Thursday, April 17, 2008

dastardly and motley


This caught my eye as an interesting nugget of distribution innovation.
Glam metal veterans Motley Crue have regrouped to release their new 'single' - via Xbox's Live platform and Playstation's store - through the game 'Rock Band', the big brother of Friday afternoon office fave 'Guitar Hero'.

According to MTVGames 'Rock Band went on sale last November and now has more than 80 tracks available for download in addition to the 58 tracks in the original game. MTV Games said players have bought more than 6 million downloadable songs for Rock Band.'

Reuters story here.

As well as highlighting the potential of video games as a get out of jail card for the ailing music industry, this is a good example of getting the product where the audience is at.

Apparently during the Crue's heyday in the mid-80s, they were once holed up in a Hollywood hotel on tour - lounging by the pool surrounded by semi-naked bimbos and generally having it large on the JD and narcotics. Word arrived that drug legend Ozzy Osborne had checked into the hotel - much to the excitement of apprentice hellraisers, the Crue.

Ozzy staggered out to the pool, bent down to where a glass of something had been spilled and proceeded to snort a 'line' of ants that had gathered around the spilled beverage.

Motley Crue split up shortly afterwards, no doubt realising they could never reach the dizzy heights of rock'n'roll excess as demonstrated by the true master.

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