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

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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