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CNN SUNDAY MORNING

Hit Play

Aired November 9, 2003 - 07:56   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

RENAY SAN MIGUEL, CNN ANCHOR: Well, video games are a huge business. And most of the popular ones now feature hit music as well.
CNN's Shannon Cook has that story for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Check this out, man.

SHANNON COOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Cutting edge choreography, state of the art design, trash talking.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody ever beats me.

COOK: Some of the key ingredients of a successful video game. And like a good film, it just wouldn't be the same without a musical score.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Music drives the emotional experience behind a video game. It makes you jump -- want to jump further, makes you want to hit somebody harder. And it makes you want to get pumped up to get into the game.

COOK (on camera): And with the gaming industry now bringing in more than $10 billion U.S. a year, record labels and artists also want to get into the game.

LEE STIMMEL, ATLANTIC RECORDS: Artists have come to us as they get signed or a new record comes out playing music for me and for other people they say would this work for a game. That's obviously a big change in the last year.

(MUSIC)

BILLY MARTIN, GOOD CHARLOTTE: Some EA Sports came to us and asked if we wanted to be a part of Madden. And I know that it's like the top selling sports game. And we all really like video games. So of course we said yes.

I believe that the game came out before the record had some out even. So a lot of people were learning the song just from the game. And I think it really helped us a lot.

STIMMEL: You're hitting like a bunch of kids that are their prime demographic for us in selling records many times. Additionally, it's a very captive, repetitive audience. COOK (voice-over): Besides providing an outlet to break new music, some games offer exclusive tracks recorded by artists. And in several cases, the game's soundtrack gets released separately as an album.

(MUSIC)

POD's latest CD is the first to be sold with a video game included.

JOHN DAVISON, ZIFF DAVIS MEDIA: A few of the really large companies that are investing a lot in this.

COOK: Mya performs the theme song for EA's James Bond 007, "Everything or Nothing." It's due out next year. Mya also plays the sultry but sassy Bond girl in the game.

MYA: Somebody's coming. I've got to go.

COOK: Also shaken but not stirred is rapper Eve in the role of Major Jones for UB Soft Entertainment's next action shooter.

It probably helps that a lot of musicians enjoy video games themselves, but with shrinking playlists on radio and declining CD sales around the globe, the virtual world offers another outlet for artists to stay ahead of the game.

Shannon Cook, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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