Report: Guitar Hero Musicians Get $300 Per Song

There's no question that the Guitar Hero franchise is a huge moneymaker for just about everyone involved—everyone, that is, save for the musicians performing the covers, according by a recent report.

A story in Metro Silicon Valley (by way of the busy bloggers at Kotaku) describes the sorry state of affairs for musicians who perform cover tunes in the various Guitar Hero games. According to the (unnamed) sources in the report, the musicians earned a flat fee of about $300 for each of their GH covers, with no residuals based on sales of the hot-ticket game. Pretty sad, considering that Activision stands to rake in more than $500 million in combined Guitar Hero sales this year (according to analysts' predictions).

But we're just talking covers, though, right? And as the MSV story points out, the Guitar Hero cover musicians were often only in the studio for about two to three hours per song. Kotaku goes on to note that the success of the Guitar Hero doesn't rest solely with the cover musicians; quite a bit of programming, graphics, and design work also went into the mix.

All true—but consider that some of the most popular songs around are, in fact, covers, and I'm pretty sure the musicians involved (Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, The Fugees, etc.) get a well-deserved piece of the action. And something tells me that the Guitar Hero games wouldn't be quite as successful if the covers were performed by, say, Ted and His All-Star Kazoo Band. The cover musicians involved in the Guitar Hero series rocked us hard, and they deserve better than a handful of C-notes for their killer chords.

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Sweatshop Silicon Valley [Metro Silicon Valley, by way of Kotaku]