"Rock Band," "Guitar Hero" drive digital song sales
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DENVER (Billboard) - In the two months since MTV Networks  and Harmonix released the music-based videogame "Rock Band,"  players have purchased and downloaded more than 2.5 million  additional songs made available after the game's initial  distribution. Activision, meanwhile, said it has sold more than  5 million new songs via download for "Guitar Hero III: Legends  of Rock" since it began adding downloadable content in early  November.
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By one measure of its success,  chart-topping rock band The Darkness has sold enough song  downloads, T-shirts and thongs on its official Web site  http://www.TheDarknessRock.com to nearly finance the group's  next recording.
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MacCentral - RealNetworks Inc. said on Tuesday that it has sold more than a million songs at its online music store since slashing prices last week as part of a limited-time sale aimed at growing the user base of its new digital media software.
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The market for digital music on the Internet and mobile phones boomed in 2004, according to a report released Wednesday that showed the global recording industry collecting significant revenues from the segment for the first time.
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Activision Inc  is set to  launch "Guitar Hero 3" amid expectations that the latest  installment of its music-themed franchise will be a platinum  hit for the second-biggest U.S. video game publisher.
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Activision Inc. said  on Thursday it had sold more than 300,000 downloadable song  packs for its hit &quot;Guitar Hero II&quot; music game, giving it  confidence it will not have to lower prices despite outrage at  the cost among some game fans.
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Buying digital music can be confusing. On one hand, you have an alphabet soup of acronyms, all referring to varying formats. On the other hand, you have a slew of online retailers, each furiously competing for your hard-earned music dollar. And in the middle, you have an avalanche of players, each of which offer different features and work with different formats.
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The game is the highly anticipated encore to one of the year's breakout successes, "Guitar Hero 2," which sold 3.9 million copies through September.
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Sales of MP3 players are rocketing, fuelled by falling unit prices, integration of MP3 support into a wider range of devices and the creation of legal music download websites.
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Apple Computer Inc. AAPL.O on  Thursday said sales of songs bought from its market-leading  iTunes online music store had topped 200 million, a figure that  was about in line with what some analysts had been expecting.
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Digital music sales have doubled in the last year, but overall music industry sales are falling.
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Game designers are often called the rock stars of the digital world, but that&#39;s a load of hooey. Rock stars are pop gods and they transcend all bounds of genre to find success in the mainstream.
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Total video game sales (hardware and software) through  October was $10.5 billion, compared with $7 billion for the  same period last year, according to data from NPD Group.
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Although the record companies raked in $2.9 billion in revenue from digital music sales in the past year -- up 40 percent -- the collapsing CD market is dragging them down.
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The Zune, Microsoft's much-hyped answer to Apple's trend-setting iPod, had a good first four days of sales, says a leading research firm. But consumer electronics analysts don't think Apple has anything to worry about. The NPD Group, which tracks sales at most top retailers, says the Zune digital music device had a 9% market share in its first sales days Nov. 14-18, compared with 63% for Apple. The research firm hasn't reported sales for the all-important Thanksgiving holiday selling weekend.
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Having a No. 1 album just isnât what it used to be. This week Alicia Keys is back atop the Billboard chart with âAs I Amâ (J), but the 61,000 copies it has sold is barely above the historic low for a No. 1 album, Nielsen SoundScan reported. The âJunoâ soundtrack, on Rhino, fell to No. 2, with 55,000 sold. New releases dot the chart this week. The Mars Volta, which revels in head-spinningly complex progressive rock, opened in the third spot with 54,000 sales of âFrances the Muteâ (Universal); the Welsh heavy metal band Bullet for My Valentine reached fourth place with âScream Aim Fireâ (Jive), selling 53,000; and the â2008 Grammy Nomineesâ compilation (Hip-O/Universal) moved 50,000, opening at No. 5. The remix album âHannah Montana 2: Non-Stop Dance Partyâ (Disney) bowed at No. 7, and Vampire Weekend, the acclaimed New York indie band, reached No. 17 with its self-titled debut on the XL label.
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LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - The hottest rock acts and  videogame technology are coming together for the second  Nintendo Fusion tour.