Rock Band Opening Up (Slightly) For Indie Musicians
from the it's-a-step... dept
While some record labels and groups like ASCAP are telling musicians they should hold their music back from video games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero without larger upfront payments, most smart musicians recognize that getting their music out on these popular platforms is a great way to build up a much bigger (and more loyal) following. But, of course, the process to get into these games has been pretty difficult. So it's neat to see an effort from Harmonix and MTV Games to make it easier for independent artists to get their music into the games, if in a somewhat limited fashion. It still involves something of a hassle, but opening up the platform further is a good idea. You would think that one of these games would one day go fully open and trump the other by having a much wider selection of content -- with plenty of bands focusing on that provider, rather than the more limited one.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: indie musicians, rock band
Companies: harmonix
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Can you imagine the rock band commercial, get rid of "highway star" and replace it with something from Amanda f-cking palmer? Wouldn't that be attractive. Wait, it wouldn't happen, because she would complain that the cartoon image of herself in the ad wasn't fat enough. :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
alas my problem is I have a wii... and I can't play rockband without rebuying the guitars and drums... if someone was to make a game with all the indie bands... i hope they would make the controllers compatable with ones already on the market as well (Just planting seeds.... :P)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Another idea
I have a couple of local bands I follow that I would be stoked to play in Rock Band or GH.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And as a listener of obscure, regional bands, I do want to play music I know. Most of the songs I like to play on rock band aren't bad, but I'd never go out of my way to listen to them. Highway Star is as obscure to me as 1-800-ALARM-ME probably is to you.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
An open platform already exists
One already did. It's called Frets on Fire, and it is open source freeware available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It has a forum with monthly "fretting" and "drum fretting" competitions and literally thousands of available songs. Lots of the songs are certainly illegal, but there are also a lot of independent songs posted there officially. The game ships includes independent music at download, and they have official featured bands on their Web site.
Being open source, it of course won't have the advertising that the commercial titles do, but it's out there, and it works great.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]