Do video games have an effect on popular music?

Do video games have an effect on popular music?

Absolutely, and popular music has an effect on video games as well. It's very interesting to see many games switch to having soundtracks that come from popular tracks of the day. "Grand Theft Auto", "Guitar Hero", "Elite Beat Agents" all have pretty popular songs. And the music industry, it makes a lot of sense to them to get them in games because rather than having the song played on the radio maybe twice a day you get a game: a kid might play a level seven, eight hundred times, depending on how much they love the game, so they're hearing that song constantly, and it ends up as really great marketing for the music industry, and great for them, but sometimes not as great for composers who, I mean, back in the day when you'd make a game you'd hire a composer to come and do a soundtrack for you, and it seems like maybe they're getting the short end of the stick now, but the music industry is doing exceedingly well going through games just because of the exposure.