Or taken the other way. I am in a segment of gaming all my own? I do not play games for the reason you describe. To listen to music or mess around or look at scenery.  I have played collection games but I am also a collection whore in the real world too.

So yeah obviously I just don't like the values of gameplay your talking about (in the sense that it would not be fun for me, its not evil or anything).

It still seems to me that this style of gaming is relatively new, within the last 5 years maybe, or a very small segement of gaming population until now.  The Wii expanded the gaming market by millions.  Brand new people playing types of games before relegated to a small niche.

Also you keep bringing up GTA, but I don't agree with your comparison of GTA and Wii Music.  GTA may be a sandbox style game, but like oblivion has a story and the sandbox aspect really is just exploration and destructable/malliable environment.  It seems like freedom, but really is just open ended to where progression in the game is open rather than linear or forced.

@dharh: I was merely pointing out that the audience already exists and isn't separate by any means. It's just mixed with audience that doesn't play that way.

The reason why i keep bringing GTA up, is because of the values what people find from GTA. If you take out the "sandbox qualities" from GTA, what do you have left? You and many others would still be interested in the game, but a large part of its audience would be gone.
If we would take out the "story mode" from GTA, that would leave us left with just fooling around. Maybe you wouldn't care for the game anymore, but a lot people still would.
The freedom in GTA is very limited, i agree, but it still is a lot. The same way people explore the game and do stuff without any purpose, they explore Wii Music.

It may be surprising, but the big scale adventure and RPG games have actually trained gamers to non-objective gaming. When you are performing a task which takes hours, including all the exloration, you feel like you need a rest from the task, so that you don't get frustrated and you start to do stuff that has no purpose. All the minigames, sidequests and interesting details in Zelda games are no coincidence, they are for you to take a rest from the mission and "recharge" yourself to be able to continue.

And no, this type of gaming isn't new, it's been there always. The text based RPG:s offered you to try out senseless stuff, you wanted to know what you could do in Leisure Suit Larry, or pick nearly any game from the past and you'll notice that the real value has been how you achieve, not what you achieve.

"Besides, Metallica is largely selling records only for their established fanbase from eighties and early nineties."

So you don't believe that Metallica has any fans of its new music in highschools across America right now?

@Paul Warren: It has. But only to an extent. When you think of it, so does Elvis. People tend to listen mostly the music of their time.

It seems like your saying a majority of people who play GTA are those people who just want the sandbox to play in and aren't interested in the actual gameplay.  I need a source for this, otherwise im gonna say that its the majority of people who play GTA who are interested in the story, tasks, etc.

Also, you say do stuff without a purpose but I think people who do _that_ are also alot smaller than what you suggest.  I think there may be quite a few people who play games who aren't into it nearly as much as others, but they certainly are playing the game not just messing around doing nothing.  Personal goals like im gonna make this car jump over this ramp and land on the roof may not mean anything to the game but its still a challenge and its within the gameplay.  Many people who GTA do this (especially after they've beaten every other challenge set for them in the game).  This is not exactly what we typically think of as gameplay, but its not exactly Wii Music nofail/nochallenge either.

You could make the argument that people could do this in Wii Music.  I'd agree, but just as I think people playing GTA for the gameplay and/or who set personal challenges to beat are the majority and the people who just run around doing random stuff are the minority.  For Wii Music I think a majority will probably be people who are just interested in messing around in tune with the music and the minoirity will be those who challenge themselves within the framework.  I think minority because Wii Music does not seem to have any mechanism for setting challenges.

You play RPGs a little right? Those minigames/sidequests are not non-objective gaming.  They are challenges and give rewards, and sometimes those rewards are top items in the game.  Yeah in RPGs there can be alot of grinding and mindless tasks, but they are always done to reach a goal.

Finally, I see the text based gaming world different than you also.  When I played those games I was playing to explore, beat the bad guy, find the hidden treasure, whatever.  All things related to gameplay and not mere 'digital play'.

@dharh: Not only. What the fooling around does in GTA for everyone, is it adds fun. The "freedom" in the game is its main selling point. You explore the game and find all the kinds of fun stuff/details and you're not limited just into completing the game. Practically everyone kills a random cop or a random bypasser just because you could do that. GTA lets the player to create his own goals.
Think about the games name, where did it come from? From the idea that you would fool around stealing cars and the story mode was added if you wanted to clear objectives while fooling around.

Well the challenge is to make the song sound like something you may have vision about and you propably create one while playing (the multiplayer may change the challenge part of it). But i do agree, that most people will play it just to fool around, although, the number of tracks and instruments makes sure you have lots of fooling around.

You mentioned the exploration yourself, which essentially is "fooling around". You went behind that tree just to see what happens, maybe it was a top item or maybe it was just "20 rupees" or maybe nothing. Or the text based RPG:s, you do know what happens when you type "Go to the east" instead of "Go to the north".
In Wii Music, you change the band setup and the song sounds completely different. Play it faster and then again you have a new "sound" in the song etc. It's exploring in similar fashion.

In the end, you can't fail in Wii Music, because it doesn't give you a score and there's nothing that measures will you "qualify" or not. In other ways, it looks like you can fail in similar fashion that you do in other games too.