Video Games Are Launching Rock-n-Roll Careers 171
jillduffy writes "Steve Schnur, a high-level music exec at Electronic Arts, talks about how video games are launching the careers of top musical artists these days. Some of his examples: 'Avril Lavigne was first introduced to European audiences through FIFA 2003. Fabolous was first introduced in America via NBA Live, and went on to sell over 2 million albums here. JET got their American iPod commercial based on exposure in Madden 2004. Avenged Sevenfold were an unsigned act when we featured them in Madden 2004...' Schnur explains how the phenomenon is made possible by the new generation of media junkies, who feel a song becomes real when they 'play it.'"
WHAT??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Somebody better tell them quick, surely this means the end of their business model?
http://www.riaaradar.com/ [riaaradar.com] is a place to look for other artists that are not associated with the RIAA if you are interested.
Spokesmodel (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice how none of this crap stays in anyone's playlists or even radio stations a few years after it's new? Because it doesn't speak to, or for, anything real. It speaks to some manufactured hype of the moment. Which is all it can, because the artists are commercial artists.
That's not "rock & roll". That's corporate rock. The same manufactured pop that real rock & roll, from real people, chased from the charts back when it was real.
Re:I agree (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:They already had their break (Score:3, Insightful)
Or to being a multi charting Australian Top 10 act?
Sorry, Occam's Razor ain't on the EA games' side, on that one.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
For starters, there's the absolutely massive "indie" community that fosters a fantastic amount of great music.
If you prefer ambient/electronic music with few or no words, quite a lot of artists have cropped up in this genre thanks to the magic of file-sharing and the internet, given the genre's relatively specific audience, and the difficulty for such bands to effectively promote themselves.
There are a whole slew of artists in this genre worth checking out: 65daysofstatic, Mogwai, Sigur Rós, Four Tet, Explosions in the Sky, The Books, Battles, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, and a thousand others that I've either forgotten or never heard of.
No matter how obscure you might think your musical tastes are, chances are good that there are many, many others like you. Don't be confined by video game soundtracks!
That all said, I've never been all *that* impressed by a video game soundtrack, with the very notable exception of the Final Fantasy series.
Re:They already had their break (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate people that say stuff like that. Liking pop music isn't a bad thing, nor is liking or disliking *any* kind of music. Take your tinfoil hat off and listen to what you want, but don't get all high and mighty about it. It's exactly the same way with religion.
Re:They already had their break (Score:5, Insightful)
Then Guitar Mania came along, with the same weak-ass euro-J-dance and even weaker Bon Jovi tracks
To most people, Rock Band is the true sequel to Guitar Hero 2. GH3 is okay, and has a decent track list, but it is inevitably inferior than the first two, simply because its creators are obviously not music lovers of the same caliber.
Re:They already had their break (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you heard her Chop Suey live cover? There are no words to describe how terrible it is...
It's not the music but the experience (Score:5, Insightful)
More to the point though, I am also attached to whatever music I put on while I was playing. Whenever I hear some songs, it instantly takes me back to playing that game. The same goes for pop songs today. If you put the song in an engrossing atmosphere, people get attached. It's no different than hearing the "NHL Tonight" theme and thinking hockey, or hearing "Zombie Nation" and thinking college hoops.
I'm not surprised that people like the songs, and then seek the artist. Any exposure to the music in these environments is good for the artist.
Re:Spokesmodel (Score:5, Insightful)
The Beatles were pop, same as Britney Spears is pop. Don't hate pop music just "because", there is quality in the genre.
Re:Spokesmodel (Score:3, Insightful)
Videogames aren't responsible for shit music. It's the music industry that's found a great vehicle for its shit music in videogames.
Avril Lavigne .. sk8er boi (Score:3, Insightful)
That may be true, but in the UK at least I'd have thought it was not through Complicated but through her second top 10 UK single (charting at number 8, 5 Jan 2003) "sk8er boi" from December 2002 that she was widely aired.
Who even knew she sang on Fifa 2003? Fifa 2003 was apparently released in UK in Oct 2002, some reports say November - which means it would have targetted the christmas market
So I'm guessing that this is far more correlation than cause.
Whatever.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2629761.stm/ [bbc.co.uk]
Re:They already had their break (Score:1, Insightful)
BLARGA BLABBA BLIBBA BLOOGA BLICKUP!
BOOBLE BABBLE BOGGLE BARBLE BLUCKUP!
FLIBBLE FLABBLE FLARBLE FLOOBLE FUCKUP!
GLIBBLE GLABBLE GLOOBLE GLOBBLE SHITFUCK!
Look, April Levine is jizz in a sock, but don't try to make your case by talking about how she butchered a song by the Arrhythmic Gypsy Pickpockets or what the fuck ever that band is called. If they weren't goat-bearded Roma wank-rockers nobody would give a flying fuck what they did or who covered it. That shit is positively unlistenable unless you're a trust-fund college anarchist majoring in "The Suppression of the Vagina in Modern Theocracy" or some equally Dworkin-esque horseshit category. I'd rather have an iPod with "Sk8r Boi" on infinite loop permanently wired into my brainpan than have to listen to that overblown circle-jerk of a song even once more.
Re:Turning it around (Score:3, Insightful)
So I don't know what this story is really about.