Hot properties: 'musical real estate' on games

LOS ANGELES - When "Madden NFL 2005" hustles onto store shelves next month, video gamers won't just be playing their favorite football game; they'll also be listening to its soundtrack of 21 licensed tracks from emerging rock and hip-hop artists. And, if this year is anything like the last, almost 25% of Madden owners will buy or download one of those tracks because they heard it in the game, and 15% will buy or download an album because they enjoyed it while they were passing the pigskin.

Those are the kind of numbers that are music to the ears of record labels whose sales -- having been impacted by digital downloading -- slid 7.1% in terms of units last year from 2002, which was actually an improvement from the 8.9% drop in 2002 from 2001, according to the RIAA.

"In the media world, it's very hard to target advertising to the 12- to 24-year-old male demographic," says Lee Stimmel, senior vp of marketing at Epic Records. "We've found that introducing an artist as part of game play instead is a very, very impactful way to bring music to that demographic which buys music, goes to concerts -- and also happens to be the core gamer."

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