UPDATE: Rock Band - EA Pwns Music Industry
Rock Band website launched, full details inside.
Posted 2 Apr 2007
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In addition to offering deep online connectivity, Rock Band will "Build on unprecedented deals with the world’s biggest record labels and music publishers, the music featured in Rock Band will span all genres of rock and include many of the master recordings from the biggest songs and artists of all time..." reads the release.
Rock Band is surely going to operate as an important new promo tool for the ailing music industry, in addition to what promises to be a cracking videogame. Strategy/concept wise, everything is in place, so it's hard to see how it could fail.
However, let's not forget that they ('the music industry') said the same thing about The Traveling Wilburys!
So while we're pumped, we'll not get ahead of ourselves eh! SPOnG will wait until we hear and see more on the actual game (specifically how the online collaborative/jamming mode will actually work in practice) before we make any spurious value judgements on Rock Band.
What we do know is that EA pretty much 'pwns' the music industry on this, as we've just been informed that:
The leading music publishers - EMI Music Publishing and Warner/Chappell Music - are allowing unrivaled access to their catalogs of incredible songs for use in Rock Band. The record labels - EMI Music, Hollywood Records, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group's Universal Music Enterprises and Warner Music Group's Rhino Entertainment - have agreed to supply master recordings by their artists for use in the game.
Bye bye Guitar Hero... it was nice playing you.
SPOnG's interested to know how, if at all, Rock Band will tie into EA's new record label. There's no word yet, but SPOnG will let you know as soon as EA spills the beans.
You can see more on Rock Band at the newly unveiled official game site at Rockbandgame.com.
Comments
1/4
aaaah, licenses. a source of much evil in the games industry
2/4
dude, are you sure you're not missing the wood for the trees here?
surely - whatever the contractual issues surrounding licensing all the music required - the basic idea of being able to play a Guitar Hero style game, collaboratively/online with a bunch of friends ... playing along to ORIGINAL versions of your favourite tunes... surely this is not evil?
providing the tunes are good and the price is right, i'm buying it.
surely - whatever the contractual issues surrounding licensing all the music required - the basic idea of being able to play a Guitar Hero style game, collaboratively/online with a bunch of friends ... playing along to ORIGINAL versions of your favourite tunes... surely this is not evil?
providing the tunes are good and the price is right, i'm buying it.
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3/4
the power of EA and its licenses will crush all competition, regardless of quality, is the evil i was referring to. surely a valid point
4/4
meh, I suppose... we can only hope that the Harmonix guys get the final call on which bands/tunes they want in the game, as it's clear they have good taste...
The worst possible outcome would be if MTV dictated the musical content - which is a real fear.
The worst possible outcome would be if MTV dictated the musical content - which is a real fear.
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