Friday, July 17, 2009
Posted at
11:39
by
Ryan Stewart
From Billboard comes the news:
Later this year, MTV plans to launch a groundbreaking initiative called
the Rock Band Network that will enable any artist-unsigned emerging
act, indie cult fave or major-label superstar-to submit songs for
possible inclusion in the game.
The Rock Band Network recently started a closed beta
trial, which MTV expects to expand to a public beta test in August. The
company hopes to open the Rock Band Network store before year's end.
Songs available through the new store, which will remain separate from
the existing "Rock Band" store, will be initially available for
download to users of Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console. MTV expects to
eventually make the popular tracks available for use on the Sony
PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii game systems.
-- snip --
Rather than deal with Harmonix directly, artists and labels will submit
songs to a community of Harmonix-trained freelance game developers who
will prepare the tracks for "Rock Band." Additionally, labels can
either hire trained developers or school their existing employees to do
the work in-house.
Songs submitted through this process must then be
reviewed by other developers to check for playability, inappropriate
lyrics, copyright infringement and so on. Harmonix will post approved
tracks to an in-game download store separate from its existing "Rock
Band" store where creators can set their own price (50 cents to $3 per
song) and receive 30% of any resulting sales. Gamers will also be able
to demo 30-second samples of each track.
Although originally designed to give indie and
unsigned artists a way to sell music through the game, MTV quickly
realized the Rock Band Network could be used to clear the bottleneck
for major-label content as well.
This is huge on many levels. First, it's obviously a great way to expand the library (and, it should go without saying, a preferable option to its competitor's strategy of releasing expansion discs one at a time). Second, the general lack of restrictions of who can participate means we'll see a genuinely wide range of styles. Third, the vetting process means the songs will all translate well to the gaming environment (again, an improvement from Rock Band's competitor's free-for-all). Learn more at their new Web site, and we'll have more on this soon.
