Band’s need to be pushing to get all of their music on the game systems in both Rock Band and Guitar Hero format. How do I yell this any louder. There aren’t enough licensed music games in the pipeline!

Yeah, every Tuesday we get treated to a few new songs. Any idea how many years it will take to get a decent sized music library at this rate of publishing? According to the Zune our family has over 690 albums and 5,555 songs. On Rock Band we have purchased probably 80% of all the music released to date (I didn’t do an exact count) and maybe, maybe we have a couple hundred songs.

Not enough.

We’ve bought several albums because we played the music on these games, so it does translate into CD and/or digital music sales. I see a day in the future when we’ll see bands come out with new albums in Guitar Hero and Rock Band format (or rather some unified format(?) or wishful thinking?) the same day they sell their album in stores. This remains a huge opportunity that at least at the moment isn’t plagued by piracy.

As soon as anybody can make their own music game files, expect to see cover music coming from sources that aren’t the official artists and once again the artists will be left without a cut of the pie. Where today the blame is on P2P, tomorrow it will be on cover music on game systems.

One way to help curb this would be to simply get as much authorized music game files into the system as fast as possible and allow an easy publishing system for artists to be able to make their music available for sale and direct profit. More artists will get on board if there is an easy publishing system. Something like Amazon is doing with the Kindle for writers to publish and get paid.

There is always going to be music piracy, no matter what format. No way to eliminate it. Best thing artists can do is to embrace what new forms of publishing are out there and keep making great music. Heck, Guns N Roses white elephant album Chinese Democracy had tracks released before they have published it yet (when are you going to publish this anyway, Axl? In this decade. Maybe? Hopefully.)

On the Xbox 360 side I’d say XNA, but that isn’t really non-programmer friendly. Most artists aren’t programmers. They need a system, perhaps some kind of pro tools plugin that will let them export in a format and publish their music for sale to the masses. Not many artists are going to have the technical skill, time and/or patience to sit down and spend hours or days coding a single song. If some other party steps in for a small cut of the sales pie, they might be willing to go that route for the technical heavy work.

Before you laugh off this idea, think about how many different avenues there are for bands to be heard? The pool of music in the music games genre is still pretty small. Giving indie and pro artists the publish directly — keyword: easily — would be a huge win for everybody.

To date there have been only *3* full albums available on Rock Band (and zero albums are available on Guitar Hero yet): Judas Priest Screaming For Vengeance, The Cars debut album and most recently The Pixies. We bought the first two and skipped the third. With millions and millions of song and who knows how many hundreds of thousands (or million plus?) albums are in existence, you’d expect the music business to latch on and sell, sell, sell.

How many total albums will be available by the end of the year? Any guesses? I think it will be less than a dozen, which is a shame. Next year though if sales are strong, we could see this continue to blow up and the number albums available get into the hundreds. How cool is it being able to play along with your favorite songs? Fake music games are here to stay, bet on it.

And when will we start seeing some REAL music games? I remember a story about a game like Guitar Hero where you played on a real guitar called Guitar Rising (will be released in “late 2008″ according to the website). Learn how to play along with songs using real instruments. The music industry needs to change. Reading tab or traditional music notation is boring. Games could put the fun back into practice and could unleash the next Eddie Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix plugged into a PC or console system. Why not?

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