Viacom CEO: We Need To Pay Less For Music in Video Games
During the company’s 4th quarter earnings call last week, Viacom’s president and CEO Philippe Dauman made it clear the company is intends to cut music costs for its video games division:
As we go forward, we are continuing to focus more on software than hardware, looking to reduce the cost structure associated with Rock Band, being selective in the music titles that we choose for Rock Band based on their cost. The music industry will assist with this category to make sure that it can continue on a profitable basis in the future and then finally we think we have the best games in the category, we’ll continue to rollout exciting products.
While Dauman’s comments referred specifically to the Rock Band series, some industry analysts expect Viacom’s actions to impact licensed music for video games including license fees paid for songs and potentially composer fees for scores for games.
Comments
By John Scuderi on February 19th, 2010 at 8:12 am
Why should the music industry kowtow to Rock Band. The music lives on;
Rock Band will be outdated in a few years, if not sooner. Why would you
cheapen your music for yesterday’s software. Typical French snottiness.
By Esol Esek on February 22nd, 2010 at 12:28 pm
WE need to pay CEOs A LOT less money. Maybe then they will shut up and crawl back in the selfish hole they crawled out of. Delist corporations, break up every corporation above a set money level. Throw unempathetic jerks like this out on the street.