are sold by the music industry) are really good and I have actually considered to buy them. But I am seeing this greed again and I have enough for another decade. They cannot offer almost anything for me and complain.
And let's not forget. On DDR/HP (I don't know guitar hero and stuff like that) the licensed songs are only covers, because the originals sound poor to me.
Anyone besides me think it's interesting to note that even though the music industry keeps bitching about new ways to distribute their music, they keep putting out the same old crap? Spending millions on a "star" personality marketing them to everyone and their dog seems to be the only way they expect to make money, while history shows that its the small-time surprise artists that make the enduring impact on the industry? If they would quit manufacturing superstars and start focusing on bringing GOOD music to the masses, I think we'd all be a little happier.
J
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
Maybe they'll get a clue one day?
Just to be prepared, I've patented a pig repellent. Never know when one of those obnoxious pigs might fly in through your window.
in other news the RIAA slits their own bellies by banning games that advertise music
It's just Warner in the article.
Since Guitar Hero is owned by Activision / Vivendi Universal, I'm pretty sure they're OK with it.
Dear Time-Warner:
1985 called. It wants its business model back.
Change or die. You are irrelevant, and that's why you're seeing less money from licensing deals. Y'all should get down on your knees and thank God that industry publishers can still make money off of properties like "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Talk Dirty To Me."
Embrace it, or wither and die.
--
Toro
The music that is used in games like that is rarely the original version. What it is instead is a cover. A cover is where another band redoes a song. They are quite common. Sometimes they feature stylistic changes, like a rock band might cover a jazz tune in rock style, sometimes they are just a different band doing the same song. In the case of these games, the bands are doing their very best to imitate the original sound, and doing a rather good job at it. Not as hard as you might think these days given the amazing things you can do with a digital audio workstation.
Ok, so why does this matter? Well many moons ago the recording industry lobbied for, and got, a law that established statutory cover fees. See they wanted their popular artists to be able to cover old songs. However it wasn't always easy or possible to track down the original artists and secure licensing rights, but the songs were still copyrighted thanks to industry's lobbying for copyright extensions. So their plan was that a statutory fee would be established. Thus you pay a fixed rate for covers. This allowed them to have their popular artists cover songs as they pleased, and they never had to worry about what they payout would be, it was defined in advance.
Well now that same shit is working against them. A game company wants to use a famous song. The recording industry decides since it's famous, they want $10 million dollars. Ok no way the game company is paying that, especially if you are talking many songs. Instead they hire a cover band and a good recording engineer for much less, probably under a million. They cover those songs, and then pay the statutory fee of 8.5 cents per song per copy sold.
This little loophole that they created for themselves is now becoming a real problem. Back in the day there was probably no worry. After all recording was real expensive, not the sort of thing you did outside the recording industry much. Now, heck a few grand gets you all you need to get started. Also the technology out there allows you to adjust things in amazing ways, and thus more easily replicate the sound another band gets.
This would have to stop at games. It would be possible for bands to cover popular bands and sell their work. So music industry band A releases a popular song. Cover band B makes a cover that sounds almost identical. Cover band B then sells that cover for less than the music industry does, but enough to cover the statutory fees and make money.
A cover is a good idea, If you cover a song the record industry gets nothing in return.
However, if you cover a song, you still need the publishing copyrights. The fees and royalties for these rights are far more expensive than the recording rights. You'd probably find the rights are owned by someone like a Warner Publishing company so in the end your in a no win situation. D'oh!
Hey, you wont get the RIAA on your back for your own recordings though.
If the industry tries to change their licensing deals, the two game companies will just switch back to cover song.
With cover songs the developers 1) have a flat per-unit fee set by ASCAP / BMI to pay and 2) won't even have to get the same permissions.
You haven't played in awhile, I see. This was true in GH1 and GH2. Virtually all tracks in RB/RB2 are originals.
This is very informative as far as the laws about covering a song goes. But, except for the first two Guitar Hero games, almost every song in Guitar Hero and Rock Band are original recordings. Only the songs that they cannot find master tracks for are covered now.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
Oh, the irony!
Thanks for the highly informative post, by the way. That's a nice little gem I would have otherwise known nothing about.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
This article is about the RECORDING industry, not the music industry. The music industry is companies like Fender and Guitar Center.
Actually, that's not true. For covers, you pay money to the copyright holder and you can publish your songs commercially. For an in-depth (but not legal advice!) breakdown in plain English, I recommend CD Baby's How to Legally Sell Downloads of Cover Songs.
However, I'm not sure that it applies to video games:
This Compulsory License is only available for sales in the United States. Other uses of masters, such as streaming, conditional downloads, and the like, are not subject to a Compulsory License. A separate license from the publisher is needed in those cases.
Thirty years ago, Hollywood took a similar threat -- the VCR -- and turned it into a new source of revenue, building customer loyalty in the process.
Actually, they fought it as long and as hard as they could, and only embraced it when it was clear it was going to happen.
I distinctly remember comments comparing the VCR to the Boston Strangler. I'm too lazy to track it down, and most of you should remember...
Keep in mind, this is Hollywood's attitude (and the Music Industry's attitude, incidentally) towards the ideas which ultimately provide them the most value. The music box, the phonograph, VCRs, digital audio tape, DVDs...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I bought GH3 knowing that I knew some of the songs and (having played GH2) expecting the game to be fun on its own.
What I've found that the game being fun doesn't depend much on whether I know the music but whether I like the music.
Prior to buying the game, I didn't know Eric Johnson. After having played Cliffs of Dover in the game, it's one of the songs I can go back to and play over and over again, just for the fun of playing the song.
