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Well…almost.
When I played Rock Band the first time on my friend’s Xbox 360, I was completely addicted, but sort of jealous. I remember saying to my buddy while rockin’ out on the drums: “I wish you could play my band’s songs in this game!”
Think of all the people to whom you could potentially expose your music through a video game like Rock Band: millions of kids, adults, and fellow musicians who embrace the fake Stratocaster controller as a chance to rock out. Currently, a few bands are able to do that through the game’s “Bonus Tracks” – these are playable songs by less known, typically local acts that were lucky to make their way into the game. (Disclaimer: most of these bands have some sort of connection with the game itself, such as a singer who happened to be a game developer.)
In a couple of months, this is going to be possible for the rest of us. Harmonix (the original creators of Rock Band, also Boston-based) is going to be rolling out a public beta of their new Rock Band Network in mid-November. This is a new online community that will allow bands, producers, or avid fans of the game to construct new Rock Band tracks based on their own master recordings, and then upload them for sharing within the game. Harmonix also will provide categorization for your music using several parameters and help with promotion of user-created songs. Finally, bands will be able to set a small price ($1-3) to download their Rock Band tracks if desired, allowing for a small revenue stream.
This has huge potential as both a promotional venture and revenue stream for bands. The Rock Band series has sold over 13 million units, and players have downloaded over 50 million songs for the game. The download store has already been a huge success for major acts, with bands like Metallica releasing their full albums in the store. Bands struggling to expand out of the garage towards an international presence will be able, after some sequencing work, to share their music both in this network and the Rock Band download store.
Also, artists who publish tracks on the network will retain all rights to their songs and retain 30% of the download revenue – while this doesn’t seem to high at first, put it in the context of the above numbers, and there might be a small but worthwhile source of cash for struggling bands.
Harmonix has set up a partnership with Reaper, a cheap but powerful audio/MIDI workstation, which you can use to create MIDI tracks based on the original master tracks of your song. Once the MIDI tracks are created and synched up, bands can upload them for review and then publishing on the web. Reaper will look familiar to anyone who’s ever spent some time in the recording studio or with a synthesizer: audio tracks will display at the top of the window, with additional MIDI plugins that Harmonix will provide to convert audio data to MIDI code below. The process is sure to get tedious, but you’ll want to make sure your song sounds right in the new format, so perfection is key. The final piece of the process involves an eight-person review process to ensure accuracy & playability and prevent copyright infringement.
Adam Yoon over at Joystiq, a popular gaming website, puts it best: “The cost of entry is relatively low for what is, essentially, a new avenue of music publishing: a copy of Rock Band 2, an Xbox 360, a $99 Creator’s Club membership, and the $60 license for Reaper. For dedicated enthusiasts and professionals alike, that’s an easy price to swallow.”
Check out the landing page for the Rock Band Network for some more info here. For Adam Yoon’s in-depth look, click here. Also, check out Reaper, the MIDI workstation, at reaper.fm. Finally, check out Harmonix, the company behind it all, here.
Happy rocking!
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