Our philosophy in our forums, reviews, podcasts and feature videos is to promote audio and visual excellence by gathering and sharing the best information and resources available.
MTV To Launch New Track Upload Program For 'Rock Band'
Most recording artists would love to have their music available on MTV Networks' "Rock Band" videogame. But MTV's Harmonix unit, the developer of "Rock Band," simply hasn't had the time or staff to program the vast number of songs it would like to include in the game.
That's about to change. 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.
"We've figured out how to make it so anybody who owns and controls masters and publishing can put music into ["Rock Band"] at their own pace," says MTV Games senior VP of electronic games and music Paul DeGooyer. "We're talking about a set of serious professional tools to allow people on the front line of writing and recording songs to completely control their destiny with respect to interactive products and then giving them direct access to the download store."
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. While the Harmonix team has grown from fewer than 10 programmers to a few dozen since MTV acquired the videogame developer in 2006, the company can only add about 10 new songs per week to sell through the "Rock Band" store. The same team has also been handling the development work for the upcoming "The Beatles: Rock Band," due in September.
"Once we flip on the infrastructure, we can go from a few dozen people capable of doing this work to hundreds of people or more," Harmonix founder/CEO Alex Rigopulos says. "We can ramp up by a factor of 10 or more the rate of production of content."
So far, Harmonix developers have made about 700 songs available to download and play on the game. Those titles have sold a combined 50 million downloads through the game, demonstrating an ability to drive sales that has other artists and labels itching to have their music included.
Sub Pop Records head of A&R Tony Kiewel says the label is expecting to submit songs from its upcoming fall releases as well as its bigger releases from the past two years.
"It's very exciting news to us," Kiewel says. "It's important to participate in every possible revenue stream available. Whatever gets your music heard helps your overall awareness and ability to sell records and downloads."
Artists could use the Rock Band Network to upload their entire discography to the game or release an album through the game day-and-date with a new CD release or the start of a tour.
"If there's a really great song we love, we'd promote that, because that helps everybody," DeGooyer says. "We're also able to see what's selling well. If stuff has some heat on it, we may pick up on it . . . If Judas Priest decided to put their whole catalog in the Rock Band Network, we would promote the heck out of that."
Differentiating 'Rock Band' From 'Guitar Hero'
By launching the Rock Band Network, MTV is essentially doubling down on downloadable content, the primary point of differentiation between "Rock Band" and Activision's rival "Guitar Hero" franchise. While Activision makes the occasional song available for download for "Guitar Hero," its primary strategy is to sell expansion discs like "Guitar Hero: Metallica" and the forthcoming "Guitar Hero: Van Halen."
By contrast, MTV wants "Rock Band" to become a platform for music distribution, using its interactive features to lure music fans who otherwise may not be buying music.
"Recorded music on its own no longer leads the charge for artists," MTV's DeGooyer says. "It's now this aggregated value proposition of recorded music, touring, merch, branding, Web presence and now videogames . . . If we get this right, music creators will start to think about what they're releasing in terms of interactivity."
The Rock Band Network is the result of a 16-month development process with a number of partners. Most important was Microsoft. Tracks released through the Rock Band Network will only be available at first to Xbox 360 users, as it relies on Microsoft's XNA game development platform and its Creators Club online community of developers.
The Creators Club allows freelance developers or hobbyists to make their own games and sell them on the Xbox Live Marketplace. Games created through this process must first be submitted to the Creators Club community for game-play and content review before they are added to the marketplace.
The Rock Band Network marks the first time that XNA and the Creators Club have been used to outsource the development of expansions to an existing game, according to Dave Mitchell, the Microsoft product unit manager in charge of overseeing the two programs.
The Creators Club reviews about 30-50 games per month. Because MTV and Microsoft expect the number of "Rock Band" submissions to quickly dwarf these totals, the software giant took the unprecedented step of creating a custom version of the Creators Club for Harmonix, complete with a customized set of review procedures specific to music games-including checking for copyright infringement-which Harmonix will host separate from the existing Microsoft site.
Another key partnership is with the software developer Cockos, which customized a version of its Reaper audio production application that developers will use to program the audio stems needed to create each instrument and vocal track within "Rock Band." Reaper will also allow developers to customize the avatars, camera angles and lighting for the background video rather than using the automatically generated default setting. Cockos is working with Audible Magic and Gracenote to identify rights holders.
