Making Money at Guitar Hero

If you’re a band trying to make it big by touring college campuses (like I LOVE COLLEGE‘s Asher Roth) or just waiting to sign a deal with a label (and finding out with a music royalty calculator that you owe more to the label than they’re paying you), then maybe you need to rethink your game.

Maybe you need to focus your energy on making music for Guitar Hero and not for CDs and MP3 downloads.

Why?  Because that’s where the real money is these days.  Video games and music tie-ins.  Heck, the music-related video games like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and others pulled in US$2.3 billion in three years.The president of Activision, the company behind the Guitar Hero franchise, said at a 2008 analyst meeting, that the game “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith” generated “far more in revenues than any Aerosmith album ever has.  Merchandising, concert sales, their ability to sign a new contact have all been unbelievably influenced by their participation in Guitar Hero.”