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'Rock Band' opens up to indie artists

20 July 2009 0:26 by Andre "DVDBack23" Yoskowitz | 3 comments

MTV Games and Harmonix have announced that they plan to start the Rock Band Network next month, which will allow indie musicians to add their music to the popular instrument game.

Cnet says that "to program songs for the game, you need 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."

Once you have an account, log in and you will be greeted with instructions and free tools to create master recordings. The songs will then be submitted for critique from other creators and MTV Games for final official approval.

All approved tracks debut on the Xbox 360 exclusively for the first month and then MTV will pick the most popular songs to make available on the PS3 and Wii.

Artists can charge up to $3 USD for each song, and a minimum of 50 cents. They also get to keep 30 percent of all sales revenue.

Permalink to this article | Topic: Consoles

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ROMaster2 (Newbie) 20 July 2009 1:28
*Quote:* They also get to keep 30 percent of all sales revenue. For indie artists, they better get enough sales to at least compensate for the money they spend on getting those songs on. On another note, if there's too many songs then most to all artists won't get noticed at all. [ + quote]
emugamer (Member) 20 July 2009 14:18
The investment seems minimal. Even if they only pay $49 for 4 months. If they release 5 songs and sell them each for $1.50 to 50 people, they walk away with $112. Not a bad return on the investment, plus they get some exposure to people who might just want to give their song a try. [ + quote]
ee2skater (Newbie) 23 July 2009 15:22
Would this work for artists who are popular but not popular enough to be in Rock Band? I'm kinda dying to play A Day To Remember on Rock Band.. [ + quote]