Warner Music Wants "Guitar Hero," "Rock Band" to Pay Higher Licensing Fees

While CD sales have plunged, music video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have been massively successful — so now record companies want a bigger piece of the gaming pie. Warner Music Group has begun demanding the makers of music-based video games pay more for song licenses. The company's chief executive, Edgar Bronfman, compared the clout of Guitar Hero and Rock Band to MTV and the iPod, saying, "The amount being paid to the music industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content we own and control, is far too small."

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

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