The Rock Band franchise has an easier time attracting music talent than its competitors, claimed Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman during the UBS 36th Annual Global Media and Communications Conference on Tuesday.

"There's a strong music orientation to our company; many of our networks are ideal vehicles to promote the game, and you'll see more and more of that as we move forward," said Dauman.

"We also have the opportunity to attract talent to [Rock Band] in a way that our competitors have greater difficulty doing."

The best argument for Dauman's claims is the recently-announced Harmonix-developed Beatles music game, which will feature music from the group that spans the Fab Four's entire career.

"[The deal] is something that we probably got because we're Viacom--we're MTV Networks," Dauman said.

The Rock Band franchise breaks the 500 song mark this week with the release of the 13-song No Doubt track pack.

But Activision and its Guitar Hero series is no slouch either in the music business, particularly after its merger with Vivendi, a conglomerate that owns Universal Music Group. The Guitar Hero franchise broke $1 billion in sales in North America in January.

The most recent Guitar Hero release, World Tour, has around 150 songs, including on-disc songs and downloadable tunes. With downloadable songs costing around $2 apiece, the more songs a game has available, the better.

MTV acquired Cambridge, Mass.-based Harmonix in 2006 for $175 million. But Dauman said other major acquisitions related to games are not planned. "We expect [music games] to be a significant business for us. We'd like he games business to grow organically, we're not looking to make big acquisitions. We may want small acquisitions... that fits in with our fundamental business."

Growing that business will include taking advantage of Rock Band's multiple revenue streams, which includes the retail (software, peripherals, bundles) and paid downloadable content.

"We view this as a strong long-term franchise for us," Dauman said.

He offered a bit more color to the recent Beatles game announcement. "It will just blow you away," he claimed. "It really goes through the history of The Beatles and they're collaborating with it. [Gamers] will start out in clubs in Liverpool and work [their] way through to the Abbey Road studio with never-before-heard dialog from when they were recording their music."