Emerson Guerrero ,  Staff Writer

Everyone at one time or another has thought about what it would be like to be a full-fledged rock star, performing on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans. While most of us will never get that opportunity, new video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band give wannabe rockers their best chance to live out the dream.

This new kind of video game experience also leads to tremendous changes for the record industry as a whole.  While the industry undergoes huge changes leading into the digital age, single songs are becoming more important than a solid album.

Most people have iTunes now, and it is now easier and cheaper for a person to download one’s favorite singles at 99 cents than to buy the whole album for $10.  In a way, downloading singles is a throwback to the record industry of old when albums were so expensive that people only bought their favorite singles.

When Guitar Hero first came out, it was a unique game that gave players the chance to feel like Jimi  Hendrix or Eric Clapton.  The game sold well, but the soundtrack of mostly classic rock guitar anthems did not see a boost in record sales. Then Guitar Hero II came out and changed everything.

Guitar Hero became a huge seller and the release of Guitar Hero II was a success. All of the sudden, the digital sales of Guitar Hero songs started to increase.

USA Today noticed that Nielsen SoundScan data shows that a random pulling of 12 Guitar Hero II songs shows 11 increased sales.
The study showed that Cheap Tricks’ song, ‘Surrender’ went from 58,000 to 161,000 digital sales, while Kiss’s ‘Strutter’ went from 11,000 to 63,000 almost six times its previous sales.

The record companies started to take notice, and this winter when Guitar Hero III and Rock Band were released, the games soundtrack was made up mostly of original master copies of the songs, not the covers that had made up the previous games.

A young band named DragonForce lent their song ‘Through the Fire and Flames’ to Guitar Hero III and the song’s sales went from 2,000 units per week to 37,825, an almost incomparable jump.

Rock Band offers an entirely new experience, giving players the chance to play as the drummer, bassist and singer, in addition to the guitar. There is nothing better than unleashing a face melting guitar solo while your buddies are holding the bass line and drum beat in rhythm.
Rock Band also gives gamers with online connections the chance to download single songs to add to their song library for $1.99 a song.
Perhaps the best part of popularity for these games isn’t the increased sales, but rather the exposure the game creates for bands who would not regularly draw a younger audience. For a record industry that has been dominated by dumbed-down and simplified songs like Soulja Boy’s ‘Crank That’ and Mims’ ‘This Is Why I’m Hot,’ it is a breath of fresh air to the music industry that music with an emphasis on musicianship is coming back into the spotlight.

Even an established band like Aerosmith took notice of the games’ popularity and is releasing their own version of Guitar Hero, called GH: Aerosmith. The game features all Aerosmith songs and even the likenesses of the actual band members.

With Rock Band Releasing three new downloadable songs per week and soon whole albums at a time (the first of which being The Who’s “Who’s Next” album) and a Guitar Hero IV already in the works, the trend does not seem to have any signs of slowing down.