On the other hand, there are some songs I don't like; playing those is not fun, and it probably wouldn't be even if I knew the song.
So: liking >> knowing.
The music that is used in games like that is rarely the original version. What it is instead is a cover.
While this is the case for the older games in the series, it's no longer true. The new games mostly use the original masters for the tracks. The music industry finally realized "Holy shit, our target consumer base eats this stuff up" and let the creators use the original masters. Good thing, too. Some of those covers were horrendous.
Personally, I'm waiting for the owner the Led Zeppelin's rights to make the same realization.
And sometimes they're getting the original band to record the cover. They couldn't find a master for the Sex Pistols song in RB2 so they recorded a new master with the original band.
I would love to buy a music game done entirely with classic game themes. The music industry is already on very thin ice (or already through and sinking, depending on where you stand). If games left them behind entirely, I wouldn't be disappointed.
At least with Rock Band 2, most of the songs are original. Those songs that are actually by cover bands usually have titles similar to "Ten Speed," as popularized by Coheed and Cambria, as opposed to "Peace of Mind" by Boston. (Note the "as popularized by" statement added to the cover band's rendition.)
Those cover songs are in the minority, at least on the game that I own.
I have a bad feeling about this...
These people deserve some bad press for naming themselves after Valenti. Please.
There are two "sides" to the licensing of each song. They aren't the sides you think. They are 1. the side for the songwriting and 2. the side for the recording. Each side needs to be licensed in order to use an original recording, whereas only the songwriting side needs to be licensed in order to _create_ a cover. That said, to _license_ the cover itself one would still need to license both sides (for the original songwriting and the new recording, though for the new recording it is often easier if the publisher of the cover and the creator of the cover are one in the same, even if only in terms of ownership and not the actual individual musicians).
The need to separately license both sides grows out of the fact that there are two distinct pieces of copyrighted material and different sets of people with their legal hands on each part. With the propensity for guest artists these days, especially in certain genres of what their proponents call "music" *cough*hip-hop*cough*, you can imagine just how many people could be involved in any one side, let alone both.
Whether there is one side to negotiate or two, and whether for a cover or not, in any given case the overall process is the same and equally open to all sorts of craziness in terms of who wants how many dollars.
That aside for the moment, and to comment on the overall subject in general, it is worth noting that both sides have been more than happy to license their music to these games, and that you would be amazed at the amount of money it sometimes takes to get one into a game. The only reason the fees aren't even higher is because there is _competition_. What do I mean by this? Well, there are a great many songs out there, as we all know, so these copyright holders can only push negotiations so high before those in control of the budget for the game will dump the song and move onto something else on their list. Unless all of the artists form a cartel to control these license fees, this form of competition is what keeps the production of these games even remotely affordable.
In the meantime, both the copyright holders and those licensing the copyrights (the game companies) are completely free to negotiate for what they want and to walk away at any time. That the labels have been doing one thing (happily licensing their side) and saying another (complaining about the licensing fees they are receiving) should be no surprise to anyone here on /., that's for sure.
I have a solution to the music industry's piracy/licensing problems. This solution works in the software industry. It's called a dongle. Every device that can play music (computer, stereo, iPod, etc) should have a DB-25 port, like the parallel port on the back of a computer. Each song you buy would come with a dongle. In order to play the song, you'll have to plug in the dongle that came with that song. The dongle would obviously cost something to manufacture, so the prices of songs should be increased accordingly. This solution will be effective and popular with the public because people will brag about the size of their dongle collection.
As much as I have a distaste for the music industry. (probably because it is an industry)
It's possible that they should be getting more, depending on the pay structure.
If the blanket licensing for incidental use is as low for rock band as for a game such as grand theft auto, than some scales are off. This means that GTA which uses music to enhance the game experience, is making the labels about 4 to 5 times the amount of money they get from a game that is basically about the music.
GTA radio stations have easily about 20 albums worth of music on them, where rockband will have a quarter of that.
If they get paid per song, than rockstar is paying way more than harmonix is.
If they get paid more already, than they have no case.
The sooner the music industry dies a horrible death the better. They are greedy hypocritical worms. Practically none of the revenue generated by the musicians ends up in the musicians pockets. They deserve to go the way of the dinosaur.
Indeed. Plenty of big corps also have PR sections and foundations (Ronald McDonald Children's Charity, Tim Horton's Camp). These foster goodwill between the consumer and the company, so in theory you're spending some money to gain goodwill (and thus gain more customers and sell more product)
Suing customers doesn't gain goodwill, and the music and movie industries actions against customers in general has earned them a pretty poor reputation as of late, thus it is seen by many as cool to "fight da man" and download music/movies, etc.
If the RIAA is becoming a big problem then..... evolve and do it without them. Change the game and go from bands directly to fans without the middle ground. The no name bands would make money, and the fans would love new content. I'm sure Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony would make more money without paying a premium and everyone makes good money in the end.
Yes, exactly! (posting anon because I just modded you up)
I only recently got into the Guitar Hero scene (V-day gift for the wife; we've been having a blast!). I can already see the enormous potential this has for the music industry - if the industry chooses to unleash that potential. They've already benefitted from my having bought the game in multiple ways:
Ideally, I'd like to see GH and RB become a generic iTunes-like platform for distribution of music - with extra value added that it's interactive for playing along. This could be a huge long-term cash cow for the music industry if they don't get too greedy and choke it off before it gets going.
Unfortunately, this dream will probably never happen. Roadblocks I see include:
So I'm not holding my breath. But just think how cool it would be to have a play-along music store with its catalog a significant fraction of what iTunes or Amazon has. How cool would that be? It's a nice dream, anyway.