Back in the 90s, Bruce Springsteen painted a picture of a world with “57 channels and nothing on.” Today, try 200+ channels of high-definition, surround-sound slices of sex and sizzle pop and political culture in a 24-hour news cycle competing for our collective attention.
Are we receiving?
So much is “on” that in reality, nothing is on.
How do you reach an audience, grab its attention and break through? What does this have to say about the future of communication?
Our teenage children may be showing us the answer lies in the video games they're playing.
Video Games Selling Music
I sincerely love music and listening to it and creating it is a life-long passion. In the 80s, The Buggles ushered in the MTV-era when they reported to the world how Video Killed the Radio Star. Today, it’s video games murdering the old ways of the music business.
Metallica’s new album Death Magnetic is exhibit A. For my money it’s their best work in years. (Full disclosure: I actually liked St. Anger, even though many hard-core Metallica fans didn’t.)
Following in the footsteps of Aerosmith, the new Metallica release is out as a download, a Compact Disc, on vinyl and as a release for ActiVision’s Guitar Hero III video game. (Other notable bands have songs featured on interactive video games. One of the best videos on You Tube is the band Rush playing the Rock Band version of their song Tom Sawyer.)
Why a Video Game?
Just like Willie Sutton, who said he robbed banks because "that’s where the money is," Metallica is putting Death Magnetic out on a video game because that’s where the audience's money is.
According to CBS News, last year, Guitar Hero and its competitor, Rock Band, rang up $935 million in sales – outpacing all digital music sales by $100 million.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project, with sponsorship from the MacArthur Foundation, recently released a 76-page report entitled “Teens, Video Games and Civics” that found:
* 97% of teens ages 12-17 play computer, web, portable, or console games.
* 86% of teens play on a console like the Xbox, PlayStation, or Wii.
* 60% use a portable gaming device like a Sony PlayStation Portable, a Nintendo DS.
* 50% of teens played a game “yesterday.”
* 48% use a cell phone or handheld organizer to play games.
By gender: 99% of boys and 94% of girls play video games.
I’ve seen this with my own eyes. My 13-year-old son is a Guitar Hero Jimi Hendrix. I have watched him during parties captivate his friends with his virtuosity with his fingers dancing across the faux fretboard.
He represents the audience Metallica wants to reach with this release.
Just like I have owned The Beatles "White Album" on 8-track tape, vinyl, cassette, CD and have it on my iPod, releasing music in this format is a novel way to spur even more sales of Death Magnetic. Even more, while providing visually stimulating entertainment, the music may actually sound better, too. This, in itself, should generate increased sales.
Loudness Wars: Up Goes the Volume, Down Goes the Sound Quality
Metallica fans are burning up the Internet saying that, because it has a greater dynamic range – the difference between the loudest and softest sounds – the Guitar Hero version of Death Magnetic sounds better than the CD version.
There’s a comparison on You Tube of the two versions.
To this 44-year-old, it seems that, thanks to the so-called “Loudness Wars” in music, the traditional method of just turning the volume knob up has gone the way of the audio cassette.
Why would the producers and engineers do this to what is possibly Metallica’s best release since the famed Black Album of the 90s? Apparently, when you want your music to stand out on the radio and draw an audience’s attention, louder is better. So up goes the compression and down goes the sound quality.
If you want the best sound quality, you’ve got to get the video game version. I predict the sales of the Guitar Hero version of Death Magnetic will soar and Metallica’s music will rock game rooms worldwide. This is a clear break through.
Death Magnetic Lessons for Communicators
I see a couple of take away lessons of this break through for people who communicate.
Know Your Audience: Metallica smartly understands how its audience listens to the band’s music and will demand to hear it in the highest quality available.
Use Technology Smartly: With the Guitar Hero release of Death Magnetic, Metallica shows the band knows a new generation of budding guitar heroes will strap on their plastic Les Pauls and obsessively to learn each of James Hetfield’s and Kirk Hammett’s stinging new riffs and licks. To get the video game version of the release, they (or their parents) will drop down a few extra dollars for the game download codes. That’s more money for the artists and for the business.
“Shall We Play A Game?” A Glimpse of the Future
In the early 1980s, I went to the theater and was introduced to online interactive computer gaming when I watched the film War Games. I didn’t realize it at the time but in that film, David Lightman (played by Matthew Broderick) gave us a glimpse of today’s online world.
The growth of video games in the entertainment sector, their advanced technology and the prevalence of their use among teens show us how today’s young people are pointing the way to how we are going to communicate tomorrow.
We’d all be wise to pay attention, understand this audience and use the communications vehicles that work.
It's clear, Metallica is listening. Are we?
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