Only the ones that need to separate out the individual instruments like Guitar Hero. All of the dance-pad games just use existing music because they don’t need to split out the instruments.
It’s the same thing as when they use popular songs in movie soundtracks. There is a licensing deal that gets struck between the publisher of the game/movie and the publisher of the song. Whether it’s a cover of the song or whether it’s the original song depends on the situation and the deal, I’m sure.
I don’t know the details of these deals… In some cases, the songs seem to be getting “advertised” within the game/movie , being given special attention, as if somehow the game/movie were being viewed as a platform with which to drive up album sales for the artist. In those cases, it wouldn’t surprise me if the deals weren’t a simple case of the game/movie studio licensing the song; perhaps the record company discounts or even kickbacks to the game/movie studio in exchange for this “free” advertising. I’m just speculating out loud, really, though. It would be interesting to know more about it. It would also be interesting to know whether or not this sort of thing happened for Guitar Hero as well.
So here’s an interesting tidbit I just read in “Game Informer” magazine. For the next sequel to Guitar hero (“Rock Band”), they’re going after as many original master tracks as they can. The article listed four confirmed songs where they have the original master tracks already, and the one that surprised me was The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. That’s a pretty darn old one… and it’s so classic that I’m sure there was a lot of concern over the amount of care taken with those tapes. I’d love to learn about the engineering that went into that.
The article also mentioned that if all the players stop playing (it’s a multiplayer game with guitar, vocals, and drums) then all of the backing tracks stop, and there is silence.
Yes, they would. The tape then becomes a submaster and it’s quality can be superb.
I used to work for a man who had the worlds largest private collection of studio submasters. He used them in pre-CD days to make music tapes for radio stations. When CDs came out he started to burn custom CDs using those submasters. The quality was, in a word, astounding.
He was a perfectionist. He had the studios precede each song with a 1,000 cycle tone, a 10,000 cycle tone, and a 50 cycle tone. Using these tones, and an oscilloscope, he could tweak his reel-to-reel playback deck to be exactly in sync with the recording deck, for the most incredible sound and stereo separation I’ve ever heard.
This is a very minor nitpick aimed more at someone who may be ignorant like I was, rather than at tfabris, who probably already knows what I’m about to say.
The next sequel to Guitar Hero is actually Guitar Hero III, which is a different game from Rock Band and should be released prior to Rock Band. Guitar Hero III is also still slated to be playable on the PS2, which will not be the case with Rock Band.
But DDR doesn’t use the original songs, at least not for popular American music. They use remixed music, and often rerecorded by other artists. Part of that is that they want a really strong beat in the songs, but I bet a lot has to do with rights. Certainly the DDR game I have doesn’t have Britney Spears or Ricky Martin or Christina Aguilera singing any of the songs they made famous in the game.
And you can’t just get the mechanicals and start including the original performances any more than I could make copies of the White Album by paying $0.07/track (or whatever) to ASCAP. All the mechanical rights grant me is the right to sell cds of me singing the songs, or of cover bands covering them for a video game.
I’m not sure I buy your other points that it’s technically easier to rerecord than it is to use (sub)masters that have the tracks split out, either. It’s legally and financially easier, but as long as you’re given the music with the instruments broken out in separate tracks, applying the kind of filters Guitar Hero uses is fairly trivial.
Good point. There are actuallly three upcoming games that I was getting mixed up with each other. The “80’s-themed” sequel (whatever that’s called), Guitar Hero 3, and Rock Band. In all of those cases, they’re expanding the list of songs that are made from the original artist’s multi-track masters; I find this both admirable and scary.
I like thinking that some of the artists and record companies might be warming up to the idea that having their songs appear in the Guitar Hero games is excellent advertising. I haven’t yet bought albums based on hearing new songs via Guitar Hero, but there are a couple on my wish list right now.
“Rock Band” is aiming to be far more than a game - the developers want it to become a new format for distribution of music. They see Rock Band as not just a game, but as a way to experience music interactively. Their vision of the world is that when new music comes out, it will be available on CD, on iTunes or other download service, and in Rock Band format.
To this end, they are working not just with original songs, but with new remasters of those songs in high resolution, multi-channel sound. And rather than just pick individual songs from an artist’s catalog, they want the entire catalog to be available, and they are working deals with music labels to make that happen. For instance, the entire CD of the Who’s “Who’s Next”, with the original songs remastered for Rock Band, will be available at launch as downloadable content. Metallica is apparently making their entire back catalog available. And Harmonix says that there will be new content available for Rock Band every week - just as CDs are released on Tuesdays of each week, there will be Rock Band songs or CDs released.
When Guitar Hero first came out, no one expected it to be the hit that it was. So it was hard to get the performance rights for songs, and the publisher of the game was unwilling to pay the extremely high fees for those songs. That’s why almost everything was a cover. But now that Guitar Hero has sold in the millions, the record labels are waking up and seeing the vast revenue potential. And with downloadable content, no huge up-front license fees need be paid - the publisher can instead set up a royalty schedule.
This is the kind of thing that might just save the music industry. Value-added music. I could see Rock Band format albums eventually coming with custom animations of the band, added content in the form of interviews with the band, training lessons, etc. Hell, it could even wind up being the new distribution vehicle for Rock videos. Download the song, and even if you don’t feel like playing you can sit back and listen to the music in high-resoution multi-channel glory while watching custom animations of the band. I imagine someone like Beck could have a ball with that.
I’m more excited about Rock Band than any other game released, ever.
