Why gaming is saving the record industry
By John Lister
Between illegal filesharing and the realization that the likes of Apple and Amazon hold immense strength in the download age, it’s understandable if record label bosses aren’t too welcoming of modern technology. But now it’s becoming clearer that one form of modern entertainment is doing far more good than harm to the music industry.
There’s been plenty of anecdotal evidence that games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band have prompted players to buy music featuring the artists whose songs appear in the band. Now there are even more hard figures to prove it.
The Associated Press has looked at legal download figures for a series of songs, comparing sales in the last week of December 2007 with the same period the previous year. That’s significant because all the songs featured in games released in October and November 2007.
As all the tracks are far from new releases (the newest is from 1993), there shouldn’t be any other significant factors which affect their sales, and the method of comparison means seasonal factors shouldn’t affect the visitors. Logically there would be a slight rise in sales year on year simply because the download market is growing.
But the Associated Press figures show the average track tripled in sales thanks to the inclusion in the game. The biggest gain was Cherub Rock by the Smashing Pumpkins, which rose from around 700 downloads to 6,600.
That’s likely to be reassuring news to bands featured in the games: for example, a special Aerosmith edition of Guitar Hero reportedly sold three times as many copies in its first week as the band’s last studio album did in its release week.
The boost in record sales may also cheer up record labels, which have a lot to lose if customers buy games rather than records. The cut a record company gets from a game is much lower than from a record, mainly because games companies only need a limited number of songs and can thus drive a harder bargain.
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Stumble It!
December 24th, 2008
Here’s what’s really worng –
“According to a new study, of the 13m songs available for sale on the internet last year, more than 10m failed to find a single buyer.
The research, conducted by the MCPS-PRS’s Will Page and Andrew Bud, brings us that much closer to proving Sturgeon’s Law – that 90% of everything is crap. It also provides evidence for the famous old rock critic adage – your favourite band sucks.
More importantly, these findings challenge the “long tail” theory that diverse, specialised items – though individually less popular – will together outsell mainstream “hits”.
Page is the chief economist at the MCPS-PRS Alliance, a not-for-profit royalty collection agency. According to his and Bud’s research, 80% of all revenue came from about 52,000 tracks – the “hits” that powered the music industry. Broken down by album, only 173,000 of the 1.23m available albums were ever purchased – leaving 85% without a single copy sold.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/23/music-sell-sales