wax&wires

Metallica Joins The Guitar Hero List (aka: the new way to make money in music)

Guitar Hero: Metallica will be released on XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3 late this March. This adds Metallica to the list of artists who have learned to capitalize on the surge of opportunities within the current video gaming market.

After strong sales, but notably bad publicity with regards to the audio quality of their latest album, Death Magnetic, perhaps this will give Metallica an opportunity to re-establish the album to their fans. Many thought that the album was way over-compressed, and even the Guitar Hero version of the songs (released later for an additional $18) sounded better. Oh, how the worlds are colliding.

A month or so back, I posted an article, Video Games Will Save Us?, on the status of sales within the music industry. Music sales are down overall, but I’m convinced that one of the new ways to make money in music is through licensing songs to video games. We’ve seen countless artists release singles to Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Huge bands like Aerosmith and Metallica even have their own custom versions of the games, featuring only their songs. I’m sure they fetch a higher royalty rate off of those game sales as well, not to mention the increased exposure and potential for increasing album sales to a new generation. Now, if they don’t already, when will the RIAA begin to count those sales towards your next platinum album?

Smart move on Metallica’s part. Can you think of a new and creative way to work around direct sales and make money off of your songs?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 8:19 pm. It is filed under wax and tagged with guitar hero, metallica, video games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.