You might have heard that Kurt Cobain's estate and the makers of "Guitar Hero" are at odds. You might even have heard of the lawsuit threats - but if you don't play the game, you might not know why Courtney Love is spending hours on Twitter denigrating the game and why Nirvana's surviving members are asking that the Cobain likeness be 're-locked'. 

Rob Thomas admits he’s not much of a gamer. And given his commitments to his burgeoning solo career and his duties as frontman of Matchbox 20, that’s not surprising.

That said, he does own an Xbox 360 and a PlayStation 3. And, as the father of an 11 year old boy, he’s been known to pick up a controller from time to time. The game of choice in the Thomas house? “Rock Band”

“There’s something great about watching [my son] playing a Pixies song with me on ‘Rock Band’,” he says. “[The game] puts a kid in a world they’re familiar with, but unbeknownst to them, they’re being exposed to this great assortment of music.”

It’s ironic, then, that the game features no songs by either Thomas or Matchbox. Fans of the game have requested them in forums, but haven’t gotten a response yet. As for Thomas, he says he’d love to see his music added to the game.

“We haven’t been asked,” he says. “If we were, we obviously would do it.”

Are you listening Harmonix?

(While he’s not a gamer, Thomas is one of the few musicians who’s on the cutting edge of digital marketing. Read more about how he’s using the technology to expand his fan base at Technotainment.)

One of the most innovative features of "Grand Theft Auto IV" when it launched last year was the ability to buy any one of the 150-plus songs on Liberty City's 19 radio stations via the in-gam "Zit" service and a partnership with Amazon.com's MP3 store.

That service isn't going anywhere with the upcoming "GTA IV" downloadable episode "The Lost and the Damned," which updates five the game's virtual radio stations with new tracks from artists including Busta Rhymes and Funkmaster Flex. But the Amazon.com partnership is.

About 10 months after the deal started, Rockstar is ditching Amazon.com and switching to iTunes. The update to the music download service, which ties into the Rockstar Social website, will come when "The Lost and the Damned" launches next week.

No official word yet on the reasons, but when I interviewed "GTA IV's" soundtrack supervisor Ivan Pavlovich last year, he said one of the reasons Rockstar picked Amazon was they wanted downloaded songs to be available without DRM, so they wouldn't be restricted to a certain device.

Apple, of course, recently decided to make the entire iTunes library DRM-free, eliminating that concern. And Amazon.com's MP3 store, which was only about half a year old and growing fast when Rockstar struck its deal last year, hasn't become very big. It's still fighting with eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody etc. for the scraps left beyond iTunes 90%-plus market domination.

Given all that, it's perhaps no surprise Rockstar is making the switch. Since many more "GTA IV" players are used to iTunes, more music will likely be sold, earning additional commissions for Rockstar and, probably more importantly, making the labels and artists who want to sell more tracks happier.

It's definitely a blow, however, for Amazon, for whom the Rockstar partnership was a big promotional opportunity and selling point last year -- one of the very few unique features of its MP3 store.

It's also interesting to see Rockstar adding new music to "GTA IV" via DLC, something I doubt few players were expecting for their $20. It will probably be a while until we see game soundtracks dynamically updated, but adding fresh songs via DLC seens kuje a great way to keep the game world alive and vibrant, not to mention a great way for labels to promote new stuff.

When one media company comes out with a successful product that uses another media company's content, you can bet a fight over compensation is coming soon -- especially if the latter media company is a music label.

So just as the music industry went after MTV and peer-to-peer networks and streaming Internet sites and then YouTube, it's now after the videogame industry.

Thus we have Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman recently telling Reuters: ""The amount being paid to the music industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content we own and control, is far too small."

How did Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, whose company publishes "Guitar Hero," respond? "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."

Take the word "games" out of Bronfman's statement and he could easily be talking about musicvideos on MTV or online, songs being used in YouTube clips, streaming Internet radio, etc. It was the same argument over and over. And Kotick's response, essentially that his products are helping to boost music sales by exposing artists to new audiences, is exactly how MTV and Internet companies always responded in the past.

