Electronic, Extreme ink music deal

Library to rep vidgame giant's some 2,000 cues

By STEVE CHAGOLLAN

Video games giant Electronic Arts, known for its "Rock Star" and "Harry Potter" titles, has just inked a 5-year deal with music library Extreme Music for the latter to rep Electronic Arts' backlog of more than 2,000 cues. Cues from such popular EA vidgame series as "The Need for Speed," "The Sims," "Battlefield" and "Medal of Honor" will now be repped by Extreme.

The pact, which underscores the increasing sophistication of original music created for the videogame realm, will allow for placement of EA's cues in feature films, TV programming, trailors and commercials. The work of such A-list composers as Michael Giacchino ("Ratatouille," "Up"), who cut his teeth in videogames, as well as Ramin Djawadi ("Iron Man"), Trevor Jones "Notting Hill"), Hans Zimmer ("The Dark Knight"), Chris Lennertz ("Godfather II" and "Quantum of Solace" vidgames) and Mark Mothersbaugh ("Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist") will be featured as part of the deal.

Production library APM will also continue to represent some of AE's cues as well.

"We felt that Extreme is a way to create an extremely aggressive campaign to relicense these songs because we feel these are very reusable in the world," said Steve Schnur, EA's worldwide executive, music and marketing, as well as president of Artwerk Music Group, EA's music publishing armend