In the long running, agonizing death spiral that that is the CD Business, its refreshing to see new models for distribution that Just Work (and that don’t involve iTunes).  One example is the example of Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band, two games for next generation consoles that allow players to play instruments along with real rock music.  The kicker?  There’s a way for players to pay for additional music to play with, as new tracks are released every month.

Just how successful has this been?

Well Rock Band has sold over 2 million tracks in just 8 weeks, at anywhere between $.99 per song to just over $5 for a pack of three.   Guitar Hero 3?  They’ve sold 5 million tracks this way in a little more time than that.

Pretty awesome stuff — and as someone who purchased Guitar Hero 3 on the basis of the buzz alone (as I’m not really a fan of Classic Rock) for my PC, I can personally vouch that A) It is one helluva fun game, even if you’re not intimately familiar with the music (most folks will know the chorus’s to many songs anyway) and B) once you’re done, you just want to play MORE music!

You start imagining “wouldn’t it be great if this band was on GH3?”  You start compiling playlists in your mind, you start air guitaring to stuff you hear on the radio … well, as someone who has been gaming for a long time, its something that really has to be seen to be believed.

And when you put it into the context about the economics of new media and the business of music these days, you can’t help but wonder — this is brilliant in its simplicity and execution in so far finding a way of giving people exactly what they want, and them dying to pay for the privilege of having it.

Its clear business models like this aren’t going to be the only solution to the woes of the music industry, but its clearly one solution.  And as purely digital content faces all kinds of challenges in its own evolution, its one example I’ll won’t be forgetting any time soon.