DigitalBattle.com

While their prospective owners must love them for raking in endless streams of revenue, many musicians have expressed their distaste for music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Joining those ranks are Jack White of the White Stripes, Raconteurs and Dead Weather and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. Speaking at a press conference for the upcoming documentary ‘It Might Get Loud’ both artists voiced disdain at the popularity of these games.

“It’s depressing to have a label come and tell you that [Guitar Hero] is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music,” said Jack White, continuing that while he doesn’t care what format people listen to their music in it’s “a little sad” if video games are the only way to get your music into their hands/ears. Page agreed, stating that people don’t learn anything from playing them.

Are these games really where kids are learning about their music? If so, they’re probably getting more exposure to older songs than anything else. From everything I’ve seen playing these games the playlists have mostly three kinds of songs: classic rock songs that didn’t cost much to get the rights to; popular, canned generic rock music and finally songs by somewhat popular yet relatively unknown bands who’ll sign off their songs for a pittance in the hope of getting a greater fanbase. These days most musicians can propagagate themselves enough through viral marketing and free publicity via websites like Youtube and Myspace. As far as learning anything? Playing Guitar Hero teaches you exactly the same thing that listening to music on its own does: that music is fun.