If you're an independent musician looking for as many ways to sell and promote your music as possible, and you or a friend has some experience with software development, you'll want to check out the upcoming Rock Band Network, for which Harmonix and MTV Games plan to begin beta testing in late August.
It's more complicated than posting a song to iTunes, but you'll get placement on a more exclusive platform.
(Credit: MTV Games)To program songs for the game, you or your developer friend first needs a membership to Microsoft's XNA Creators' Club, which was launched a couple years ago to let independent developers create casual games to sell through the Xbox Live Marketplace; a membership costs $49.99 for four months or $99.99 for a year.
You'll then be able to get free tools and instructions from the Rock Band Creators Web site to convert your master recordings to the MIDI charts used by the game. Next, you'll have to submit your song for other creators to critique and finally to MTV Games for approval.
Once approved, the song will enter the Rock Band Network. All songs will debut exclusively for 30 days on the Xbox 360, and the Rock Band team will pick stand-out songs to make available to the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii consoles.
Under the network terms, musicians can charge between 50 cents and $3 per song, and they will keep a 30 percent cut of all sales. That may seem small, compared with the 70 percent cut musicians get for selling their songs on iTunes, which requires much less work, but Rock Band is a much more exclusive platform--you're much more likely to stand out here than among the bazillion songs available through Apple's music store.
Follow Matt on Twitter
As a member of the old-people-who-used-to-play-in-rock-bands demographic, I've never found much appeal in Rock Band or its competitor/predecessor Guitar Hero. But they obviously have a lot of devoted fans, including, apparently, "the only Beatles in the world" (and the others' designated heirs).
On Thursday, Rock Band creators MTV Music-Harmonix teamed up with Apple Corps and announced a forthcoming video game that will let you play along with Beatles songs. The game won't merely be another Rock Band version or Track Pack, but will rather be an entirely new game that will presumably work with the Rock Band peripherals. Album art will be prominently featured, as will the original mixes, presided over by Beatles engineer George Martin's son Giles (who also worked on the Beatles/Cirque du Soleil tie-in project, Love).
Personally, I'm hoping for an interactive Yellow Submarine portion and a new Rock Band keyboard so I can try to play "Hey Bulldog."
It doesn't seem like there'd be much overlap between a band that broke up nearly 40 years ago and a new video game, but generation after generation keeps reclaiming the Beatles as its own. My friends' 7-year-old daughter has been obsessed with them for some time--she could tell John songs from Paul songs from George songs when she was only 4, and watches Beatles movies alongside Hannah Montana flicks.
The game will come out late next year, in time for the holidays.
Ion's digital turntables, which let you convert LP records directly to digital files, aren't new--I first saw them at the 2006 CES--but the company is showing more sophisticated equipment each time I stop by their booth. This year, they're showing off their LP Dock turntables, which not only feature a USB connection out but also a dock for selected iPods (5th gen and Classic and 2nd and 3rd gen Nano). This lets you record directly to the device via Voice Memo mode.
But I hadn't seen their URecord before--it's like their digital turntables but more versatile, letting you connect any audio source via RCA cables. The iCUE also looks cool--it's a two-channel mixer for digital audio files on your computer.
Ion's iCUE lets you mix digital audio files from your computer.
(Credit: Matt Rosoff)At their CES booth, they'll be showing off their electronic drum kits in conjunction with an Xbox 360 playing Rock Band. And right across the aisle, the folks at Peavey will be showing their guitar controllers with Guitar Hero. It's a virtual rock-a-thon! Check it out, about halfway back in the main hall at CES.
When Guitar Hero or Rock Band come up in conversation, I always feel a little like Stan's dad in this recent episode of South Park (fast forward to 0:45 if you're in a hurry).
I feel a little better since yesterday, when Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein published her review of Rock Band in Slate, in which she compares playing Rock Band with playing in a rock band. It's a fun read, so I won't summarize it here, but the following quote pretty much nails it for me: "And, really, if you are going to play the game with a group of friends for more than a night, shouldn't you just form a real band? There is something sad about the thought of four teenagers getting Rock Band for Christmas and spending all of their after-school time pretending to know how to play."
And before you accuse me of sounding like an 80-year-old, yes, I've tried Guitar Hero and can see how it might be addictive. The drums in Rock Band also seem appealing, although I haven't seen that game in action yet.
- prev
- 1
- next
