Has Guitar Hero gone too far?

[Fel]

Did Activision get paid by the artists/labels to put those unknown songs in there?

That's a good question.... it's possible. You'd think if you're dealing with a label, they could tell you "Well, we'll give you these 3 AAA tracks, but to get them, you have to include these 3 other ones as well."

It makes business sense to do that on the part of the label. They get exposure for unknown artists (Guitar Hero is great for that... amking unknowns suddenly popular), meanwhile the game developer gets access to better content. It's win/win. (Arguably also a win for the consumer too... win/win/win?).