Rock Band Network: UGC Gets a New Platform

In a brand new initiative aimed at reinvigorating the piracy-victimized music industry, Harmonix in association with MTV Games has announced the Rock Band Network this week. What is the Rock Band Network exactly? Well, its pretty much the idea you had when you first started playing music games: “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could play our own songs?”

Which is essentially what RBN is. It allows bands and record labels to author their own recordings into the familiar 5-color rock n’ roll scroll and put them up for sale in the console’s online marketplace.

While there’s no denying that this was a logical next step for the music gaming genre as a whole, it’d be hard not to speculate what this could potentially do for both music and games. While the video game industry was down 31% in June, these faltering numbers don’t hold a candle to the ultimate demise of the music industry, thanks to the likes of the legally loophole’d p2p sharing and torrenting practices.

But the real question is, who will benefit more? Planet Xbox360 reports:

“Artists featured in the store will be able to choose from multiple pricing tiers for individual tracks and will be compensated via a simple payment system that provides automated accounting and regular royalty payments.”

I’d love a few more details on said “automated accounting” considering all the drama associated with the feisty world of royalties, rights and intellectual property. But on the music side of the spectrum, it would seem that dropping the $99/yr premium membership for Microsoft’s XNA Creators Club is a very small price to pay for what is essentially trackable advertising, depending on how Harmonix further publicizes their business model to account for leading users towards a retailer to buy the actual music.

This is the key element of this whole dynamic. The end user, the person we’re marketing towards, has become apart of the process. The same people that will ultimately be creating content for RBN are the same people that generate blogs, videos, machinima, and any other form of UGC; the essential crux of the internet. They have shown time and again their creativity in modifying existing content to contribute to the overall mass of gaming media, so there’s no question that we’ll see some amazingly creative stuff, depending on your aural palette. In the end, re-affirming ones existence on the Internet is commonplace, but the exciting thing is how it will be monetized in a new market model.

Upon first glance it seems like everyone wins: Users vote on what songs they want to play, bands become privy to a massive captive audience, and Harmonix and MTV get their cut. Considering the video game industry hasn’t quite endured the wrath of piracy that music has, it’ll be interesting to see exactly how much momentum Rock Band Network gains. And as an unwavering fan of both worlds, I sincerely hope it works.

Rock Band Network: UGC Gets a New Platform