And finally there is the freelance game development community. Harmonix will hold regular training sessions to certify developers for the program and operate a support forum staffed by Harmonix developers to answer questions. It will also maintain a list of certified developers for artists and labels to contact and reach out to existing rhythm game community sites like ScoreHero.
"This is arguably the most complicated initiative Harmonix has ever tried to get off the ground, given the number of parties involved and the technical infrastructure involved," Rigopulos says.
Potential Risks
MTV is moving slowly with the rollout mostly because of the anticipated volume of submissions. If the response from artists and labels is anywhere near what MTV expects, the program may experience delays in reviewing and approving songs until a critical mass of developers and reviewers emerges.
Another concern is ensuring that the playability of songs developed for the game through its namesake network will match the sophistication of those developed in-house. Selling songs that provide a sub-par playing experience would hurt the integrity of the "Rock Band" store and could drive labels away from the program.
The decision to keep the Rock Band Network store separate from the existing one was made to address both issues. But operating two different download stores raises the possibility that artists, labels and customers may come to view the Rock Band Network store as an inferior "kids' table." It could also cause confusion because it would require users to search through two stores.
DeGooyer says MTV will keep a close eye on the music submitted to the store and cherry-pick tracks to promote as part of its weekly "Rock Band" communication. While it doesn't expect to move songs from one store to another, MTV could decide to merge the two outlets if the program is successful.
"It's kind of a capitalistic petri dish," DeGooyer says. "I can envision a song coming into the Rock Band Network first, getting traction, picking up customers through online play and then being picked up by MTV's programming and showing up there. We've shown we can sell millions of songs in the 'Rock Band' store. So it really does tie into a larger picture."
hmmm, not too sure of what to make of this at the moment. As long as there's a decent amount of quality control I think it could be OK.
Nifty idea which should lead to more high quality content and some cool indie bands. I agree though, management is key to ensure they play well and hopefully there is a limit to the price they can set and they don't price them too high!
looks interesting. I did wonder what that big announcement later was supposed to be.
Looks like they are doing it the right way and everything will be quality checked before it hits the store and its not like they are letting any tom dick or harry put tracks on it like GH tunes.
There are always threads on the RB forums that such and such band wants their songs in RB and this looks like a way of doing it. Im sure if they had the manpower, we would have far more songs available than we do now.
It can only be good news. If it works, great. If it doesnt then as a consumer, we havent lost anything.
ive just been reading about this on the RB forums. This is HUGE news IMO. Ok we have to wait and see if it works as intended and the quality is maintained.
One of the HMX dev mentioned ages ago that they could have 5000 songs by the end of the year. It was quickly retracted but they were obviously working on this at the time and 5000 by year end is still a bit of a stretch but we could have thousands of songs available within a few months.
Not to mention all the bands that dont get much coverage in the US and are generally ignored could make it to rock band. Personally, id love to see some prodigy or pendulum in RB (because the drums would be awesome) but never thought it would happen. Now it realistically could. Not to mention the awesome british bands we have around at the moment that aren't likely to get a look in otherwise.
I agree. Having read more about it, this has the potential to be massive (in terms of the genre). We've always known that Harmonix has been working on a music creation tool of some sort, but I didn't expect something like this!
it looks like if you pay the $100 XNA membership, you can actually review the tracks before they hit the store (you would still have to buy them sadly)
As someone that buys alot of DLC, £60 a year for being able to fully preview songs seems like a good deal. Ill definately give it a few months to work out any kinks before i signed up to it but its something to think about.
Tracks released through the Rock Band Network will only be available at first to Xbox 360 users, as it relies on Microsoft's XNA game development platform and its Creators Club online community of developers. ... MTV expects to eventually make the popular tracks available for use on the Sony PlayStation 3
Yeah i can understand if it's using XNA, but surely they could have released tools using Windows/OSX/Linux to allowed broader song input? The only thing i can think of is that LIVE is more restrictive about user-content, so using the XNA might have been the only way to get MS on board (re: fuss with user content for Unreal Tournament 3 360 vs PS3/PC)?
