You may not have realised it but the places you can now purchase music are changing drastically. It used to be the case that if you wanted to buy a record you would have to go into town and visit your local record store.

Now that digital music has taken off you can download music via websites. Not content with resting on their laurels, and keen to capitalise on consumers on the go, it was inevitable that you’d then be able to buy music tracks from Internet enabled mobile phones.

Now, as video games are such a prominent part of our culture, and playing them online has become so popular, it perhaps also inevitable that you’d be able to buy music through your games consoles, via video games.

Games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero for example allow games players to purchase tracks direct through the game, for use within the game. They are becoming hugely popular, even though the music bought cannot be transferred to another device for playback.

Allen Kovac, CEO of Tenth Street, says that video games are a new market that allow music labels to sell their product without fears of privacy, to a new, otherwise untapped market.

We do research on every artist we have, and the research said that the people who bought Motley Crue music and tickets play ‘Rock Band” and video games … (so) it was our inclination to go there. As marketers, it’s our job to find the audience. If our audience tells us they’re sitting at Xbox and PlayStation, that’s our job to do that.

The video game Rock Band has sold a staggering 10 million music tracks in a little over 6 months, whereas the Activision game Guitar Hero has sold more than 15 million tracks.

What is even more interesting to record labels is the fact that over 75% of tracks sold through the video game Rock Band are older catalogue tracks. This means that music labels can sell old music over and over again to a new consumer on a new format.

This makes for very high profits indeed.