The reason is simple: stand-alone video game soundtracks have not proved particularly successful. "I couldn't have gotten those tracks out to people on that magnitude."Įlectronic Arts has no plans to pursue soundtrack albums. Sciacca, who will make his major label debut on Hollywood Records. did for me is something I couldn't have done on my own," said Mr. When the remixer Zach Sciacca, known as DJ Z-Trip, was told that two of his songs would be on the Madden soundtrack, he was so elated that he got down on one knee, clasped his hands together and thanked Mr. Schnur started EA Trax, an internal licensing venture that gave him a platform for selling record companies on the hard-to-reach demographic of young men - the core of Electronic Arts' audience.Īrtists soon discovered the benefits of having a song picked for a game. Electronic Arts tested the idea, and the feedback from gamers and the record labels was positive.Īt the end of 2002, Mr. Schnur, who began his career as an intern at MTV.
"My pitch was that an entire generation was raised with that expectation" of MTV-style credits, said Mr. Producers at Electronic Arts saw the music credits as a waste of screen space, and preferred to leave the liner notes where they had always been: at the back of a game's instruction booklet. Schnur joined the company in 2002, he had to persuade his colleagues to include on-screen graphics that would show a band's name and label affiliation at the start of each song in a game, much as music video channels do. It's not viewed by the user as someone programming to them."Īt Electronic Arts, however, the value of in-game music was not always appreciated. Lee Stimmel, senior vice president of marketing for Epic Records at Sony BMG Music Entertainment, added: "Music in a game like Madden is just like a new game feature - it's not seen as an advertising feature. Gamers "feel in some ways that they are discovering these artists and helping to push them out into the public." "It's becoming in many ways what radio had been during our era," said Michael Dowling, general manager of Nielsen Interactive. Instead, they are learning about new artists through the Internet, films, television and video games. Schnur.īut what ultimately brought Cherry Lane and Electronic Arts together is an awareness that many listeners are no longer discovering music via radio or even MTV. "A few of these happen and you start to think maybe there's something there," said Mr. Soon after, MTV sought the rights to a track that the rap musician Just Blaze wrote for the game NBA Live. The cost of placing a song on a video game starts at around $5,000, according to recording industry executives, but a hit by a top artist could fetch three times that. "We didn't know what to charge," said Mr.
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Schnur with a request to include the orchestral theme from Electronic Arts' Medal of Honor series in the trailer for the movie "Seabiscuit." The idea to reach beyond licensing the music composed for Electronic Arts' games was formulated in 2003 after Universal Pictures approached Mr. "This move won't move the stock the first day," said Mr. While the Cherry Lane partnership is expected to give Electronic Arts more influence within the recording industry, it does not yet represent a major source of revenue. That awareness also drives sales, she said. "The way that music is integrated into games, when it is done well, it does help build awareness for artists," says Courtney Holt, head of new media and strategic marketing at Interscope Geffen A&M, part of the Universal Music Group. Meanwhile, game play is on the increase, rising 26 percent a year for the last five years among men between the ages of 18 and 34, according to Nielsen Interactive Entertainment.Īs a result, video games have become an important avenue for the marketing of both emerging and established artists. Bedeviled by file sharing and claims of overpricing its products, the record industry suffered through three consecutive years of sales declines before finally stemming the losses this year. The contrasting fortunes of the record business and the video game industry explain the change in attitudes. Schnur 2,500 songs for his consideration. But this year, when he was creating the 21-song lineup for Madden NFL 2005, one of Electronic Arts' most popular titles, the labels sent Mr.
Schnur and other video game executives had to cajole record labels into licensing songs for video games.