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Beatles music may soon be strumming a new tune via air guitar video games, according to a report in the Financial Times.

Apple Corps and EMI, which respectively represent The Beatles' business interests and ownership of its master recordings, have reportedly been in discussions with video game publishers Activision and MTV Games.

Under a possible deal that could be worth several million dollars, users could put their air guitar to use while listening to The Beatles and playing Activision's Guitar Hero or MTV's Rock Band games, according to the report.

The move to push The Beatles' music onto a new stage via video games could occur within the coming weeks, the Financial Times reported. Such a move would mark a change in embracing technology for The Beatles' music, given that digital-use licenses for Beatles recordings are not yet available.

The Beatles representatives, as well as the game publishers, declined to confirm whether a deal is on the horizon.

It's only rock 'n roll, but Wii like it. Harmonix, the game developer acquired by MTV Networks to create the Rock Band video game, announced Monday that the software will be available for Nintendo's Wii console on June 22. Currently, versions of Rock Band have been created for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3.

(Credit: Harmonix/MTV)

Rumors of a Wii edition of Rock Band first started to circulate early last month. The game was originally released in November amid the soaring popularity of Activision's Guitar Hero franchise, which had a Hollywood-worthy $115 million opening weekend for its most recent game, Guitar Hero III. MTV's Rock Band puts a spin on the concept by letting participants play bass, drums, and vocals in addition to guitar.

Despite the inherent similarities to Guitar Hero, Rock Band has been a huge hit, too.

But, just like a rerun of Behind the Music, the guitar-playing video game craze has been ridden with drama. Harmonix developed the original Guitar Hero, but MTV Networks acquired it in 2006 to create rival Rock Band and distribute it through gaming mega-publisher Electronic Arts. Meanwhile, guitar manufacturer Gibson Guitar has filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers of both Guitar Hero and Rock Band as well as six major retailers--according to Gibson, it's held a patent on a guitar-playing video game since 1999.

So far, none of the gaming console manufacturers--Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo--have been targeted by Gibson's suit.

The June 22 Rock Band Wii release will encompass the U.S. and Canada markets, and a core bundle (software, drums, microphone, and one guitar) will cost $169.99. Standalone instruments will also be sold. It'll feature a lineup of 63 songs, including five exclusive to the Wii.

In some tech circles, Viacom is the symbol of botched digital strategies and old-media thinking.

There's little doubt that operating under Viacom's umbrella has hurt MTV's hipster cred with some tech-savvy music fans. MTV managers, however, are trying to dispel the notion that the company is technology backward, fearful of sharing its content online, and has missed out on the Internet age.

On Tuesday, Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks Music and Logo Group, and some of his top managers met with CNET News.com at San Francisco's Hotel Vitale to outline the company's digital strategy for the future. Indeed, this unit of Viacom appears more willing than any other part of the conglomerate to strike out into areas it has historically failed at or avoided, such as content syndication, social networking, and digital downloads.

"I'm impressed with how experimental they are being," said Charlene Li, an analyst with Forrester Research. "This is a company that is taking a lot of risks...really, more than any other big media company."

Viacom, parent company of MTV, Paramount Pictures, and BET, is perceived by many to jealously guard its content from users posting it on non-Viacom Web sites. Not MTV. The company now offers an embeddable video player that allows users to post every piece of MTV content to which the company owns the rights.

The strategy unveiled Tuesday also details MTV's efforts to get into the social-networking game. In 2005, News Corp. outbid Viacom for social-networking giant MySpace.com. Since then, Viacom has largely been on the sidelines in the growing market. Now the company is focusing on creating a vast array of highly targeted Web sites that are loosely connected and focus mostly on programming such as VH1 Classic, Jackass, and Sucker Free on MTV.

These Web sites will be at the core of the company's digital efforts. MTV sees its content as its strength, and Toffler said he intends to make it more available on the Web than ever before.

In the past year, the company has constructed 32 new sites. The idea is to create a type of assembly line for Web sites, according to Jeff Yapp, executive vice president of program enterprises for MTV Networks' Music & Logo Group.

Those sites that find an audience will continue to be nurtured and those that don't will be stripped down and "reskinned," or refitted for the next experiment. The company also doesn't plan to spend wildly in promoting the sites. It has confidence in their content and the viral ability of the Web to spread the word.

In regards to dowload sales, where the music icon really has missed the boat, MTV is trying to recover from Urge, the online music store and iTunes competitor that it launched in partnership with Microsoft in 2006. The site never truly got off the ground, but MTV announced last year it will try again with help from RealNetworks' Rhapsody service.

MTV is also branching in new directions from its competitors. The company is amid a $500 million spending plan into video games, the high point of which was the 2006 acquisition of Harmonix Music Systems, makers of the rock-and-roll simulation game Rock Band.

The company sold 1.3 million units of the game last year and the deal has helped MTV find a new way to sell music. Rock Band owners pay between 99 cents and $3 to download songs for the game.

Toffler and his staff credit Viacom's management with bankrolling the experiments and allowing the unit to operate like a start-up.

The moves could help convince fans that MTV is still an arbiter of youth culture.

Viacom may have filed a $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google's YouTube and sends out reams of legal notices demanding that fans remove their video content, but MTV wants everyone to know that it isn't at war with technology or music fans.

"I tell my staff all the time, in this situation cats have to marry dogs," Toffler said. "We have to make a successful marriage of our content with technology. And that's what we're going to do."

While MTV appears very willing to stick a toe into new business models, there are signs that some areas still give it pause.

Forrester's Li said MTV has not been very aggressive when it comes user-generated content.

But Toffler said the company has more surprises coming, including a high-definition video player as well as more music-focused video games from Harmonix.

"We have a lot of confidence in our content," Toffler said. "Were going to make our Web sites more interactive and engage our users with that content. It's not just going to be people chatting online. We'll be able to show advertisers that our users are immersed when they visit our sites."