I just wonder what the delay will be till PS3 owners get their crumbs
This sounds brilliant. Although even I might have trouble buying all the DLC now.
Good day for RB news with this and the good DLC next week. Also there is talk of 2.2 version patch for RB2 later in the year for this process to work - wonder if this is why they are delaying the stars/Ion/Lips mic patch so they combine them into one mega patch.
While Activision makes the occasional song available for download for "Guitar Hero," its primary strategy is to sell expansion discs like "Guitar Hero: Metallica" and the forthcoming "Guitar Hero: Van Halen."
a bit rich that considering theyve done acdc and soon beatles seperate expansion discs. glass houses and all
But at least with the AC/DC pack you can export the songs into the main RB platform. You won't be able to do it with the The Beatles, but I'm hoping that RB Lego will also have that feature.
Well I have been thinking about this all day, and I think it could be the best possible news for Rock Band. A lot of brand new content by the artists and their teams themselves will mean far more choice for us the users.
I dont know how anyone can complain about that. To me this seems a bigger step than making your own content, because it will allow copyrighted material because it will be by the bands themselves.
great news so long as the charting is right. I'm not sure whether xna games are allowed to be free which would make free tracks impossible really, a shame as the best way to get publicity and a million downloads is to release free songs from up and coming bands. Even a small cost per song would put off many players. Also instead of a 30 second free demo of the song i would rather have a video stream of the whole song so i can see the charts in full before purchase.
obviously this appears much better than GHtunes allready. It may end up like the App store with too much content and little quality (which is what the XNA games are allready like right now) but we shall see.
great idea for all those awesome small bands there are,
in fact ive got some songs id love to get on rock band...
suppose that would be possible with this hey?
damn that would be great!
Music video games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero have become the new stars of American culture. But fans of cult or indie music like, say, the Melvins, can’t exactly inhabit their inner Buzz because rhythm game music catalogs offer a tiny fraction of recorded music. This week however, the newly announced Rock Band Network introduced the option for anyone with a tune to try to get their songs added to the Rock Band shop. Legendary Seattle indie label Sub Pop has already said they’re interested and many labels are sure to follow.
Sub Pop A&R executive Tony Kiewel is an avid Rock Band aficionado and said the storied label is investing in equipment this week to turn songs into playable tracks. Sub Pop albums like Nirvana’s Bleach or the new record from the Shins could be part of Rock Band by Fall should the game accept the tracks for sale. “This conceivably could be the opening of the floodgates,” Kiewel said. “We always had the feeling that the people at Harmonix, they’re all in bands, they’re music people and I think it actually broke their hearts that we couldn’t work it out to get our stuff into the queue faster.”
Kiewer said Sub Pop is looking at converting its entire catalog, which includes early Nirvana, the Postal Service and the Shins, into Rock Band-ready tracks for sale in the new Rock Band Network store. “You’d be crazy not to make your stuff available and sell it if you can,” he says. “My fears are we haven’t actually used the software yet and audio multi-tracking software in general is pretty complex.”
With 8 million units and more than 50 million downloads sold, Rock Band appears poised to become a full-on music platform, and the new Beatles game — due September 9th — is sure to bring in an entirely new demographic. The game is creating new production costs heretofore unknown for Sub Pop, says Kiewel.
“It’s all up in the air,” he says.”This’ll be a ‘release’ as far as I’m concerned. This’ll be another format alongside vinyl and CD.”
This is big. Hopefully more and more record companies start doing this and it'll snowball.
Sub Pop?! Awesome news! I cant wait to get more (early) Soundgarden, Supersuckers, Mudhoney, Fugazi, etc etc I dont see Seven Year Bitch (Note to mods: yes that's their name; correct term for female dog) on their list or artists, so who are they signed with?
Sales of music downloaded for games such as Rock Band and Singstar will soon contribute to the weekly music chart - a move which could result in music labels scrambling to promote their artists through videogames.
What always happens when it starts accepting different types of data into the chart, said Talbot, is that the activities of the labels changes.
"At the moment we're not including downloads from games, and as a result of that labels aren't promoting their releases through games in the way that they might if sales of these downloads contributed to the charts," pointed out Talbot. "They would rather sell a vanilla download through Amazon or 7digital and have it contribute to the charts.
