Rock Band's already massive set list is about to explode.
In late August, Harmonix will launch an open beta of the Rock Band Network, which will work with Microsoft's XNA Creators Club to let musicians create and sell their own tracks on the Rock Band platform. Harmonix plans to recruit and train an army of designers and reviewers from the Xbox indie development community who will create and peer-review the tracks before passing them on to Harmonix for final submission.
This is not, as in Activision's "GH Tunes" feature for Guitar Hero, about creating MIDI music using pre-canned sounds. You're taking the stems from a ProTools session, the original recorded music, and turning it into a track that is indistinguishable from Harmonix's own work.
In an extensive interview with Billboard, Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos says that he expects both indie bands and major labels to use this service. Currently, Harmonix can only create about 10 new songs per week for Rock Band. By opening the process up, major labels that want to get in on the act can instead choose to have the community of Harmonix-trained indie developers work on their songs -- or hire their own in-house staff of song creators.
If your tracks are approved, you can post them to the Rock Band store and get a 30% cut of the sale price, which you set from 50 cents to $3. Harmonix says that it will move some of the community-created tracks to the PlayStation 3 download store, but the program for now revolves around the XBox 360 Creator's Club.
Many, many more details at Billboard, including some thoughts about potential risks of the service.
MTV to Launch New Track Upload Program for Rock Band [Billboard]
