It took some time to build the brand awareness since the game first started, but now the music biz is reaping the Guitar Hero rewards. In what should be no surprise to anyone by now, Guitar Hero III had a huge first week on the market, grossing over $100 million its first seven days on sale in North America, according to variety.com (some estimates put the amount as high as $115 million).

As Guitar Hero guitarist Marcus Henderson told us, “The industry has definitely taken notice of the immense power of video game placement. Music in games has grown so much it’s become the major selling point for games, and it's responsible for the content of the core game-play in rhythm games and music puzzle games.”

Guitar Hero III was also finally able to land two Metallica songs, One and Enter Sandman. As Guitar Hero producer Will Littlejohn told Tom’s, “Metallica's been sought after since the very first inklings of the game, and now that they’ve finally come aboard is really exciting for everybody. It's even better that they're gonna be using their master tapes, which we think is great.”

Right before the release of Guitar Hero 3, the Wall Street Journal revealed why Metallica have finally joined the party: royalties. As Nick Wingfield reported in the Journal, Metallica was indeed approached before, but turned down being on Guitar Hero because they would only be paid flat fees instead of royalties from the game. With both Guitar Hero III and the upcoming Rock Band, Metallica’s wish was granted (several members of the band also play the game).

In what’s also clearly a big show of Guitar Hero’s impact, the indie label Roadrunner has reported a 183% increase in sales for their band, Dragonforce, who have a song on Guitar Hero (source: Blabbermouth.net). As Guitar Hero guitarist Lance Taber told us, the music business “needs different outlets to be able to move catalog now. They need different delivery systems. The record store days are gone, and they need to rethink how to get their content out there. That’s probably why we’re seeing a lot more people warm up to this sort of content and artists wanting to do this. I think they want to get into as many outlets as possible.”