Can Guitar Hero Help Save The Music Industry
A great Freakonomics blog entry at the New York Times regarding how Rock Band, Guitar Hero and soon to be other are changing the music business. From the post:
Weezer’s “My Name is Jonas,” a song originally released in 1994, saw a tenfold increase in sales when included in Guitar Hero 3. More interestingly, a special version of Guitar Hero focused entirely on Aerosmith’s music resulted in more revenue for the band than any individual Aerosmith album.
“I contacted MTV Networks and they were kind enough to share several interesting statistics. For example, Motley Crüe’s single “Saints of Los Angeles” premiered in the Rock Band Music Store day and date with its single release, and it sold more than five times as many units there as it did on iTunes in its first week.
Back in July, twelve of the The Who’s greatest hits were released for Rock Band, and in two weeks, fans purchased over 715,000 tracks. During the same two-week period, all twelve tracks experienced a 159 percent increase in SoundScan sales. (SoundScan measures physical CD sales, as well as digital music sales.)
And in August, Buckcherry’s new single “Rescue Me” was made available in Rock Band prior to the group’s new album release. The success of the download is credited with helping the new album Black Butterfly to debut at number eight on the Billboard Top 200.”
