hypebot

Video: Music & Games @ E3

Billboard's Alan Frutkin takes an look at the growing partnership between the video game and music industries at this year's E3 gaming expo. "Brutal Legend,” “DJ Hero” and “The Beatles: Rock Band” are among the games featured as well as interviews with top executives like RedOctane CEO Dan Rosensweig.

Jay-Z & Eminem Promote DJ Hero Game Collaboration

Jay-Z and Eminem performed together on Monday night at the Wiltern Theater in LA to promoter their collaboration on DJ Hero, the new game that aims to bring DJ culture, hip-hop, electronic, R&B and soul to the successful Guitar Hero platform.

Video: McCartney, Starr Introduce "The Beatles: Rock Band" At E3

Video: Tap Tap Revenge Coldplay Edition

Tapulous have launched a special Coldplay edition of their top selling TapTap Revenge game for $4.99 at the Apple Apps store. More details on Coldplay's site here or watch this video. (via Music Ally)

RockBand Passes $1B In Sales, 40M Songs

The Rock Band game franchise has surpassed $1 billion in North American retail sales in just 15 months, according to the NPD Group. 40 million songs have been through the Rock Band platform.  Originally launched in November 2007, Rock Band is the multi-million unit selling, genre-defining music game published by MTV. The game has had a strong impact on both music promotion and sales.

 Rock Band Music Stats:

• 614 songs offered via on-disc and in-game music store
• 269 different artists
• Over 40 million paid songs have sold since Rock Band launch
• 11 albums released to via Rock Band including AC/DC Live, The Cars, Judas Priest, Pixies, Motley Crue, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Megadeth, Rush, No Doubt and Stevie Ray Vaughan, as well as special compilations from The Who, Nirvana, The Grateful Dead and Boston

Gamecues Offers Indies Path To Gaming $'s

INgrooves First To Use New Platform

Money from music in games is moving from something that indie labels and artists could usually only read about to a possible revenue source with the new Gamecues licensing platform.  Dubbed "the first sound library built exclusively for the gaming industry," Gamecues facilitates the music discovery and transaction process much like YouLicense and others do between music and film, tv or other media.

Innovative digital music distributor INgrooves has become the first to take advantage of Gamecues’ new Level 2 Licensing process for premium content.  Now INgrooves artists like Too $hort and Thievery Corporation can be licensed via the Gamecues interface directly to game publishers and developers.

Apple Corps Gives Rock Band What It Won't Give Apple Inc: The Beatles

Apple Corps, Ltd., Harmonix and MTV Games will release of The Beatles: Rock Band video game worldwide on 9/9.  The release marks the first time that Apple Corp has licensed The Beatles music to a video game. Versions will be available for all three top formats: 360, PlayStation and Wii.

 The Beatles: Rock Band will allow fans to pick up the guitar, bass, mic or drums and interact with music from The Beatles.  In addition new Rock Band modeled will be modeled after the instruments used by the Fab 4.

Tap Tap Revenge Adds 150 Free Songs

Gaming as a music discovery platform gained another important outlet with the release of Tap Tap Revenge 2. This upgrade to the hugely popular free iPhone game now comes with 150 free songs. Included are tracks by Death Cab For Cutie and a pre-release debut by Crystal Method alongside many indie rock newcomers.

Game Over? Music Game Sales Slip

Music Games Down 6% in 2008

Given the dominance of a relatively few games, is this just a blip caused by new release patterns or is the sector saturated and near its peak adoption?  Neither is good news for a music industry just starting to add music via games sales and royalties to its balance sheet.

Music remains the top selling game genre with 16% market share according to the NPD Group.  But 2008 releases of MTV's "Rock Band 2" and "Guitar Hero: World Tour" sold well below 2007 levels by previous editions. Activision's "World Tour" sold 1.5 million units in the US down 55% from "Guitar Hero III" and  "Rock Band 2" sold just 809,000 copies in 2008.  According to Variety, Disney's "Ultimate Band," Konami's "Rock Revolution" and Nintendo's "Wii Music" were all poor sellers.