• 1

- •.
KSIx^ 1
•
HH L L I I
•• a • •• 4^1 kÉ1 •
,
•
|l
I í
; :
" • • • • • n:

1 TUT
III
LVJ
WHAT'S TIIK MOST COVETED GUEST TURN BY MICHAELENDELMAN
in the music business? An invite to i n - ILLUSTRATION BY EBOY
form two songs on Siditrilay Night ¡JIM!
Not bad. A gig at The ().('.'s faux-gnmgy
nick club, the Unit Shop? We're listening.
A visit to TRL, followed by a cliat with a
sycophantic V.I? It'll do.
(Jo poll a fistful of rappers, rockers,
and record execs and you'll likely get
How Snoop,
this answer: The real music-biz touch-
Green Day, and
down comes with a little thing called
the music maven
Madden NFL Football. Scoring a spot
on the soundtrack for the Electronic
behind'Madden'
Arts game is, says Bnice Flohr, head of
teamed up to
A&R for Dave Matthews' ATO Records, turn videogames
"just as important 88 getting the record into a touchdown
played on KROQ or Z100 or any big ra- for the music biz
dio station. When I landed in Los Ange-
les from mixing the latest Dave Mat-
thews Hand album, my first stop was |a

pitch meeting] at EA Games."

ii

L I S T E N TO T H I S 15

On the receiving end of these pitches is
Steve Schnur, a bright-eyed former A&R
guy (Capitol, Arista, and others) with a
head of spiky, thinning ham As the world-
wide executive for music and audio for
videogame giant E A, it is Schnur's job to
place music in every single one of EA's
40-some-odd releases every year. "I left
the record industry," Schnur says, "to get
into the music business." Which means
everything from commissioning a score
from journeyman film composer Trevor
Jones to slogging through literally thou-
sands of songs for every game to find just
the right pop tune to match the pixelated
pyrotechnics of race-'n'-crash game
Burnout or the careful joystickflippingof
Tiger Woods PGA Tour.
In Schnur's three years at EA, he's be-
come a bona fide music mogul, not only
transforming games into a more powerful
pop-culture experience but offering music-
biz marketers an attractive option beyond
the usual orbit of radio, retail, and press.
IE I U5TEN TO THIS
All of which translates, according to
Schnur, into "the coolest job in the world."
The 800-pound gorilla of the industry,
EA is the world's largest videogame com-
pany, pulling in S3 billion in revenue last
year. And in its stable of cash-generating
franchises—Need for Speed, NBA Live,
The Sims, and many others—the 16-year-
old Madden NFL series is the company's
signature title, having sold more than -10 mil-
lion copies since its debut in 1989 (it's still
a fixture on annual best-seller lists).
Thanks to Schnur, those black $50
discs now offer baby bands and veteran
acts alike an effective way to generate
buzz (right down to the jukebox-style
features on games that allow players to
see the song titles and band names).
"People weren't paying much attention
to game music when I started," Schnur
says. "The more I researched it, the
more I realized how simple it would be to
bring music to where kids are." Prime re-
cent example: Green Day's "American
Idiot" debuted on Madden NFL 200S last
summer, weeks before the single hit ra-
dio or MTV; the album of the same name
went on to be one of the most successful
records of 2004, winning the Grammy for
Best Rock Album.
Instead of force-feeding a diet of tired
jock-rock to the gaming audience, Schnur
approaches his job like a cool-hunting ado-
lescent, stringing together cuts by acts as
diverse as Radiohead, Snoop Dogg, the
Dandy Warhols, and Good Charlotte. And
because he's divorced from the market-
plan mentalities of radio airplay and retail
jockeying, he's free to indulge his inner
tastemaker: the early adopter, the first kid
oil the block who knows about that band
you've porra hear. "I just need one guy to
remember that we had the song first," he
says. "Bragging rights are the important
thing. My whole motto here is that even
though we're not 14, we have to think and
act like we're 14."
But there are challenges. Unlike picking
a song for a movie, TV show, or commer-
cial, Schnur must consider an incredibly
broad demo. "Madden is the hairiest game
to program," he says. "I've gotta jilease a
kid who only listens to hip-hop and anoth-
er who listens to metal. I've gotta find 20
songs where a kid might only love one, but
think the other 19 are kinda cool."
There is, in fact, a rough guideline
Schnur uses when vetting the few thou-
sand cuts for the 20-plus-track .Madden
playlist. Rule No. 1: "It has to be aggres-
sive, it has to pump up the gameplay, it
has to be in-your-face," he says. "Which
eliminates a few bands that I'd like to
have—Snow Patrol or Coldplay—but ul-
timately they don't give you that effect.
Game first."
Rule No. 2: Resist outside pressure.
PHOTOGRAPH BY GREGG SEGAL
 .j^fN /ff*

#814
April 8, 2005
f

©0r^\

Vl/ ! —i U J OTC
HOUSE
Inside F
Surpris
)
mwww.ew.com (AOL Keyword: EW)

FRAN
DRESCF
Omigav\ FEVER PITC
Jimmy Fallon
And Drew
She's Be
I
BarrymoreWith
Johnny Damon