Slashdot Mirror
Warner Music Playing Hardball With Rock Band
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.
I hope they sit down with the Warner execs and say: Have a look at album sales after we release a track. If you want us to use your songs, pay up. If not, we can always go elsewhere.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
"You didn't give us enough free money for providing us with free advertising for our cash cow that we didn't even put work into in the first place, so no deal. Come back when you've got even more free money than what you gave us last time."
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
These games use the music as a very integral and essential part of the game, not as an effect or to convey a certain mood. I believe that the money the labels receive under the current agreement makes no difference between those two circumstances.
Not that the music labels would succeed in recognizing any income apart from up-front money... I mean, they probably mark up the songs in games as "lost sales", since people wouldn't have to buy the records.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
This might backfire on Warner, and Rock Band might really do what you hope - ask Warner to pay them for the privilege of having Warner songs as the bundled songs in the next game.
Rock Band can definitely walk away. The Guitar Hero game already has enough mindshare on its own to do without Warner's "help".
As long as they have an idea of what music their target market likes, they can even fill it with 100% indie songs, and the people buying the next GH game will still buy GH (and some CDs).
Pick good stuff, add a bit of "rebel" marketing, and the teens/youths won't care that there are no big names.
After all half of them might never have heard of the "big names" either. Some of the big name hits came out before the kids were born (for example - Strutter by Kiss was released in 1974). So it's all the same to them.
Anyone wants to talk to them at all, or re-use again, for the thousandth time, their same old tired, tired content. I haven't bought any music since Napster. My family went pure indie after that and we couldn't be happier. I don't know anyone who still buys music either. Indeed to do so would be horribly gauche when you can always catch amazing music performed live any given night of the week in any of two-score bars/venues in Brooklyn. Guitar Hero gives the labels one last, golden chance to bridge that void and reach the generations that have come after mine (I'm 36). So, yes, the labels ought to be kissing GH's butt, not pulling stunts like this one. Antagonizing GH is a sure path to complete and final irrelevance.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I (almost) hope patents keep the music companies from doing the obvious and releasing their own games. Of course, they'll probably use a model where you need to pay every time you play the song.
By continuing with this action, you hurt the consumer by artificially inflating costs. As a consumer, I do not approve of this.
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 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.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
of a deathly sick, old and dying business model.
Good bye money grubbing creativity squashing coke snorting over paid executive pigs...we will not miss you.
You are all missing the most important piece.
Rock Band should immediately cease all talks with Warner and switch back to cover songs. I that case they will only need to pay a mechanical royalty of about $0.091 per unit sold per song. The only difference is that a cover band will be playing the songs.
If they choose to do this, Warner has literally NO say in the matter. They cannot deny them the license.
-- lol pwned
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.
I think Warner is perfectly within their rights to do this. That is business. However, they need to be aware of the law of supply and demand. Should everyone do this and it bump the price of the game or DLC up significantly, game players will make other choices. I suspect that demand is very elastic and today's money machine could easily become tomorrow's warehouse filler.
Or the other music houses could sense a competitive advantage, stick with the original deal and just let Warner get pushed out of the party.
Or, as someone else mentioned, Activision and Harmonix could use covers for these songs and sidestep the issue.
Or perhaps some other type of game will become popular, these games will complete their arc and it really won't matter. (As long as the Beatles music game gets produced, that is. :D )
1) Pull out gun, fire at foot repeatedly.
2) ????
3) Profit
[Insert pithy quote here]
Don't negotiate with terrorists. If they want to pay hardball then let them play by themselves. Music industry is always crying how they are losing money, here is a new revenue stream which is really gravy for them as they have very little costs. Take it or leave it, there are plenty of fish in the sea.
Are you blind? Since the release of Guitar Hero, all of the bands whose songs were included suddenly saw spikes in record sales. Were it not for Guitar Hero, they would have sold even more records! Stupid, free-loading videogames. The record companies have to recoup all of those lost sales somehow.
