The options for making money from recorded music have expanded greatly during its 100-year history. But while early music moguls would have readily understood the opportunity offered by movies and advertising, surely none foresaw a time when music would make a virtual car heist more exciting, or bring World War II to life via a shoe-boxsized games console.

Today, licensing music rights to games publishers is big business. With the best selling titles shifting millions of copies around the world, games represent a new, distinct and
growing outlet for music.

Indeed, some forward-thinking music publishers have even looked to promote new artists by working more closely with games developers, similar to how commercial advertising has previously shone a light on new or neglected musicians from Marvin Gaye to Moby.

Music to make games go by
Music in games has developed out of all recognition from the simple bleeps and beeps of the earliest arcade machines. As the games hardware has become more capable, developers have alighted on commercially available recordings by well-known artists to help add atmosphere, kudos and value to their creations.

Additionally, games developers now commission cinematic-style soundtracks from well-known composers, with full orchestral scores. Hollywood giant Danny Elfman composed the title music for Microsoft’s 2004 adventure game Fable, for example, while Electronic Arts’ Medal Of Honor series features specially commissioned orchestral music by Michael Giacchino, the composer of the award-winning soundtrack for the TV show Lost.

The latest trend is for the music itself to be the game, and not in any passive sense. Witness Sony’s SingStar series, which has brought karaoke to PlayStation-equipped living rooms with over a dozen titles in just four years. Or consider the extraordinary success of Activision’s Guitar Hero, where gamers can act out their fantasies of joining their favourite band on-stage by literally plugging in and playing along to their greatest hits.

Most interestingly from a music industry perspective, Guitar Hero has generated over two million song downloads in the last seven months. Activision claims 55 per cent of gamers between 13 and 32 first learn about a musical act through a video game, and 33 per cent of these will then download that artist’s recordings.

Crossover potential
The next instalment of Guitar Hero will be branded Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Dedicated to the veteran rockers’ back
catalogue, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith will complete the circle by putting what is essentially an interactive album on the shelves of games stores, to lucrative effect for both the rights holders of and the game’s publisher.

It’s a two-way street: game music sales are starting to bring in much needed additional revenue key to offsetting the high development costs of the games themselves. Record labels are releasing spin-off soundtracks of music featured in computer games, with Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series having given rise to seven albums.

There is plenty more innovation to come. For instance, Grand Theft Auto’s original creator, the Scottish game developer David Jones, has announced a deal with the music website Last.Fm to enable players to customise their own soundtracks for his next video game, bringing online music distribution into the equation.

The legal, commercial and artistic boundaries between games and recorded music are becoming more blurred, with copyright one obvious area that now requires extra care. Without contracts properly protecting their rights, recording artists and music publishers might not just be giving up income today, but also potentially vital new revenue streams of the future.
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