Recently MTV Games and Harmonix, the companies behind the smash hit music video game Rock Band 2, announced that independent artists and game developers can now submit tracks to the game's download service. For those who don't know, Rock Band is like a "instrumental karaoke" game of sorts, rivaled by it's elder Guitar Hero. Rock Band and Rock Band 2 have a rather expansive download service where you can actually download new songs, and now it's getting just a little more expansive.
Upon the news of this announcement, indie rock juggernaut Sub Pop Records announced that they would release their ENTIRE CATALOG on Rock Band 2 stating that it would be "another format, just like CDs or Vinyl". I don't know if they're counting the old singles series and everything, but that's still a lot of releases. A few others have announced such desires as well. I might even jump on that bandwagon ("The Manifesto" on Rock Band anyone?).
I guess what I'm confused about is how a song on a video game that only plays correctly if the person playing it is good enough can count as a "format" for a release. It'll be weird when some vinyl and digital only labels start having to say "available on 500 red, 300 orange cream, 200 purple marble, digital, easy, medium, hard, and expert." I'm honestly curious to see how this works for some independent labels. With the fall of Lumberjack Mordam, maybe some labels might actually try this.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's pretty cool that anyone can submit their music to the game. The mentality of some people, such as the people at Sub Pop, thinking that this would be a whole new format to release music on. I mean, it's fun to be able to play the songs, but don't market it to be the greatest thing ever, and don't expect to make bank off of this.
Time will only tell how this works and if it would benefit the already ailing (and corrupt) music industry in any positive way.
This may have made zero sense whatsoever, but I don't care, It's my blog.
Thanks for reading.
Until next time, I'm off to go play Seaweed's self-titled on a plastic guitar and force my dad to sing it or something.
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