Activision CEO hits back, accuses Middlebronfman of disrespect

“The chief executive of the company behind the Guitar Hero video game franchise has hit out at Warner Music after the label said higher royalties should be paid for use of its songs,” Matthew Garrahan and Chrystia Freeland report for The Financial Times.

“In a sign of increasing tensions between the two companies, Robert Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard, said Warner Music had failed to acknowledge the benefits to music sales from Guitar Hero,” Garrahan and Freeland report.

“Mr Kotick told the Financial Times that Edgar Bronfman, Warner Music’s chief executive, had made ‘one-sided comments’ that were not ‘respectful of how much we’ve done to bring new audiences into the market,'” Garrahan and Freeland report.

“Activision recently merged with Vivendi’s games unit. Vivendi owns Universal Music, the world’s largest music publisher,” Garrahan and Freeland report. “Mr Kotick said there was a direct link between artists featured in Guitar Hero and sales of their music. ‘We’re introducing a whole new group of artists to new audiences that is resulting in their iTunes downloads being exponentially higher than they would otherwise be, [as well as] new album sales and new merchandising opportunities.'”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “bizarro ballmer” for the heads up.]

26 Comments

  1. Surely Activision and Warner have a contract determining the amount of money Act pays for Warners music. Is this a case of sellers remorse? ” Oh wait your product is doing well, I should have asked for more.”

    I own a massage school. It never occurred to me to complain that my graduates should retroactively give me more tuition after they become successful.

  2. I think Bronfman is pissed that iTunes got more sales because of the game. If iTunes didn’t get any sales out of it, he wouldn’t have bothered WHINING like a little spoiled GREEDY BRATT!
    It was good that he other side of the story was brought out, and it just puts an exclamation point of Bronfman’s GREED!!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.