Rock Band Network; HUGE Announcement

Several hours ago, a Harmonix employee detailed a new project called the Rock Band Network. Inside the spoiler is an announcement thread post on the site Scorehero, which is in close affiliation with Harmonix and has access to the closed beta. However, I suggest you skip down to my summary, as it is hard to understand at first glance.

Spoiler

Rock Band Network

I am proud to announce the upcoming launch of a system that will revolutionize music distribution, known as the Rock Band Network!

Through the Rock Band Network (RBN), which is built on top of the Xbox 360 XNA Creator's Club, the community will have the ability to publish and sell music that they own rights to through Rock Band 2. A new in-game Rock Band Network Store will be added with the ability to "demo" any RBN song that is live for free. Players will be able to play the first one-third of the song (or full 1 minute, whichever is longer) before being given the option to buy the full track.

In terms of true game-quality content, this is the real deal. The system will require full multi-track audio stems for each instrument, along with an authored MIDI file containing the note chart, animation, lighting, camera, venue, and other gameplay events. Harmonix has opened the doors to file format specifications, game engine requirements, and authoring standards and guidelines to bring everything necessary to create top-notch content to the community.

Leveraging the power of the already established Xbox 360 XNA Creator's Club system, any content submitted to the system will first go through playtest and/or peer review phases where other Creator's Club members will be able to play songs in review, rate and comment on them. Upon receiving enough positive review scores for every aspect of the song (each instrument/difficulty and lyric language), the song will be automatically published to the Rock Band Network Store where the submitter will receive quarterly royalties in the amount of 30% for every purchase of the song. The submitter will be able to set the song price at certain fixed increments upon submission.

As part of the Rock Band 2 patch, a brand new 'Audition Mode' will allow content creators to transfer song projects from their PC to their Xbox 360 console to play the song locally. Auto-play may be turned on or off for any and all instruments so you can see your charts without worrying about failing that wicked solo, additionally, the song speed is adjustable in real-time during play (with much more fine-tuned control than typical practice mode).

A closed beta has just recently launched which myself and some other ScoreHero staff will be a part of. The official community site is at creators.rockband.com, and in the upcoming months the system will open for the rest of the public!

Rhythm Authors LLC

I was first contacted by Harmonix about this incredible new system in production back in February. Knowing ScoreHero and CustomHero's involvement in the authoring community and with intent to set community standards high from the start, they wanted to bring onboard a small team of us to brainstorm ideas and prepare for a successful launch.

As a result I've independently registered a new company, Rhythm Authors LLC, which will serve to provide a professional Rock Band authoring service to bands and musicians wanting to bring their music into the platform. All of our top Rhythm Authors staff have recently attended an authoring master class hosted by Harmonix where we were able to ask questions, see the process first-hand, and get feedback on authored songs we'd brought along. It was very valuable and we will surely be committed to upholding Harmonix quality standards for every project we accept.

Those from ScoreHero currently on the Rhythm Authors team include: myself, Phr34k, elx, Chil, nickb611, katamakel, ImaCarrot, emptyset and socrstopr

I've built a website at RhythmAuthors.com for all of you to track our projects as songs are submitted to the system and become live in the RBN Store. Not much is available yet, but feel free to register and check it out. As songs are added we'll have a browsable song database with preview pages available for each artist and band, and you'll be able to subscribe to updates on certain bands or feeds.

If you have experience in the software or custom's community, or general interest or knowledge with music theory, MIDI sequencing, or audio mixing, we are looking to bring more individuals onboard and will be opening up Rhythm Authors applications through the site sometime in the next few weeks.

There will also be a way for interested artists and bands to get in contact with us and submit song demos for review. We've got Rhythm Authors e-mail, as well a toll-free phone/fax line which will be available soon.

Not only will we be involved in authoring work for clients, but will also be active in reviewing other songs on the network, and browsing the official RB Creator's Club forums to help other, share advice, and hopefully learn new tips along the way ourselves.

Summary: The Rock Band Network is a software where aspiring artists are able to record their own music within the Rock Band Network recording studio, place corresponding gems inside the note highway, and sell it worldwide through the XBL Marketplace as downloadable songs. Anybody, and I mean anybody can record instruments and vocals from real instruments and put it into the game.

Experienced music gamers who frequent the website will be able to play and review each and every song submitted before it gets released to the general public. If a song is reviewed well enough by the staggering amount of reviewers (There will be tens of thousands), it will be released for purchase and anyone can download it.

In the network, buyers can preview a song and play the first 1/3 of the song before deciding to purchase it or not. There are three great benefits to this:

1. Rock Band players will be able to download unparalleled amounts of game content. There are already over 700 songs able to be played on Rock Band, but with the Rock Band Network, that number could literally double in just a few months.

2. New artists making their appearance in the music scene will be able to get their music out there. A whole new wave of popular artists will rise up, and ones that may have gone unnoticed will garner worldwide fame from this music network.

3. The third and most astounding benefit to this feature is that every single time someone downloads a song off the network, the band who wrote and played the song gets a cut of the cash. That's right, simply writing a song will almost undoubtedly net you some extra cash.


This is a huge announcement for music games, and possibly the biggest step forward in the genre's history. No word on a release date, but more information is said to be on the way very soon.

For more information and a video detailing some more features, you can go to creators.rockband.com

 

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