It's worth remembering that the music industry has largely won in the past, either through corporate pressure or lawsuits. On the other hand, the music biz is in really dire straits these days and I think it's pretty undeniable that "Guitar Hero," "Rock Band," etc. are boosting downloads and album sales at least somewhat.

Nonetheless, music labels see a potentially lucrative source of revenue growth at a time when their traditional business is slumping and you can bet they'll be going after a bigger chunk of it aggressively. Especially with more music games coming out in the future ("Lips," "Ultimate Band," a million "Guitar Hero" spin-offs, etc.) you can bet this fight is only getting warmed up.

...was definitely Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos standing in the back of the balcony of the Orpheum theater with a big grin all throughout the "Rock Band" concert featuring The Who. (who are, I finally appreciated tonight, just as amazing as my mother and uncle always told me)

Today at E3 I got to demo Microsoft and iNiS' upcoming karaoke game "Lips" and got some more details on the innovative new feature that will let players import songs from their iPod (or Zune, as Microsoft keeps reminding us) into the game.

It turns out the game can handle any DRM-free music file, which is really impressive. iNiS' Chief Creative Officer Keiichi Yano also promised there will be a cool solution to the question of showing lyrics to the song on screen, though he didn't provide details. (I would imagine it's a deal with Gracenote or another online music database)

Being a business reporter as well as a videogame critic, my thoughts immediately went to the financial end of this -- if the game can import any MP3, that means Microsoft doesn't have to have a licensing arrangement with the song's label or publisher. Meaning Microsoft doesn't have to pay the people who made the music. Yano confirmed this for me.

Activision and MTV certainly pay labels and publishers for the songs in "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band," as does for "Singstar." I would also imagine that Microsoft is paying the rights holders for all songs included on the "Lips" disc, as well as any downloadable content.

Microsoft has some good lawyers, so I'm sure they're comfortable with the idea that they can legally use any song that users already own (regardless of where they got it) in the game. But it's not clear to me that the music industry would be cool with this arrangement. On the contrary, in fact, labels are increasingly looking to videogame as a source of revenue growth. They expect to make money when their songs are used in games.

And on the face of it, it doesn't seem like there's a reason why the source of the music (my iPod vs the game disc) should effect who gets paid. Half the people who bought "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith" may already own lots of Aerosmith CDs, but that doesn't mean Activision got out of paying to use the songs. Making the song into a game is arguably a transformative use for commercial gain.

I'm not saying I think Microsoft should have to pay. But based on everything I know about the music industry, I would think they won't be pleased that "Lips" owners can use their songs in the game for free. This is definitely something I'll be looking into more.

OK so this really has nothing directly to do with games... But on the theory that most people reading this blog are geeks and that "Star Trek" has in some way -- whether one of the five TV series, the 10 movies, or the innumerables games -- has probably influenced us or touched our lives in some ways, I thought it was worth linking to.

Alexander Courage, composer of the theme to the original "Star Trek" show, which not only was part of all the other "Star Trek" themes over the years but also influenced lots of other bombastic sci-fi music, died on May 15. There's an excellent obituary of him in today's Daily Variety by a very knowledgeable film and tv music journalist named Jon Burlingame that I highly recommend reading. Did you know Courage did orchestrations for everything from "Jurassic Park" to "Basic Instinct" and adapted John Williams' themes for "Superman IV?" I sure didn't. (And let's not hold that last credit against him.)

In an eerie coincidence, there's also an obit in today's Daily Variety for Joseph Pevney, who directed 14 episodes of the original "Star Trek."

Sure, games like "Rock Band" may be expanding the market and bringing in lots of "non-traditional" gamers. But every once in a while us "real" gamers need to know the publishers still love us. So bless the hearts of Harmonix, MTV, and Valve for bringing "Still Alive," the hilarious and brilliant song from the end of the hilarious and brilliant "Portal," to "Rock Band" tomorrow, where it will be free to download for PS3 and 360. And no, it's not an april fool's prank.

Honestly, I'm very happy about this. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

I've been spending a lot of time perfecting my drum skills (well, trying to make it through the hard solo tour) on "Rock Band" recently, but I think I want to call vocals for this one.

(Thanks, Kotaku)