Game music most influential

EA bigwig Steve Schnur reckons music in games influences youngsters more than other media, like radio, GamesIndustry.biz reports. That's probably because they spend all their time talking and cut records off before they're finished.

Schnur addressed the topic in his keynote speech at the Games Convention Conference in Asia, where he pulled Franz Ferdinand and Avril Lavigne out of his hat as examples of musicians first discovered in videogames.

He believes titles like Need for Speed can boast track repetition nearly twice every hour, which racks up to about one billion earfuls worldwide in the game's lifetime. Shiny.

"A recent poll of core gamers between the ages of 13 to 32 revealed that 55 per cent, and that's growing, learned about their new favourite artist, or new favourite band, or new favourite song – they learned about it from a videogame. That's Europe, Asia, US."

"Even more impressive for a record industry that's having its own problems – over one third of those that discover a song in a game download that song, and over 20 per cent purchase that artist's CD."

The speech soon moved onto EA's new music company Artwerk, which has signed four artists in the nine months since launch. These include Junkie XL, whose work will feature heavily in Need for Speed ProStreet, and Jupiter One, based in New York.

But it isn't only in EA games these artists will be exposed. Australian band Airbourne will blaring out in Grand Theft Auto IV and Tony Hawk's Proving Ground.

Schnur went on to muse about the future, and the infusion of all types of media on future consoles.

"But what will the PS4, Xbox 5000 and iPhone 2 bring? All these future devices will be complete home and mobile entertainment supercomputers that represent technology beyond anything we've ever experienced."

Supercomputers. Yes, of course they will be.

"Imagine a world where 80 per cent of the global population is instantaneously exposed to music via videogames, with the power to purchase literally at their fingertips."

EA Music Store announcement? No, wait. We'll be quiet.

"Perhaps for the first time ever, global culture can finally be truly global. Perhaps for the first time ever, music can change the world."

Didn't it do that in the 60s or something?