Move Over iTunes...

I've written a few posts about this new genre of music based video games and how they represent a whole new ballgame for the music industry.  Not that I don't think you trust my madness implicitly, but it never hurts to toss a little sugar of actual fact onto the Stub musings pie =)

A few months back, the band Motley Crue debuted a brand new single, Saints of Los Angeles, on Rock Band.  The move in and of itself was interesting, as this was the first time a new song was being released directly to a Guitar Hero/ Rock Band game without being released through traditional music channels first.  But interesting doesnt pay the bills, so show me the money baby!

As it turns out, Rock Band did just that.  Queue up the Wired.com quote:
"The title track off the band's upcoming album "Saints of Los Angeles" has reportedly sold over 47,000 copies at through just the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band, and around 10,000 copies through traditional music download services like iTunes and Amazon."

The full physical cd will not be released until June 24th, so I have no idea how these numbers will compare to hard copy sales.  Nor do I know how many copies of Saints of Los Angeles were sold to the PS3 version of Rock Band.  But a nearly 5:1 margin of Xbox to other forms of digital media distribution is a pretty wide margin.  I don't even like Motley Crue, and I bought the song - and you can bet I'm not the only one. 

A few quick points:

• I should probably offer a disclaimer that inevitably, Rock Band tracks suffer from a small pond syndrome.  Though the game has been incredibly at constantly adding new content, there are only so many songs you have access too.  Thus depending on how amped you are for new or diverse content, you are far more likely to snag a song you only marginally like in Rock Band as compared to something like iTunes.  Beggers can't be choosers, and that makes Rock Band a very desirable place for artists to release Music too - especially if they are trying to reach a new audience. 
  
• You can bet the Music Industry as a whole is very interested in Motley Crue's success. Another interesting quote from the article: "If our audience tells us they're sitting at Xbox and PlayStation, that's our job to do that."
• If games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero do indeed become a primary means of music distribution, it re-energizes an I idea I posted about a while ago - how cool would it be to be able to download a playable song and also get a usable mp3?  There are a lot of problems with that, but it doesnt hurt to think big.

Rumors have long since been going that other mainstream artists, such as Metallica, have reserved the rights to release new singles directly to games like Rock Band.  Whether they will or not remains to be seen.  But after the success of Motley Crue, I'm going to say all signs point to yes.