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2009 has seen the rise of streaming services Spotify and Pandora (and the fall of several of their rivals); governments grappling with anti-piracy legislation; The Pirate Bay trial – and then its tragicomic sale saga; and hundreds of bright-eyed music start-ups and thousands of iPhone apps. And STILL no Yellow Submarine iPod.
We rounded up the key trends from the year for our final Music Ally Report of 2009, and the article is republished below in full. If you’re interested in our service in 2010, with its daily bulletin and fortnightly analytical report, click here for a free trial.
The sharp decline in music game sales continues: new stats from analyst Wedbush Morgan claim that Activision made $55 million from its music franchises DJ Hero, Guitar Hero and Band Hero in November – down 65% year-on-year.
Meanwhile, it claims Rock Band sales were $31 million that month – down 59% from November 2008.
“Sales of music genre games have suffered mightily in 2009, with sales through November totalling $620 million, compared to $1.19 billion in the same period a year ago,” says analyst Michael Pachter. “The $570 million decline in year-over-year music sales is responsible for two thirds of the overall decline in software sales thus far in 2009.”
There’ll be a bump in December as people buy games as presents – with retailers already discounting the Beatles and DJ Hero titles. Meanwhile, GamesIndustry.biz quotes Microsoft’s David Dennis as saying downloadable content for music games continues to sell well.
Were The Beatles worth the huge advance paid by MTV and Harmonix for the rights to make The Beatles: Rock Band? It’s looking likely.
The game sold 595,000 copies in September according to NPD Group – a figure that includes hardware+game and game-only bundles. NPD and analyst Wedbush Morgan now say the average selling price was $100.
That means $59-$60 million of revenues in September alone – 9% of all games revenue that month.
In other marvellous music game news, two companies – Altec Lansing and Polk Audio – have launched dedicated stage monitors for use with console music games. We just hope they go up to 11…
But crikey, check the skills of the guy playing it. No, it’s not Eddie Van Halen with plastic axe in hand – it’s a guy called Danny “GuitarHeroPhenom” Johnson according to Kotaku. The nickname is clearly well-earned.
And not just those games either – ANY console games that allow players to buy music downloads. The UK’s Official Charts Company says it wants to include these sales in its Official Download Chart alongside sales from more traditional digital retailers.
The OCC says it’s in discussions with game publishers and record labels to make this happen by the end of the year. “The information we have to date suggests that the incredibly successful Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises can generate significant volume of master recording downloads that we would like to capture within our weekly survey,” says OCC chart director Omar Maskatiya.
In-game downloads are becoming a standard feature of console music games: besides Rock Band and Guitar Hero’s latest incarnations, there’s Sony’s SingStar for PS3. If the move goes through, it will be interesting to see if it gives rock songs a leg up the charts.
Hats (or hi-hats) off to Lars Ulrich out of Metallica – despite being surrounded by reps from his label WMG at a recent press event, he was happy to talk about the band’s plans to possibly go it alone now its deal with the label has expired.
“Let’s cut to the chase: The primary – not the only, but the primary – function of a record label is to act as a bank. When you’re fortunate enough to be successful and so on, you don’t need to rely on record companies as the banks… We’re doing a bunch of shows with Trent [Reznor - of Nine Inch Nails] this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what’s on his radar.”
Reznor, of course, has been trying tactics like giving away his album on BitTorrent – and even setting up his own torrent tracker. We suspect Metallica would draw the line at this, but whatever you think of the band’s previous attitudes towards file-sharing, taking tips from NIN on how to evolve in the digital era is a positive move.
Well, unless you’re WMG of course. Meanwhile, Ulrich is also excited about the Guitar Hero: Metallica game that’s coming out. “I really believe that if we sit here five years from now or ten years… it’ll be a fairly standard way of releasing music.”
Google is opening up its Android Market application store for paid apps this week, and one of the first to take advantage is Guitar Hero. The game is being released for Android handsets with 15 songs to play along to, plus a bonus song to download every month. Puzzlingly, operator T-Mobile is referring to the game as an “exclusive”, although versions of Guitar Hero have been out for Java phones for some time.
Good news: console music game Rock Band 2 sold 809,000 copies last year in the US, while Guitar Hero: World Tour sold 1.5 million copies there.
Bad news: both games sold less than their predecessors, with the latter selling 55% less copies than Guitar Hero III. Meanwhile, NPD Group says that music games saw a 6% drop in revenues in 2008. Have music games lost their lustre?
Clearly it’s early days: 2009 will see a new focus on spin-offs to both these franchises, including a Metallica-themed Guitar Hero in March, and the Beatles game from Rock Band developer Harmonix, due out by Christmas.
Good news for Springsteen fans. Not only is he doing the Superbowl half-time show AND is hotly tipped to be headlining the Glastonbury Festival next year, but he’s making two tracks available for free on the Guitar Hero World Tour console game.
Due to be made available for download in late January and early February next year, the two tracks are My Lucky Day (off his new album) and Born To Run (not off his new album). It’s interesting that they’ll be free downloads – it seems some labels are coming round to the idea of these music games being promotional vehicles, rather than purely ways to generate new download revenues.
In more downloadable content (DLC) for music games news, it seems a Roy Orbison track pack is heading to Rock Band early next year too, continuing that game’s diversification beyond, well, rock bands.
Hats (or hi-hats) off to Lars Ulrich out of Metallica – despite being surrounded by reps from his label WMG at a recent press event, he was 
