Warner Music Group, the world's third largest music company, believes rhythm game creators should be paying more for the use of Warner's tracks, reports Reuters.
"The amount being paid to the music industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content we own and control, is far too small," said Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman.
Aside from this statement, Warner Group has made no public, official moves to pull down more cash from rhythm game manufacturers via the licensing of their tracks.
Bronfman's gripe sounds awfully familiar to the complaints from the same industry when digitally downloadable music rapidly became the norm.
Though the MP3 explosion was driven primarily by people's desire for free, high quality music, the music industry almost entirely denied the potential of the advertising benefits these MP3 downloads provided them, in favor of suing everyone they could muster the slightest evidence against.
In doing so they earned nothing but the ire of their most die-hard supporters: the fans.
I'd like to think the CEOs of these music firms could see the advertising potential inherent in games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, but after the last few years (and a few thousand lawsuits filed by the music industry toward MP3 downloaders) I can only imagine they're going to try to extort as much cash from Activision and Electronic Arts as possible.
Image courtesy Harmonix
Warner Music says music video games must pay more [Reuters]Warner Music: We Deserve More Cash From Rhythm Games | Game | Life from Wired.com