"As soon as [game downloads] are incorporated, you'll start to see people become much more active in making those tracks available, I think."
So for more game tracks being made, although i can't help wonder if EA's thought on the Rock Band Network is to get the profits straight to them and bypass any sort of cut Harmonix currently take This might cut innovation in the core gameplay side of things if all EA want is to churn out an iTunes store with lots of downloads and not progress the gaming experience.
Man, it just keeps getting better. By accepting DLC into the charts it means we are much more likely to get bands promoting new singles on release in RB.
I am sure there is still plenty of room for Harmonix to produce their own DLC (and take their cut) because their production and animation will still be worth any extra cost.
I am sure there is still plenty of room for Harmonix to produce their own DLC (and take their cut) because their production and animation will still be worth any extra cost.
All the animation is stock on-disc animation anyway, the DLC just contains triggers of when to use it.
So for more game tracks being made, although i can't help wonder if EA's thought on the Rock Band Network is to get the profits straight to them and bypass any sort of cut Harmonix currently take This might cut innovation in the core gameplay side of things if all EA want is to churn out an iTunes store with lots of downloads and not progress the gaming experience.
Whilst you make a very good point, you need to keep in mind that MTV Games is the publisher of Rock Band, so ultimately that sort of decision rests with them.
EA is merely responsible for facilitating the distribution of the hardware and game software to retailers, as part of the EA Partners program.
When the Rock Band Network — essentially an App Store for musicians who want to upload and sell Rock Band-playable versions of their songs — opens for business later this year, it has the potential to transform the music industry by giving musicians large and small a distribution platform on one of the few online services that’s managed to successfully monetize music downloads. If, that is, the Network can make their songs easy to find and enjoyable to play.
The latest addition to the incredibly profitable music video game franchise from MTV/Viacom game studio Harmonix, the Rock Band Network will initially be available for the Microsoft Xbox 360 retail channel, and later for Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii. With more than 50 million purchases and counting, downloadable Rock Band songs are already an important revenue and promotion platform for the music industry. So what will happen when the Rock Band Network greatly expands the download catalog? Two leading figures working at the intersection of music and games are expressing enthusiasm for the Network, but are also sounding some cautionary notes on song deployment.
“Opening Rock Band to uploading by musicians is a key point in making the rise of music games be of benefit to all musicians,” said Nabeel Hyatt, CEO of Conduit Labs (developer of social music game Loud Croud.) Indie star Jonathan Coulton, who has two tracks in Rock Band’s current download library, including his much-loved themed to the cult video game hit Portal, says he plans to expand his offerings on the Network as soon as he can. “[M]y fans are always asking when there will be more,” Coulton told me. “This means I can put as many up there as I want.”
However, that also raises one of the Network’s biggest challenges: As more and more music is uploaded, Rock Band owners may find themselves overwhelmed by choices. “They are going to run into the same discoverability problems that we see in the iPhone App Store and saw in Tower Records,” Hyatt predicted. Coulton concurred. “Hopefully Harmonix will take a cue from all the other successful music discovery platforms and leverage the community itself, ratchet up the social networking aspect of it,” he said.
The challenge for musicians, meanwhile, will be finding indie game developers who can convert their tracks into engaging Rock Band experiences. “I don’t think it will be terribly time-consuming to get something playable,” said Coulton, “but translating good music into good gaming is a new skill, really, one that the Harmonix team has already mastered and the rest of us have never tried.”
Notwithstanding those concerns, “I do think it has the potential to be pretty transformative,” Coulton said. “Anytime you put independent musicians on the same playing field as old school superstars, interesting things start to happen.”
An independant Boston-based band called Bon Savants are going to make their songs available though Rock Band Network and he's going to be keeping a video blog of his progress. Here's Episode 1:
They are seriously going to have to revamp the music store if this gets anywhere near as popular as they're hoping.
I can just see decent tracks being drowned by dross (much like the Indie Games section). Without a decent way of organising and searching for tracks, it's just going to be a mission to use. Hopefully though, it will be a seperate entity to the current music store so the 'official' RB tracks are still easy to locate.
17-07-2009, 3:44 PM
.
E. & O.E.
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
