Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of Ultra Star Deluxe

May 4th, 2009 – The other day, I was thinking about bands that I didn’t know before I played Rockband. Often, I liked the music I was hearing (and “playing”) enough to Google them after I was done. For many people who only listen to the same radio station, and never hear new music outside that genre, things like Rockband force them to experience new music; if you want to play the game, you play whatever music the game has.

The artists that get their music placed in games, generally get a small sync license fee. If the artist is big, then they can negotiate larger fees. Some of the artist like The Police, and No Doubt, no doubt get paid quite a large percentage for the  paid downloaded song packs. Smaller artists obviously don’t have that negotiating power, but they can certainly use video games as marketing tools.

Getting your music in front of a wide audience (especially ones that can’t see your perform) is one of the hardest things to do. Video games represent a captive audience for your music. If I had a band right now, I’d be researching game franchises that my music might be a good match for. For example, if  my band played power-pop music, I might send our music to a company that makes snowboarding games. If I wanted to increase the chances that they’d choose my song, I might even sign over the sync license for free. The money we would get through sync would be much less than the advertising costs to reach that same market. Think of it as a trade that’s heavily skewed in your favour.

Some artists are already onto this marketing trend. UltraStar Deluxe, is an open source PC alternative to Sony’s popular SingStar karaoke game. What makes UltraStar Deluxe stand out for me, is a download section of additional content that’s free under creative commons licensing. People like indie star Jonathan Coulton have songs on there for you to download and sing along too. That’s a great way to get your music out to potential new fans. If UltraStar were a big franchise like Rockband, imagine what that could do for your fanbase.

If I were working at EA, I might push for an indie version of Rockband. The back-end programming is already done, so the only work would be inputting the songs for people to play. Artists could license their music for free use in that game, and EA could sell the game for much less since the majority of their costs right now go to paying sync licenses for huge artists. That would be pretty progressive, and I think bands would be clamouring to sign up. Instead of paying 15 dollars for 5 U2 songs, a consumer could pay 30 dollars for a game full of 80 indie tracks. Everyone wins.

UltraStar Deluxe