The Beatles & Rockband

I would have to agree with Daniel Radosh about Rockband putting The Beatles to the forefront of the evolution of the music industry. As if these music video games aren't popular enough, add The Beatles to the mix and it becomes almost revolutionary. The Beatles themselves broke many records in the music industry because of their unprecedented popularity. Rockband has also broken records for the video game industry by beating out sports games for being the second most popular video game genre after the action genre. Once you add the world's most popular band you have a recipe for success. Not only does the interactive game appeal to younger people, but the epic popularity of The Beatles reaches out to an entirely new category of people who have never bought video games before but who are intrigued by the popularity and decide to make the purchase because of their history with, and affection for, The Beatles' music.
In the article they also mention the large amount of revenue received from users who decide to purchase music played in the game, through the Rockband music store. Here, Rockband charges $2 per song (twice as much as iTunes) and users can purchase new songs to add to their libraries and learn to "play" on their "instruments." Sales from these songs have been shown to reawaken an artist's popularity and jolt their sales as younger generations are exposed to older music. In this way, The Beatles; surviving members and widowers or those deceased will undoubtedly earn continuous royalties from this kind of airplay. It's a win-win situation for both parties (Rockband and The Beatles) because both have such a large fanbase, though in different age groups, that they help each other by bringing in more users while the other brings in more royalties.
While I do agree that this puts The Beatles at the forefront, I do think that it's Rockband making the evolution of music by creating different ways for users to reach their product.