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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 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.
You haven't played in awhile, I see. This was true in GH1 and GH2. Virtually all tracks in RB/RB2 are originals.