On a serious note, though, these games pay you to include your music, and then increase your record sales. If you don't think they're paying you enough for the "privilege", move along because there are plenty of other record labels in town.
Here's an idea. Put down the game console. Get a real guitar, and practice a bit. Play whatever damn song you very well please, and forget paying anyone to play additional songs.
I'm actually half serious too. I play the guitar, and tried one of those guitar games. They're not easy, I didn't do too well. If you need to practice so much on what's just a game, why not practice to play the real thing? The later actually has an everlasting value.
FX:Adds Warner to list of companies I no longer do business with.
Yep, fits under Sony nicely.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
"Funk Band"
Hit up all the Old Motown R&B hits of the past! (Universal/Sony Parent)
Earth to Guitar Hero:
You don't need Warner.
You got indie music.
Can't find any? Here's my short list.
You could have a contest. The winners get to have their music on Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
They should be screaming made that Warner Bros is trying to kill off a huge source of advertising and income. If they are successful, they will just price this game out of the market and it will die. Warner Bros execs are idiots.
Seriously? How long will it be before somebody writes something that lets you use any of your own music in these games?
And as long as I'm making requests, could it be changed so that people can actually play guitar after becoming an expert in the game?
Need Mercedes parts ?
There is a feasible solution for this: Do not distribute music with the game. An automagic algorithm could be written to extract notes from any song. Then people could just plug in mp3s or whatever audio files they had on their computers, and the game makers could pay to license precisely nothing.
Players would benefit greatly from this as they could play along to any music they had, including concert bootlegs and other unlicensed recordings. The game could be cheaper without the record industry's nasty tax, too.
Before anybody tells me I do not know how the game works, you are right, I do not. So, if this is technically infeasible, well, it was a nice idea anyway. And any time anyone can reduce the amount of money any record label gets, they are doing something good for society, so I hope my speculation is not totally off base :)
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
All they can think about is money, and how to get more of it from everyone. I've always thought that if they had a good price for music people would buy it, but as it is, they just gouge away. I love GH WT but now I'm going to give second thoughts to downloading any more music for points. As another user posted, their sales are driven up, but they still want more and more. I know jets, Rolls Royces and cavier are expensive but this is ridiculous.
*Ben Heck has done way more than just sweeeet 360 mods and re-casing.
And it's also on there; stuff, like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins that basically everyone who grew up in the early/mid 90s at least recognizes.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I (almost) hope patents keep the music companies from doing the obvious and releasing their own games.
Konami owns a patent on the play mechanics of Guitar Freaks and Drummania that it licenses to Activision for Guitar Hero. And Konami has sued Viacom, parent company of the developer of Rock Band, for patent infringement.
Of course, they'll probably use a model where you need to pay every time you play the song.
Konami already used this model for Guitar Freaks: it's an arcade game.
I still think something like that could work well and have beginners playing something decent within an hour or two.
I think I know what Wii need to look at.
IANAL, but mechanical licensing is not sufficient for including a song in a video game. You will need at least synchronization rights. I'm sure that the rights to use the actual recording in the game are different than re-recording a cover version and using that version instead.
The developers should immediately start looking for songs released under an open type license, or sign some lesser known bands as the first step of a multi-pronged approach. The second step is to make the music tracks plugins, so that the end users themselves can unplug any open-licensed songs they don't like and plug in their own music from their own music collection (the plugin can work by using a text file for a list of songs to play in order, along with a configuration setting pointing to the music folder, with the developers adding a gui to make this easier along with easing how to tell the game where to look for the music tracks). The third step is to set up a community where members can suggest the best music for particular releases and particular parts of each game. One profile can be the original profile the developers had used previously or planned to use, and other profiles can suggest other music regardless of license since the music resides on the end-user's hard drive, not being released with the game by the developers. The music mafia will watch their licensing revenue drop to zero on the next game release while the end-users will still be using the music mafia's songs if/when they switch "profiles". Watch how fast they come back to the bargaining table if the scheme works, and there is no reason it shouldn't.