Make, sell Rock Band songs on 360

By Robert Purchese Published 20 July, 2009

Harmonix initiative launches this year.

Harmonix plans to let Rock Band 2 owners make and sell their own tracks on Xbox 360.

You'll need a copy of the game, XNA Creators Club Premium (USD 99 a year), Reaper and Magma programs as well as an Xbox Live Gold account. Tracks created will need to meet certain Harmonix specifications and be kitted out with MIDI gameplay elements before being submitted for peer review.

But once thumbs-upped, tracks go on sale to the public and royalties are paid quarterly - just like on the Xbox Live Indie (Community) Games channel. The split is typically 70/30 in your favour.

Closed testing will begin in August, according to the RB Network website, with a view to launching later this year.

The initiative will be exclusive to Xbox 360, although certain "stand out tracks" will make their way to PS3 and Wii, according to Gamastutra.

Head to that Rock Band Network website for the full nitty-gritty.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (11) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Toothball #1 3 years ago

    Well I'm keen to see where this goes. It'd be good to see all sorts of new music crop up from this.

  • zoidberg #2 3 years ago

    Other such sites let you keep the copyright on your music and DON'T expand it further (TV, ads, etc.). If they miss this, they won't find actual musicians to do it. Noone will give up their song's copyright just for Rock Band exposure.

  • RexRunti #3 3 years ago

    Where does it say you'll be giving up your copyright?

  • darleysam #4 3 years ago

    I thought it was 30% to you, %70 to harmonix?

  • Sonic_D #5 3 years ago

    This could be huge, I hope it works out. You do not lose yr copyright.

  • kangarootoo #6 3 years ago

    "The split is typically 70/30 in your favour."


    They are very unlikely to take ownership of copyright.

  • GamesConnoisseur #7 3 years ago

    Critics....... isnt this a great idea to allow local bands to get wider attention if they arent having much luck with big names?

    Personally I thought it a ruddy good idea even if music have zero appeal for me! Its just an extension of the User Created Contents that LBP fans so loves.

    We should applauds any initatives like this and allowing gamers channel for us to express our 'arts'!

  • kangarootoo #8 3 years ago

    I'm not dissing it. I think its a great idea.

    This seems to be the age of UGC, and not just because the tools are there to make it, but because more and more companies are starting to understand that creating an efficient and fair method of actually PAYING people for contributions that are successful is a very good thing.

  • smelly #9 3 years ago

    Seems like a lot of hassle to me.

    1. You have to pay $99 a year
    2. You then have to go thru with a midi file and match it to your song (not a quick task)
    3. And THEN it might get turned down via the voting system
    4. And after ALL THAT you MIGHT get some people downloading it to cover your costs/time... ish

    I'll stick to youtube thanks

  • darleysam #10 3 years ago

    You can get the tools for free, I believe. You only need to pay after you've done all the work and still want to upload it. As for rejection, it sounds like as long as you're not throwing bags of Skittles at the player through something as musically complex as a Status Quo song, or language to make a detroit rapper blush, you're probably fine.
    I want my band to get some stuff up on there if at all possible.

  • smelly #11 3 years ago

    But surely the whole point of rock band is to play along with songs you know and pretend you were playing them? If you're playing along to some indy band you've never heard of - surely that defeats point?

    As for band promotion - you're going to get more followers by making a youtube vid...